The phase of Rick Snyder? (photo by Chris Bowers)

I want you to close your eyes and imagine something. A hypothetical, as it were. Suppose—provided it were constitutional—that President Obama had passed sweeping legislation that allowed him to appoint "czars." And by "czars" I do not mean the well-qualified White House advisers against whom the conspiracy theorists of the far-right already waged a savage and misinformed campaign. Instead, I mean people in whom the President has vested actual power to make decisions unilaterally and impose them over the entire populace.

Now imagine that these czars—let's call them "emergency managers," just to give them a title that would less offend the right wing on account of the foreignness of the alternative—have the power to nullify the actions of state and local governments. To essentially fire their elected officials. To unilaterally terminate their contracts. In such a scenario we can easily imagine that Fox News and the entire cadre of right-wing media would start screaming in the most alarmed terms about the totalitarian and dictatorial nature of the Obama regime—an un-American policy by an un-American president designed to eliminate the fundamental principle of local control by local government.

In fact, we don't really have to imagine what that type of conservative outrage about such an Obama takeover would look like—we can see it all over conservative online media, even without the consolidation of executive power outline above. A simple internet search for "Barack Obama totalitarian" yields a series of concerned pieces from conservative outlets, including the National Review, implying or even declaring that Barack Obama has behaviors that belie a sympathy for communist-style totalitarianism.

Among conservatives, the idea of local control is a hallowed one, and the phrase itself appears in the platform documents of numerous statewide Republican Party organizations. Ultimately, it is a principle founded on the oft-repeated refrain that the individual knows how to spend money better than any government does. Theoretically, then, the further out from the individual that government radiates and the less direct connection it has to the individual, the less trustworthy it is and the less power it should have to regulate. The concept is succinctly expressed in the "Republican Principles" section of the website of the Michigan Republican Party:

I BELIEVE the most effective, responsible and responsive government is government closest to the people.

In that case, it looks like someone forgot to tell Michigan Governor Rick Snyder about the founding principles of the party he represents in office. After all, nothing could be further from the sacred conservative principle of government closest to the people than Governor Snyder's recently signed bill that grants him the power to appoint "emergency managers" with the unprecedented power to eliminate the decision-making capabilities of local government and forcibly dishonor existing contracts, pensions and other retirement agreements. The governor whose political party's very principles espouse the commitment to government closest to the people has, in one instance, fired the government of an entire town and prevented officials from conducting any business on behalf of the municipality outside of calling a meeting to order and adjourning it.

Arrogation of power to the executive branch is nothing new for the Republican Party; during his presidency, George W. Bush's White House absorbed many powers that were historically subject to review and approval by the legislative and judicial branches (or simply outlawed by the Constitution). However, the excuses for these excesses generally centered around the importance of dictatorial emergency powers in times of a national security crisis; after all, one of the powers that even conservatives concede to a strong federal government is the obligation to provide for the common defense.

There is, however, no national security crisis in Michigan. There most certainly is an economic crisis; but given the fact that Republicans and conservatives seem unified in their belief that the best management of the economy is done at the local level by the governments closest to the individual, it would otherwise seem to make little sense for these same Republicans to adopt such an autocratic approach to governance, except for one truth about what the modern GOP is all about.

The modern GOP has as its main goal to vacuum up ever-increasing amounts of wealth to the the financial elite—in our country and now throughout the world—through tax breaks, loopholes, bubble inflation, deregulation, and—most importantly—freeing up additional capital for these giveaways by means of eliminating the entitlements and government programs that have for decades sustained a vibrant middle class. If these efforts can be accomplished through weakening the power of central government, then Republicans will call for smaller government, less regulation and more local control. If, however, those policies can be achieved through giving a central government under Republican rule unchecked control to institute these policies unilaterally, then suddenly Republicans will toss the small-government canard out the window.

As long as it fosters a distinctly un-American dream, what's a little inconsistency between plutocrats?