The GOP and the Muslim Brotherhood

Andrew C. McCarthy

8/25/2012

Understanding the Muslim Brotherhood

I’m a big fan of the 1 percent. No, not the dastardly 1 percent of Occupy Wall Street myth; I’m partial, instead, to the 1 percent of Congress that takes seriously the threat of Islamic-supremacist influence operations against our government.

The people have 435 representatives serving in the House and another hundred in the Senate. Of these 535, a total of 288 are Republicans — 241 and 47 in the lower and upper chambers, respectively. Of these, only five House conservatives — five— have had the fortitude to raise concerns about the Islamist connections of government officials entrusted with positions enabling them to shape U.S. policy.

Think about that. Republicans purport to be the national-security party. For decades this claim was well founded, starting with Ronald Reagan’s clarity in seeing the Soviets as enemies to be defeated, not accommodated. President Reagan’s plan for the Cold War was, “We win, they lose,” and he pulled it off because he was not under any illusions about who “they” were.

But something happened to the GOP in the Bush years. For all the welcome understanding that Bill Clinton was wrong — that the jihad could not be indicted into submission — the Bush administration never learned a fundamental truth that Reagan knew only too well: You cannot defeat your enemies unless you understand them, and you cannot even begin to understand them if you are too craven to name them.

And now… the rest of the story. …..