united NATIONAL independent Tea Party polite just to a point
The GOP 1860-2010
This entry was posted on 11/1/2009 5:46 AM and is filed under Added Articles.
Republicans in the Mirror
We are approaching an interesting intersection in time. Next year will be the 150th anniversary of the election of Abraham Lincoln and the birth of the Republican Party. Yet in that time, remarkably, the political playing field has almost perfectly reversed. The solid hidebound South which supported Stephen Douglas and felt so strongly about it that they tried to secede and started a Civil War when they lost is today just as solidly republican as it was then democratic. The party of Lincoln has somehow become the heir to the political landscape of Jefferson Davis.
Of course most issues have changed or at least are now known by other names than they were 150 years ago but structurally and philosophically these regions have somehow kept their sociological and political identity intact. Therefore it is less the country that has changed than the two parties which are jockeying for dominance have changed their orientation. Therefore the republican party of today has become a mirror image of what it was and completely reversed the principles on which it was founded.
There is a present danger for the republicans in this. The election of Lincoln and the war that followed marginalized the democratic party for more than half a century. Controlling the South, when it tends to vote in a block against the rest of the nation rather than just as part of a broader coalition, then has not proven to be a strong position to hold.
Obviously the republican party of today is not pro-slavery. But they have made themselves heirs to that position as it has evolved through time. It has lately been the party that unreformed segregationists and anti-affirmative action, anti-immigration and states rights adherents call home. When the republican party was the chief supporter of those in favor of flying of the Confederate battle flag over certain Southern state capitals in recent years they seemed unaware of the irony inherent in that position. You are left to wonder at times if the republicans of today even remember who won the Civil War and which side they were on at the time.
Through sheer constant weak-willed opportunism those who are not only against our government but against most of what our government has done and what it might still do in the future have today gravitated to the republican party. The republican propagandists have played the card of victimhood so long and assiduously that when the majority of the electorate finally decided to enjoin the party to its own propaganda and make it the minority party it has always portrayed itself to be even when it wasn't, they have seemed surprised at this reversal of their fortunes.
The mirror comparison is not perfect, of course, for the US is a much different place now than it was 150 years ago. But when Obama, a former legislator in Springfield and a United States Senator from Illinois, self consciously portrayed himself as the natural heir to Lincoln it was unfathomable that Lincoln's old party barely even contested the comparison. They ridiculed it, as they do nearly everything in their own snide fashion, but without even bothering to insist that they were the true conservators of Lincoln's legacy. Since they knew it wouldn't be convincing they didn't even venture a try.
Naturally this betrayal of their own tradition has been a long time in germination. When the Civil Rights legislation passed in the 1960's and Lyndon Johnson presciently predicted that it would mean the loss of the South for the democrats for a generation, the republicans could not have been more eager to take the bait. From Richard Nixon's conscious determination to win the South as a closet anti-integrationist, to Reagan's nod to reactionaries in the South as an virulent opponent of affirmative action, to George W. Bush's campaign's furtive efforts to smear John McCain with claims that he had fathered a black child, and now with dark grumblings about Obama "not being one of us", the republicans have massaged the Southern Strategy to a fault. They have worked hard to earn their current increasing geographical isolation and have pursued it with a breathtaking combination of verve and myopia.
Now their talk of getting back in power in an election cycle or two is fantasy. Their problems have been too long in the making to be readily reversible. And since the route they have chosen to do this is by becoming the party of "no", as permanent obstructionists, is essentially anti-democratic and profoundly un-American, it becomes even harder to take their strategy seriously. In their latest juvenile attempt to show they are clever - as opposed apparently to serious and substantive - they have tried to confuse this moniker of the "party of no" by saying that they are really the party of "know". Get it?
Unfortunately this reminds of the old joke applied by its enemies to the University of Nebraska football team (sorry Huskers). When asked what the "N" on their helmets stood for they are averred to have replied, "knowledge". So no, the party of no is not the party of know. That would require real policies, hard work and trying to re-earn the trust of the American people, all things the current republican leadership seems constitutionally unable to provide.
It was very clear, for instance, that they were probably not going to get their way on the recent health care debate. The democrats would have had to implode, something they are capable of to be sure, but not probable under present circumstances. The numbers, the momentum and the desire of the American people for action were all united against them. But by their incredibly cynical bad behavior, judgment, lies and exaggerations the republicans have tried their best to turn a loss into a rout.
If you consider the republicans of today a little more deeply, using only historical examples as reference points, the current republican party might be thought of as an amalgam of the anti-government populism of Andrew Jackson, the big business, robber baron party of Herbert Hoover and the anti-immigration and anti-integration party of the late Strom Thurmond. Their intolerant right wing religious beliefs combined with their devil may care guerrilla type political tactics - from their tantrum in shutting down the government when they couldn't get their way legitimately in 1995, to Clinton's bizarre stage managed impeachment, to the flow-through tea baggers of yesterday's news - remind us of the Know Nothing nativists of Lincoln's day, of whom he strongly disapproved and who abandoned the republican party in droves when he won.
Superficially big money, right wing religion, southern style populism and ultra nationalist militarism almost seem to hang together well enough to look like a winning coalition in some circumstances. Money, religion, anti-government fervor, anti immigration and ultra nationalism are all powerful forces in American politics. But since these subsets of voters don't necessarily cleave together naturally the republicans have always sought policies like flag burning, gay marriage and fear of terrorists to infuse their dry policy positions with strong visceral emotional context to glue these disparate forces together.
But emotion is a card you can play only so long politically without exhausting your good will, as well as your base and eventually the entire country. This is particularly true when the private actions of those shouting loudest often seem to contradict the principles they are publicly espousing. It grows even worse when these emotional issues seldom reach any clear legislative consensus or political culmination and which moreover have absolutely nothing to do with actually running the country unless you count running it into the ground. On the contrary these emotional hot button issues normally work in direct opposition to sound management of the nation's business and resources. In addition when you factor in their guerrilla political tactics, more common to a party out of power, which eventually precipitate a decline in governmental trust and effectiveness across the board, the party in charge will necessarily be blamed for the decline.
So when anthropologists look back to try to reconstruct the typical political animal of the Reagan era, republico-pythicus, to place in an unnatural history museum of the future somewhere, he might well look something like this: a slightly overweight middle aged white male ostentatiously waving an American flag with his right hand and a gun held high over head with his left. He would have a "conservative" bible tucked under one arm and a new and undigested copy of Adam Smith under the other. On his head will rest a ballcap with the slogan, "never raise common taxes ever for anything," a pro life lapel pin prominently portrayed on his shirt, and patches sewn on available spaces everywhere proclaiming all his corporate sponsorship logos and allegiances, from Haliburtan, Exxon, Fox News, etc. But this species - the card on the exhibit would explain - was a particularly delicate one unable to easily breed or adapt to climate changes and by the beginning of the 21st century it was an endangered species and soon thereafter was extinct.
A Remarkable Symmetry
In fact, there is a remarkable symmetry here. The republican reign from 1980-2008 is really quite similar to the democratic dominance from 1832-1860. The first of these was vanquished by Lincoln and the latest apparently ended by none other than his self-proclaimed heir apparent, Obama. Both of these political periods, one democratic one republican, were founded by larger than life presidents - Jackson and Reagan - who strode like giants over their times then lent their names to the era over which their parties presided. The interesting thing to note is just how similar was the basis on which they built their popularity.
Though neither was what you would call learned each had simple and firmly held beliefs. Both were rabidly, even irrationally, anti-government. Both were martial men, Jackson actually and Reagan rhetorically. Neither was noted for having humane policies favorable to minorities. Both were strongly popular, both had great hair and looked good on a horse. Both founded dead end deconstructive political movements which achieved far more in spirit than they bequeathed in legislative substance. Each inaugurated a political period which 28 years after its inception led to a deeply divided nation, their opponents' party demoralized from having been beaten so thoroughly for so long and their own party an empty stagnant shell of mindless sloganeering and vapid belligerence. In each case, after 28 years of virtually unmatched domination their party fell on hard times. In Jackson's case, after the Civil War, as I said earlier, the democrats were effectively marginalized for over fifty years.
Now in our current case the history has yet to be written, but alleged signs of an early republican resurgence fall somewhere between greatly exaggerated and totally nonexistent. The republican party today is as surly and obstreperous in defeat as they were obnoxious, arrogant and incompetent in charge. They have become the party of nullification, virtual secessionists from reality. It remains to be seen, which is certainly possible, if they can raise up a leader who can discipline this party to follow him or her and put all this flame and tantrum throwing nonsense aside and start to climb out of the political pit into which they have so rapidly descended.
Otherwise, if for instance the long health care debate eventuates in popular, enduring and irreversible legislation, which is highly likely, the republican party is teetering on the edge of the precipice of a very long decline. So far in the Obama administration their attitude was first cautionary, then inflammatory, then irrational, then shrill and now finally, worst of all, touching irrelevancy.
Just as an aside, at the same time that the basis of Jackson's and Reagan's popularity is so similar it is also true that one would never confuse the two. Jackson is an original democrat and Reagan is a pure republican. So what is the difference? For therein lies the secret in plain sight of American and probably world politics. For it is not the sameness but the difference between them which perfectly defines the eternal difference between the two parties. Quite simply it is money.
Follow the money. Jackson was against large accumulations of capital and considered it to be a threat to democratic procedures and liberty. Reagan was in favor of large accumulations of capital into private hands and considered it the proof and apogee of the success of the American free market system. This not only is the clearest, most fundamental and enduring difference between the two parties, this is the divide that can never ultimately be bridged. This is why there are two parties.
Money in one form or guise or another is at the root of 60 to 80% of every political debate and conflict in the country. It is more subliminal even than region, religion or upbringing. How one feels about the disbursement of money, which hinges on whether or not national wealth is a resource available to be drawn on by all or best kept by a chosen few, has been the most fundamental divide in all our politics from Jefferson to Hamilton, from Franklin Roosevelt to Reagan, from Obama to McCain.
Other issues may arise and fade. Wars, abortion, race, immigration, religion, national security and big government vs. small. All may tilt elections one way or the other from time to time. But along with money, the solid South is the most potent and consistent force in American politics. Money is not the reason the South has stayed the South through all this time. No one can unravel the Gordian Knot that is the southern states, not even the party of (k)no(w). The republicans crassly set out to use the South politically and have been captured by the South philosophically. It will be a very hard knot or (k)no(t) now for the party of no (or even know) to un-knot.
This is especially true as the republican right's unabated drive for political "purity" continues to narrow and winnow the base of their own support farther and farther away.
In sum, over the last few decades some of the party's' lesser lights and dimmest bulbs have made purely opportunistic decisions which the party is paying for now and may have to pay for for a very long time to come. The republicans have won the South and lost nearly everywhere else. They absolutely abandoned the expansive, tolerant, magnanimous, far sighted, unifying principles on which their party was brilliantly conceived by Lincoln, the nation's greatest president. They have replaced these fine standards with the narrow minded, selfish, greedy, torturous, divisive, fear and war mongering techniques of historical nonentities like Dick Cheney and Karl Rove along with various other ranters and ravers too intellectually small and forgettable to note.
It is painfully clear that if they are to begin to broaden their base again and become what they once were the republicans must move back to find the principles on which their party was initially founded 150 years ago and embrace them once more.
