Both the Democrats & the Republicans are essentially coalition parties, since they’re each made up of several different interest groups, which might in other countries have their own separate party, and even in this country there are minor parties that capture some of these disparate concerns.
The Republicans are basically a coalition of the following groups: corporatists/capitalists, libertarians, fiscal conservatives, Christian fundamentalists & gun rights advocates. Most issues resonate with more than 1 of these groups (though not necessarily equally) but not all of these groups, and some people identify with more than one of these groups but not all of them. For example, low taxes are fundamentally important to corporatists so that they can keep most of the great amount of money they make, and to the libertarians, as a principle of minimal government, but not inherently any of the remaining groups any more than it does to Democratic groups. Keeping national debt low and being fiscally responsible is a key principal for both fiscal conservatives and libertarians, but not necessarily the other groups; in fact, corporatists have consistently dumped that idea in favor of keeping taxes low. Loose or no gun regulation takes priority for gun rights advocates, and it tends to be part of libertarian concerns, but the other groups aren’t necessarily tied to it, although some religious groups tend to be associated with it. Religious fundamentalists naturally put religion above science, and corporatists also tend to deny science when convenient (but use it for their own interests when useful) and use religion to manipulate religious zealots their way. Gun fanatics by nature tend not to put much credence into science or reason, but the remaining groups have no particular reason to be anti-science. In fact fiscal conservatives may see the laws of science as aligned with their own principles. The Tea Party is associated to some degree with all of these groups, but in different ways and to different degrees. Very highly associated with the Tea Party are gun rights advocates & Christian fundamentalists. Corporatists are, but mainly as organizers & financiers, not as protesters themselves. Libertarian principles are a major part of the Tea Party’s platform, but the libertarians have long been a force within and without the Republican Party apart from the Tea Party movement. Fiscal responsibility finds its way into the rhetoric of the Tea Party, but it always ends up subordinate to other issues, so the fiscal conservatives end up as frustrated with the tea party as they are with the Republicans in general.
So typically Republican groups aren’t necessarily so ideologically united as they might seem to be. In fact, I think they are quite ripe for division, especially as the light of truth is shed on many of the members of these groups. The easiest to pull off should be the fiscal conservatives. Republican presidencies, especially the stalwart “conservatives” Reagan & Bush II, saw the greatest upturn in deficits. The Republicans’ record on fiscal responsibility is dismal and their rhetoric extremely hypocritical. If Democrats got truly serious about drawing up long-range plans to tackle debt, that contains a much more progressive income tax system, energy taxes, a meat tax, greater efficiency in our government including Defense, eliminating waste & duplication & expensive unnecessary items, stopping subsidies to Big Oil & Big Ag, more pay into Medicare from upper wage earners, etc., true fiscal conservatives could easily switch allegiances. In fact, a lot of Independents would vote for a candidate that espoused such common sense proposals to lower our debt.
Libertarians are not really tied so much to the Republican Party. It’s just not as bad in their minds as the Democratic Party. Their heart naturally goes to the Libertarian Party which they’d stick with if they didn’t see the Republican Party as a much more powerful opponent to the Democrats. There are 2 ways to split libertarians off: one is by showing them the many ways that their policies have adversely affected our freedoms, including privacy, and our survivability; and the other is to show that the Republican Party is headed towards irrelevance.
The Tea Party tends to be a boisterous bunch that can get out of hand, but it’s really the corporatists that are pulling the strings. The Tea Party is a convenient front to doing their bidding in Congress and providing the votes they need in elections. They use phrases like “get the government off our backs!” which resonate among the Tea Party folks, and put the blame on other groups (minorities, immigrants, gays, women, Democrats) for the troubles these folks face, when in reality, most of it, including low wages, high health care costs, high food prices, damage to both human & environmental health, is due to multinational corporations and pro-corporate policies inserted in legislation. So in reality most of these Te Part folks have been voting against their own interests. So once you get through to them, if that’s possible (and it should be), they ought to be fleeing from the GOP. You know how angry & menacing these folks can get, and they love to intimidate the usual scapegoats, but if they knew how they’d been manipulated by the very entities that have been making life hard for them, can you imagine where their rage might go, if directed toward those that deserve it? And then you really could have a 99% (or at least 90%).
So the trick is to get the message out to these poor duped folks. Now in some ways, reaching these people in certain parts of the country is like trying to reach out to some primitive people of another continent; there seem to be so many barriers. However, those of you who live in places where they rein could try getting to them one by one, and others can try it through our current communication technology.
So then you would end up with just the corporatists & oligarchs, who rightfully should have a party of their own, but the rest of the nation should see them as they are: having no real consideration for anyone else but themselves and their ill-begotten wealth at the expense of the rest of the nation & world and future generations.
Always give people the benefit of the doubt, & do your best to explain effectively why we need to take measures to alleviate climate change, for example (you can use this same line of reasoning & tactics for a number of other issues). But if they remain obstinately opposed to this notion against all evidence & reason, don’t be afraid to shame or embarrass them and don’t be reluctant to attribute certain words to either them or to the purveyors of the lies they believe. Republicans for a long time have done this, and it has worked very well for them. They made sure that “socialism” would be connected to communism, and they made “liberal” a dirty word. They called all journalism the “liberal media”, and they stuck with it even as that “media” became steadily more conservative and bought by big corporations. Now the media are demonstrably conservative & pro-corporate, but the right wing continues to call them the “liberal media”. They’d term environmentalists or environmentally concerned people “environmental extremists”. They also typically use very innocuous & beneficial-sounding or patriotic words to name policies they support that often do the opposite of what the titles indicate, especially with bills dealing with conservation & the environment.
Liberals & Democrats are understandably reticent about using such derogatory terms as showing lack of civility and stooping to the conservatives’ & Republicans’ level, but that has put them at a disadvantage in the debates because such terms are often memorable and catch on with the public and stick. But the words need to be basically true or sincere (at least in the mind of the person saying it & hopefully the audience can easily see that connection, too), and they should fit the entity or circumstance. So words such as “gullible”, “naïve”, “brainwashed”, “manipulated”, “ignorant”, “stupid”, “unreasonable”, “idiots”, “liars”, “self-serving”, “manipulators”, “selfish”, “nutty”, “loony” “greedy”, “failing” “dirty”, “immoral”, “hellish”, “hypocritical”, “fascist”, “vicious”, “illogical”, “corrupt”, “evil”, “cruel”, “heartless”, “heinous”, “ruthless”, “unconscionable”, “ridiculous”, “absurd”… or terms such as “corporate greed”, “corporate media”, “Republican/corporate fascism”, “Tea Party idiots”, “(self-serving/manipulative) Republican/corporate liars”, “lying Republicans/conservatives/capitalists”, “corporate elite”, “corporate stooges” (referring to congressional Republicans & Democratic corporatists), “corporate climate deception”, “greedy corporations”, “capitalist failure”, “ignorant/gullible/nutty/loony/brainwashed/idiot(ic) tea-baggers”, “Republican hypocrisy/hypocrites”, “immoral corporate Republican fascists”, “corporate dominated/controlled Congress”, “failed Republican/conservative trickle-down economics”, “ruthless slaughter of wolves”, “the evil Koch Brothers”,… if consistently used together in our jargon would then become associated with these entities. Some terms liberals have already used effectively include “Big Oil”, “Big Ag”, “Big Pharma” & other “Big Business” appellations, and “fossil fuels”, which evoke the image of slow, clumsy, outdated, archaic, (should be) extinct: calling them “dirty fossil fuels” or “fossil fuels from Hell” helps even more. Liberals often use the “mainstream media” derogatorily, but I think it would be more effective to consistently add “corporate” to the phrase – the corporate controlled MSM, because many people under right-wing domination still equate the MSM with the “liberal media”. “Climate denier” is another favorite pejorative for progressives & environmentalists, but has little or no resonance with many others, so prefixing it with “ignorant”, “idiot(ic)”, “blind”, “unreasonable” or “lying” would help. Also neither “global warming” nor “climate change” sound that menacing (“sure I’d like a change in climate”, “oh, it sounds so nice & fuzzy & warm”). Something like “global climate apocalypse (or holocaust or catastrophe or cataclysm)” should get people’s attention. And we should use that apocalyptic term every chance we get. We also should term sustainable energy sources, such as sun & wind, as “energy from Heaven”, and those from down below, such as coal, oil & gas as “energy from Hell”.
Footnote: (because I’m bound to get this comment from somebody. “You shouldn’t attribute ‘evil’ to the Koch Brothers”. Hey, they know very well what they’re doing: ruining our democracy, disposing of people (to say nothing of animals & plants) that aren’t in their class of wealth or power, & making this world unlivable for people who have more years left in their lives than they do. They will be remembered by future generations very much like Hitler is remembered by ours (and of course, I brought up another no-no, but this comparison is very appropriate in my mind). The same for Rupert Murdoch, whose deceptive, mendacious, corrupt media have caused incalculable harm to the US, UK, Australia & Canada, and therefore the world.
Tue Feb 11, 2014 at 10:45 PM PT: It seems that the ability to recommend is withdrawn within 24 hours of posting, and the ability to reply to comments withdrawn after a few days, which poses a problem for anybody who is busy with other things and can't hang around here all the time. Does anybody know a remedy for that besides resorting to updates?
Anyway, I wanted to comment about the ever lower figures for interest paid on debt shown, down to under 3% of our budget now. That figure is far lower than figures I've seen, which exceed 10%. I admit they've probably recently gotten lower than before, but that is mainly because our total expenditures are so high, and our interest rates are at an all-time low. It will go up as our interest rate goes up. Any money we pay on interest today is taking away from our ability to spend in the future. I think that should be obvious to everyone, but today's society is so used to spending money they don't have, and assuming that somehow they'll always have something for tomorrow, that they pay it no mind. But it will get us in the end if we don't pay attention to it. This is what happened to Greece and Ireland and many other nations in the past that let their debt overwhelm them.
I'm also very uneasy about owing China so much money. It is likely if we continue our fiscal irresponsibility (which I blame almost totally on Bush Jr), the rest of the world will no longer allow us to hold the reserve currency, which has helped keep us afloat.
As I already said, we probably shouldn't go all out with austerity now while we haven't yet recovered, but we need to attend to it before too long, because we are going to need massive amounts of money to confront the hugely expensive challenges ahead of us.