How the Republican Party staves off Disintegration
The Republican party has become petty and vindictive as it clings to a fracturing voter Base It is a two-faced union of the Business Establishment attached to self-identified victim groups like Evangelicals, National Debtors [where were they when George Bush rang up a massive $5trillion in debt with unpaid for programs and wars],LGBT Intolerants, a Rabid Minority of Extreme Gun merchants and owners, Immigration Extremists [why did they turn a blind eye for 20 years when businesses large and small illegally hired immigrant labor sustaining the influx] and other wronged and angry factions. Dave Granlund’s political cartoon catches the Republican disintegration so very well:
The GOP executive has recognized the instability of this duopoly and after the loss of the Presidential race in 2012 set out a campaign of outreach to make the Party more inclusive of minority groups. But in the ensuing years it has been a case of Back-to-the-Past Politics as the Week delineates in its article on the Trumpfish reversal of outreach.
So as the GOP Business Establishment’s policies such as pervasive automation with huge job exports, relentless attacks on minimum wages and workers benefits, incessant assaults on environmental and climate change regulations plus increasing defiance of the rule of law by Wall Street and the financial sector while securing ever increasing pay packets and increasing tax breaks accruing to their top executives – all these “policies” have started to bite more severely into the GOP’s oppressed groups. So putting together cohesive GOP party positions has become ever more problematic. GOP policy is paper-thin.
Holding Together the Base
In order to keep its Base of Oppressed Groups harnessed and satisfied, Republicans have engaged in 3 strategies. First, courting extremist media players and viwpoints with messages of fear & hate like Rush Limbaugh, Anne Coulter, the Fox News Crew, Glenn Beck, Ted Nugent and among many. But the fear/hate extremes has started to take a toll in GOP campaign contributions and at the ballet box.
Second, the GOP is deserting the Truth. Deception by omission is a longstanding political practice. George Bush & Dick Cheney knew evidence for Saddam Hussein having Weapons of Mass Destruction was either suspect or blatantly false. Yet this became a clear pillar for the invasion of Iraq. But Truthiness allows for an ever thinner hold on reality. GOP truthiness is most sinister because it denies and seeks to refute facts and create a climate of doubt when there should be none. For example, for 4 years GOP politicians have continued to shelter Climate Change Deniers because they are major campaign and Conservative ThinkTank sponsors. But truthiness has allowed deeply flawed and false policy to take deep hold in the Republican Party.
Third, having no consistent policy of substance, Republicans resort to the vindictive partisan politics of no co-operation and complete obstructionism. This is why the recovery from the George Bush induced Great Depression of 2007-2009 has been so prolonged. Under the guise of controlling increases in the National Debt [for which Republican Presidents have been responsible for the largest % increases over the past 50 years] and attacking the conomy of Entitlements, the GOP has preserved the tax breaks for the wealthy passed by George W. Bush and refused any Infrastructure Programs or Increases in Minimum Wages.
This deliberate No Campaign to ensure that the Obama administration had no economic successes was hatched before Obama took office in 2009. Robert Draper documents this fully in his book Do Not Ask What Good We Do about the Tea Party’s influence on the GOP.
So it should not be a surprise that House Republicans are already preparing for ‘years’ of investigations of Clinton if she wins the Presidency. In place of policy negotiations, Republicans are preparing four more years of deeply divisive partisan politics despite the electorates concern about the divisive nature of current politics. Yet the electorate itself has become more partisan and divisive in 2016.
So as the US stumbles in to a hornets nest of Wicked National and World Problems – a Worsening Work and Consumer Earnings Shortage, the selling away of Rule of Law to financial and other executive elites, the ever oncoming and worsening effects of climate change, the rise of Chinese and Russian extra-state ambitions, the vulnerability of the World’s communication service structure to more serious cyber hack attacks – it appears that even after a national election, the country will be left more politically divisive than ever. And to makes things worse the GOP will be held together by their only common goal – make Hillary and the Democrats fail by any means.