Lago PARANOIA wrote:What the hell is wrong with the Republican Party right now? I mean, above and beyond their basic problems. The big thing these past two weeks, besides Carson and Jeb! doubling down on the 'goddamn lazy blax want handouts, lol' myths, is the candidates going into an overclass-slobbering policy frenzy.
I can understand in a twisted sort of way Jeb Bush deciding to double-down on plutocracy. He's slipping badly in the polls and is trying to sweeten the deal for his sugar daddies. But I don't understand what's up with Trump. His entire deal was that he was supposed to be a different kind of Republican who was not only going to eject the nasty hordes of brown people but also put a bit more dough in his supporters' paychecks by sticking it to their bosses. Is he also trying to slurp up some money from the plutocratic wing?
Today's Republican Party is made up of plutocrats, evangelist fundamentalist Christians, fiscal conservatives, libertarians, and nativists, with large crossovers between some but not all of those circles. The base voters that it appeals to are predominantly older, white, Christian, low-to-middle class and small business owners - that's the electorate. But the party apparatus is dominated by special interests in the form of big business, including a number of millionaires and billionaires with concentrated interests in privatization of government lands and services, defense and medical contracts, farm subsidies, deregulation, etc.
So it's a very schizoid party. The goals of the party apparatus do not neatly align with what the base wants, and they really
haven't for a long time. The thing is, you don't actually need huge amounts of people to win elections at the local level - even House and Senate races can be skewed by one particularly loud and vocal segment of the population, if you get them riled up enough and promise them enough things. Rhetoric can work wonder in local races. Especially wedge issues. Simple wedge issues can move small electorates like nothing else - abortion, LBQT rights, firearm ownership, state's rights - basic stuff. That can land you a House seat.
Then you get to Washington, and it's a different ballgame. There are rules; junior Senators and Representatives have minimal powers and have to work their asses off for years or decades before they can maybe get to the positions on key committees and in the House and Senate chamber before they can make real changes. A lot of stuff gets done by compromise, and the heady rhetoric of the campaign gives way to the fact that Senator Bob (R) from Arizona and Senator Grace (D) from New Hampshire have more in common with each other than their constituents. Cooperation is pretty much the only way to get anything done in our government, by design.
So what changed?
Part of it is that election funding laws have changed significantly. With the rise of SuperPACs, a lot of outsize interest is being brought to bear on even bullshit small elections - and remember, John Boehner used to hand out checks from tobacco companies
on the floor of the house. These are people to whom kickbacks were an artform, and no fucks were given. Having candidates that they couldn't control with party funds means that the party apparatus as a whole has a lot less influence than before. This meant that a lot of people that otherwise might not have been elected got to Congress, riding a wave of scathing rhetoric. People like Ted Cruz. And these people don't want to play the game, even when it's in the best interests of the party as a whole - because they're answerable to a small but vocal electorate back home that they made toxic promises to.
It sounds terrible to say that the Republican's main problem is that they're campaign platform consists of stuff that the majority of their constituents don't want, or even if their constituents
do want it, it's bad for them. But it's maybe worse even than that. Having a plank in the campaign platform to bring back the gold standard is terrible, even if a majority of your people actually want it; having a plank in the campaign platform to cut taxes on the rich is both something they don't want
and is terrible for the people of the country as a whole.
The thing is, that's pretty much all the GOP has to offer. All of the major GOP candidates gunning for the nomination except Trump are running variations on the exact same policies. And they are, by and large, the same policies the GOP has been running for decades, Mexican Wall rhetoric notwithstanding: deregulation, privatization, military build-up coupled with an aggressive foreign policy, very conservative (some might say regressive) social initiatives.
That shit looked
great in the 1960s. Even today, you'll find people touting one part of it or another - but as I said, the GOP base is schizoid. The people that benefit the most from these conservative policies aren't the base, they're the small class of corporations and billionaires that have found a way to bypass the party apparatus and buy politicians
much more directly. It's gotten to the point that the intellectual underpinnings of the party are just another example of corporate graft, led by groups like the Heritage Foundation, which thinks up new ways to justify the same old policies.
Keep that in mind. It's Lee Atwater all over.
Why doesn't the GOP believe in climate change? Because that would mean tougher environmental regulation, which means higher costs to energy companies. That's it. That is the entire justification. A large part of the anti-science campaign of the GOP over the last couple of decades boils down to the Koch brothers not wanting to pay for cleaner air out of their smokestacks.
The GOP rhetoric has just gotten too toxic for the general electorate; the GOP base is shrinking, and has been for some time. The US is weirder, and browner, and the base
recognizes that, and is getting more intense - and that's why the guys and gal running for the nomination are looking like cartoon characters. Because they're trying to appeal to the most extreme, vocal parts of the GOP base. And the eventual winner is going to swing back to center. That's not enough to win the general election. The swing-to-the-right during the primary and swing-back-toward-center didn't work for McCain, or Romney. It's not going to work for Bush 3.0.
This is all TL;DR, but if you want to know why Trump is pushing those policies, it's because
those are the conservative policies. If you try to push anything different, anything less,
you are the enemy and must be destroyed. Whatever justification you give for them, they're basically the same policies as 30, 40, 50 years ago. Bush 3.0 isn't picking up steam despite doubling down on the plutocracy because there's nothing to distinguish them from the others - and he's not even particularly entertaining.