Regardless of THEIR intentions, no one can deny that the Republicans have worked to break down the mechanisms of oversight of their activities. They have implemented unprecedented secrecy in government. They have blocked accountability for, even examination of their actions in every instance. They have undone the protections against political abuses put in place after Watergate. The have built anti-terrorism systems that are CAPABLE of spying on their political opponents. They have passed laws bypassing civil liberties that COULD BE used against any or all of us at any time. They have put in place a system of rule-by-intimidation in the Congress, and decision-by-ideology in the courts. And they have fostered an atmosphere of fear across the entire government, smearing and destroying the reputations of any who dare cross them.

Let’s just say that, of course, THESE particular right-wingnuts are good, honest, well-motivated public servants. Fine. But they have left us with nothing to stop other, bad people from taking advantage of the opening this particular crop of fine, upstanding wingnuts has created. And with the government wide-open for corruption and takeover, is there any doubt that there ARE people who would want to take advantage, step in, and take hold of the reigns of power?

I think Dave is correct as far as he goes, that the policies of the Bush administration (both domestically and abroad) have tremendously increased the possibility of the reigns of our government being taken by extremists who are, if not classically fascist (but then, no one can really quite agree on what "fascism" is) then certainly quasi-fascistic.

The trouble is that an armed take-over, or a putsch, would almost certainly be countered by the military and would also rile the spirits of many, if not most, American citizens, and would therefore not be guaranteed to be effective, so a way would have to be found to bring these extremists to power using the very mechanisms of democracy. A huge campaign warchest would have to be quickly assembled and a relatively unknown candidate would have to be found who was apparently affable and unthreatening in most circumstances, but who would project strongly moralistic views about good and evil and saving our country from its own destructive impulses. (The best tack would be to hold closely to straightforward Christian themes, since these resonate so well even in many non-Christians.)

During the election, the candidate would have to hide the extremist views of the people he'd eventually be fronting for and "run from the center", promising to bring unity and humility to government, while at the same time signalling subtly to various radical groups his acquiescence to their dogma. Because nothing is certain in a true democracy, behind the scenes every effort would have to be made to harm the opposition candidate, using smears, innuendo, outright lies and falsehoods repeated incessantly. Steps would have to be taken to reduce the turnout of those who might not vote for the extremist candidate, by way of threats and intimidation, propaganda and false information, as well as by various structural means to eliminate problematic voters from the roles entirely.

And, in the end, if these herculean labors were not to deliver a clear-cut victory, every effort would have to be made to use the vast influence of the extremists to manipulate the results to guarantee their success.

So, as you can see, the number of people and events and circumstances which would have to come together in order to bring about such an extra-democratic result is so large, that the probability of it happening is fairly slim, so we can probably rest easy, even given the bad policy decisions made by the Bush administration.