Yes, you got that right. My assertion is that the Republican Party is a figment of our political imaginations. Yeah, I know, that sounds crazy. But hear me out:
Is there any rational human being in this country who still thinks that the Republican Party is, in any sense of the term, “libertarian” or for small government?
Republicans lying through their teeth didn’t start with the advent of Trump’s election. Republicans have been lying about who they are my entire life.
The biggest lie, and the most devious one, is that the Republican Party is the party of small government. They used that lie to convince the media that Democrats were the “real authoritarians.” They have won huge elections with this bogus assertion of their political philosophy, and that has this country on its perilous course.
There is nothing on the record that supports the notion that they are for small government. They never tried to shrink the size of government. They simply rearranged big government’s furniture.
They did shrink the size of government that focused on the welfare of society: aid to the poor, aid to the elderly, aid to the disabled, and education. They shrunk the regulatory part of government that protects comsumer and labor rights. They shrunk the size of government that protects water and air quality.
Then they moved those resources to military, law enforcement, prisons, and intelligence agencies. The part of government that spies on you, the part of government that racially profiles you, the part of the government that prosecutes you, the part of part of government that imprisons you, the part of government that wages war, in short the part of government that exerts its authority, have all grown dramatically since the Reagan Revolution.
In shrinking the social welfare part of government, they convinced the beltway press that, at their core, Republicans are wannabe libertarians who only fall short of such ideals because of sturdy opposition from Democrats.
This helped Republicans to bamboozle voters that their civil liberties would be better cared for in Republican hands. Who doesn’t want our civil liberties better secured? At this point Republicans were able to convince the press and the public that Democrats were an anathema to these ideals.
For the last three decades of my life, Republican SCOTUS justices have turned the Bill of Rights, Second Amendment not withstanding, into a little more than Robert Bork’s “irrelevant inkblot.” Bork used that term to describe the Ninth Amendment.
The Ninth Amendment is anything but an irrelevant inkblot. It is an essential part of understanding what the founding fathers were trying to do with the Bill of Rights. Here is the text of that amendment:
“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
Another lie conservatives have told is that conservative judges would interpret the constitution by looking through the lens of “originalism.” That Robert Bork, as a Reagan appointee to SCOTUS possessed such hostility toward the Ninth Amendment, completely eviscerates any notion that originalism is the basis of conservative judicial philosophy.
While Bork was never seated, the very fact of his nomination in the first place reveals Republican thinking on matters of judicial philosophy. Looking at the post Reagan SCOTUS rulings one would be hard pressed to find any ruling that, in any meaningful manner, was based on the Ninth Amendment.
If Republicans were at all interested in anything resembling a party of libertarianism, then the Ninth Amendment would be understood by conservatives as a vital resource in understanding the extent of our civil liberties.
So, why would they be so hostile to this amendment? Because the response to their common refrain “where is THAT in the Constitution” lies in the Ninth Amendment. Real libertarians would unambiguously endorse this amendment. And the fact that they don’t, also underscores that their judicial philosophy is nothing like “originalism.”
If anything is clear about the Ninth Amendment it is that the Bill of Rights was not a list of the only rights we have. That is to say, the original intent was to assure that no judge would say “it’s not in the constitution” and deny citizens their rights.
It’s not just the Ninth Amendment where we see Republicans, the supposed libertarian party, have whacked away at our rights. Under Republican rule for the last thirty years, SCOTUS have mutilated, compromised, and sometimes, outright stolen our rights away.
They have perverted the Miranda Warning. decimated the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unwarranted and unreasonable search and seizures. They have weakened our right to counsel. Justice Antonin Scalia even ruled that having a drunk public defender meets the obligation upon the government that those they seek to to prosecute be afforded coinsel. In fact, it was Republican politians who scoffed at these rights by trivializng their imortance as nothing more than “criminals’ rights.”
This post is already quite long, so I won’t continue enumerating every right that have been compromised since the so-called Reagan Revolution. However, these are not the actions of a party that believes in getting government off our backs. There is nothing about the Republican agenda that speaks to small governance, muchless a libertarian small government
One interested in small government would not make laws that limit what women may do with their bodies, or how consenting adults may have sex, or which substances people are allowed to consume, or place draconian penalties on those practicing civil disobedience, or permanently ban ex-cons from voting, or make any citizen, law abiding or otherwise, jump through hoops to exercise their right to vote in the first place.
However, the GOP, in their near pathological obsession with weakening the rule of law with respect to how businesses operate, do, at first blush, appear to stay true to their small government slogan. Nonetheless, we must understand that at the heart of their deregulation craze, is their desire to give businesses more authority over their workers, over consumers, and over land use issues. In other words, to the extent that they appear to be libertarian, its whole purpose is to enable authoritarianism within the private sphere. If effect, the Republicans, through deregulation, are privatizing authoritarianism.
When we look at the Republican Party by giving primacy to their actions instead of their words. we can clearly see that, in one sense, the Republican Party is nothing more than an abracadabra act. The Republican Party is but an illusion. Contrary to what is stated in their pithy slogans, the Republican actions demonstrate that no small government party, hellbent on protecting our liberties by waging war against authoritarianism, exists
So, where does that leave us? That leads us to the beginning: President Donald J. Trump. He is not aberrant to Republican norms. He is, instead, the consequence of Republican design. The Republicans conned the press and public that their small government theatre is a work of non-fiction.
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow discovered that the only way to cover a pathological liar like Trump was not to look at his slogans and propaganda, but to examine his actions. This strategy of reporting on the powerful should not be considered a journalistic innovation. However, such is the sorry state of American journalism today. That most rudimentary practice, that basic approach to political journalism appears to be radical within the context of the vapid farce that is modern beltway journalism.
It isn’t just Trump who journalists should cover by examining actions over words. Every last politician on earth should be covered in this manner. Had journalists given primacy to the politician’s actions over their words, Republicans could never have hoodwinked this country into thinking they were following a small government ethos instead of a what they really are: far right wing authoritarians who will stop at nothing to capture and maintain their power.
Going forward, rigorous and truth-seeking journalists will break down the illusion. And then we will finally understand that the Republican Party, as they present themselvs, are nothing more than a figment of our collective political imagination.