The Republican Party has a big problem. And it is bigger than nominating Donald Trump for president.
The problem for the GOP is that it is increasingly a white, male, elderly party favoring social hierarchy when the world is increasingly characterized by diversity, interdependence, and egalitarianism. Republicans advocate 19th century policies in the 21st century. It favors the rich over the poor, owners over workers, whites over minorities, men over women, Christians over religious minorities (and atheists), heterosexuals over homosexuals, and ‘real Americans’ over all varieties of foreign imposters. It wants to roll back welfare state and civil rights protections. Going back to the 19th century, when their preferred social hierarchies existed and everyone knew their place, is what Republicans mean when they say they want to ‘take their country back.’
The Republicans have a 19th century notion of freedom: we are independent, autonomous citizens, and we are free if the government leaves us alone. (We can ignore the obvious point that this notion of freedom only applies to elites – those at the bottom are constantly regulated via the criminal justice system and abortion restrictions.) The more contemporary point is that we are not independent, autonomous citizens. We do not live on the frontier. We do not grow our own food, sew our own clothes, and get our water from the well we dug out back. We are instead intricately connected in an increasingly interdependent world. The more appropriate notion of freedom in the 21st century requires, not prohibits, government action. We are only free – we can only live the life we want to live – if the government provides public education, health care, infrastructure, and a clean environment. A ‘government is bad’ philosophy simply offers no solution to very real problems like subpar schools, millions without health insurance, crumbling roads, and climate change.
When viewed in this way, one can understand the monumental challenges the GOP faces. How do you get a 21st century electorate to vote for a 19th century agenda? There are many facets of this dilemma.
- It opposes many very popular policies – raising the minimum wage, equal pay for women, increasing Social Security benefits, raising taxes on the wealthy, etc.
- It supports many policies that simply do not work – the death penalty (which does not deter crime), tax cuts (which do not lead to economic growth), deregulation (which does not lower prices), etc.
- The country is demonstrably better off when Democrats govern. This is true both historically (compare economic outcomes across presidential administrations) and currently (compare the differences in the standards of living in blue and red states).
- It supports policies that directly contribute to the historic levels of economic inequality in the country – destroying unions, lowering minimum wages, cutting taxes of the wealthy, and opposing overtime pay/family leave/sick leave/paid vacation, etc.
The Republican Party deals with these problems by living in their own world. Reality does not conform to their ideological preferences, and so they ignore reality. Billionaire money and a saturated media world blatantly lie and use manipulative rhetoric to convey conservative arguments.
Republicans routinely demonize the people at the bottom of the social hierarchy. The poor are lazy, minorities are criminals, feminists hate men and ruin marriages, atheists are immoral, gays are promiscuous child molesters, immigrants are taking our jobs, Muslims want to establish sharia law, and, most recently, transgendered people are bathroom predators. Republicans are about essence rather than empathy. People are either good or bad, lazy or hard-working, criminal or law-abiding. (And we know who is in each category, don’t we?) Government should not reward undeserving ‘others.’ Government should protect the ‘real’ Americans from the ‘others.’ How can anyone, at this point, reflexively support the police when they kill an unarmed black man? How can anyone object to the ‘black lives matter’ movement and slogan? Well, for conservatives, it is easy because essence trumps empathy. Black lives do not matter enough for us to reform police practices. The police are doing what they are supposed to do – protect the good people from the bad people.
Even more insidious, though, is that Republicans also demonize the institutions we have created to serve those at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Public schools are not cathedrals to the honorable goal of equal opportunity; they are godless bastions of incompetence where bad teachers hide behind tenure. Unions do not provide the great equalizer of collective bargaining; they are corrupt violators of free choice and kill the bottom line. The welfare state does not provide a minimum standard of living for citizens in difficult circumstances; it harms the ‘makers’ and gives free stuff to the ‘takers.’ Civil rights laws do not ensure equal protection under the law; they provide ‘special treatment’ to undeserving minorities and unfairly violates (a 19th century understanding of) freedom.
To maintain its alternate reality and pursue its agenda against the bottom of the social hierarchy, Republicans fabricate problems and stoke fear. Voter fraud is nonexistent, yet for Republicans it justifies laws to prevent minorities from voting. The ludicrous scenario that the government may declare war on its own citizens justifies gun laws that lead to massive violence. A very small portion of the richest Americans pay the estate tax, and yet we must get rid of the ‘death tax’ to save small businesses and family farms. The fabrication is often blatant, as in the doctored Planned Parenthood videos, and yet Republicans are willing to shut down the government in order to defund an organization that provides health care to poor women. The ostensible reason is abortion, but the law of the land already prohibits federal funds for abortion. Remember death panels? Let alone the wide variety of weird conspiracy theories – Benghazi, FEMA detention centers, military operations in Texas, sharia law, birtherism? The fabrications do not have to be logically consistent – somehow Obama is both a socialist and a Muslim, or a domestic tyrant with a spineless foreign policy.
To maintain its alternate reality, Republicans also attack the institutions that actually study the real world. Climate scientists are frauds and climate change is a myth. Evolution is atheist quackery. College is a conspiracy to indoctrinate our children with politically correct pabulum; we need a ‘student bill of rights’ to protect them from liberal academics. We need to abolish tenure, academic freedom, and faculty governance. We need to shrink public funding for higher education and force academics to seek corporate support for their research. In an odd populist twist, the Republican hierarchy here is (19th century) ‘common sense’ over (21st century) ‘experts.’
There is also more subtle evidence of Republican struggles to advance its agenda in contemporary politics. If you pay close attention, you realize that conservatives often justify policies using terms and concepts inconsistent with their overall approach. What do you do when you are unable to convince a modern 21st century electorate to adopt a traditional 19th century agenda? You support your traditional arguments with modern language – and hope no one notices the obfuscation. To appeal to the changing world, conservatives often justify a policy with a rationale that they would never make in other policy areas. The GOP is scrambling to adapt to the new world as best as it can, dressing up its preferred social hierarchy within the modern language of ‘rights.’ There are many examples.
- Conservatives want to bust unions in order to maximize corporate profits and maintain an economic hierarchy. They justify this policy preference with rhetoric about the ‘right to work.’ But how often do conservatives care about worker rights? They do not support raising the minimum wage, workplace safety, or other worker benefits. The policy is about maintaining the structural advantage of owners over workers, not the right of workers to work. But conservatives cannot say this in the 21st century.
- Conservatives advocate voucher programs and charter schools. They justify this policy with notions about ‘choice.’ Applying market ideology to education is well within the conservative worldview. But arguments that they simply want poor families to have more ‘choice’ and ‘opportunity’ are not to be found in other policy areas. These policies are not intended to help the poor; they are intended to end teachers unions (see above) and redistribute resources away from public schools and toward private and religious schools. But conservatives cannot say this in the 21st century.
- Conservatives do not support gay marriage. Their reaction against the recent Supreme court ruling on gay marriage is to defend the ‘religious liberty’ of Christians. But conservatives do not generally support the religious rights of other groups – see the range of controversies about accommodating Islamic religious practices, including the uproar surrounding the building of an Islamic mosque in New York City. Conservatives want to discriminate against gays. But they cannot say this (anymore) in the 21st century.
- Conservatives support the teaching of creationism in public schools. They justify this policy with rhetoric about ‘academic freedom’ or ‘teaching diverse perspectives.’ Those slogans sound great, but conservatives do not generally champion them. They want to strip academic freedom and tenure in our colleges; they want our history books to be as Eurocentric as possible. Conservatives want to (re)establish Christianity in public schools (School prayer, anyone? Christians have ‘rights’ too.). But they cannot say this in the 21st century.
- Conservatives support banning abortion, and some without any exceptions. They justify this policy with rhetoric about the ‘right to life.’ But how often do conservatives support a right to life in other policy areas? Not on the death penalty, or torture, or war, or the environment. And, of course, not about the quality of life after the baby is born. The conservative position on abortion is really about the status of women. Conservatives prefer traditional gender roles, with women performing the traditional roles of wife and mother. How to prevent as many women as possible from performing modern gender roles outside the home? Force women to bear a child every time they are pregnant. Conservatives do not want women to have the same life chances as men. But they cannot say this in the 21st century.
There are many other examples – opposition to campaign finance rules are shrouded in free speech rights, preventing women from contraception coverage because corporations have ‘rights,’ etc. Republicans rely on manipulative, insincere arguments because the honest arguments about maintaining traditional hierarchies cannot win in the 21st century. So they adapt and use the modern, 21st century language of ‘rights’ to justify their traditional, 19th century policies of hierarchy. But the arguments are becoming increasingly transparent for what they are. They will not work very far into the 21st century. We are becoming more diverse, tolerant, and interdependent. Empathy is starting to overtake essence. That is the problem for the Republican Party.