Understanding the Republican Party

A rational person looks at American public life and wonders how it is that we can enact policies that are so unenlightened -- I don't mean just Democrats, but ordinary people around the world. How can America pay gazillion-dollar subsidies to corporations who are already making gazillion-dollar profits, while at the same time stripping survival benefits from poor people? How can anyone in their right mind stand up and say that we need more guns in schools? Why is the US struggling to meet the lowest educational standards of the developed world? Why do American citizens go bankrupt trying to deal with ordinary health problems? What is the obsession in this country with suppressing women's rights?

The explanation is that we have a political party that believes in these things so strongly that no other legislation can be enacted until their priorities are met. The party is supported by a majority of voters in some regions of the country, it is powerful enough that it must be taken seriously The other party must make compromises with the Republican Party in order to get to more enlightened agenda items, and then these have to be watered down to the point of meaninglessness.

Democracy Corps, James Carville's group, is doing something really fascinating, called the Republican Party Project. They conducted a bunch of focus groups with people who report themselves to be Republicans, to find out what they believe and who they are. The cool thing about this report is that it is objective and dispassionate. You might think a bunch of Democrats would try to tar and feather the Republicans with their own words, but this report is different from that. You are stronger when you understand your enemy's motives and thought processes, and this report was created from that perspective. Of course the Democrats want to win elections, and Democracy Corps is supporting that by producing an accurate and unbiased analysis of the party they will have to beat.

Understand that the base thinks they are losing politically and losing control of the country – and their starting reaction is “worried,” “discouraged,” “scared,” and “concerned” about the direction of the country – and a little powerless to change course. They think Obama has imposed his agenda, while Republicans in DC have let him get away with it. Inside the GOP

The report finds that there are three components to the Republican Party, and they are not necessarily on the same page. The largest group is composed of evangelical Christians, for whom the most important topics are the social ones, homosexuality and abortion in particular (they're against it).

The evangelicals support the Tea Party because they are pushing ahead and getting things done, but they differ in their core beliefs: the Tea Party is concerned with reducing taxes and the size of government, and mostly doesn't really care if gay people marry, mostly thinks it is not the government's job to make women's medical decisions for them. And finally, there is the traditional moderate conservative Republican bloc: "They are centrally focused on market-based economics, small government, and eliminating waste and inefficiency. They are largely open to progressive social policies, including on gay marriage and immigration. They disdain the Tea Party and have a hard time taking Fox News seriously." This is the smallest of the three groups.

The traditional conservative view is a legitimate and even necessary part of the national conversation. A certain amount of money goes into the treasury and there can be different views about what it should be spent on. We may be threatened by foreign countries and groups, and there can be more than one opinion about how to deal with them, and so on. In the dialog between management and labor, the GOP represents management. Well somebody's got to.

I think the Founding Fathers saw the danger of something like the evangelical bloc and tried to prevent it by carefully wording an amendment to the Constitution regulating government's ability to promote a religion or to impede one. No matter how many times they deny it, there really is a legal separation of church and state. And the power of the evangelical component of the GOP lies in the weakening of the separation of religion and government; it is their right to believe the things they do, and to live according to their customs, but it is not their right to force the rest of us to obey their taboos, no matter how repugnant we pagans may be to them.

The Tea Party is a new thing, they are the hell-raisers of the party who come up with impossible demands and then filibuster and shout people down if they don't get what they want. They define themselves as "Washington outsiders" and really don't seem to understand that a democratic government really does require that people make concessions, including them. It really does mean you don't get everything you want every time. But because their blustering has so successfully gummed up the governmental machinery, the Tea Party is seen within the GOP as a kind of success, and the other groups are hoping to get some of what they want through the Tea Party's momentum.

There is a recurrent tacit theme, mentioned several times by the authors, for instance, "While few talk about Obama in racial terms, the base supporters are very conscious of being white in a country with growing minorities."

Though the Democracy Corps paper does not address the topic in depth, it is obvious that a core appeal of today's GOP flows from the evolving demographic face of our country. White people are not a majority in some regions, and the tide is moving that way nearly everywhere. It is okay to get goose-bumpy about the Constitution and your sense of patriotism, but if you actually believe in it you have to remember that the Constitution gives rights to everyone, not just you. The freedom of religion is easy to accept when it protects your religion, not so easy when it protects somebody else's, say Wicca or Islam. But that's the way it works.

Some white people are feeling backed into a corner these days. The Constitution used to be a prop for them, it gave them permission to say what they wanted and pass laws that were consistent with their way of life, and that was fine, But now they are tasting what it was like for the rest of the population during that time, when other groups had to accept white Christian domination. The Constitution is no longer a crutch for one group, now the process of democracy is requiring white Americans to tolerate people who are different from them. The Tea Party sounds a little frantic, they know it is best not to talk about race but this is a portrait of white people who want to keep their privilege, their entitlement, when they feel it slipping away from them.

This paper is a fascinating read, if you want to understand one side of American politics. Don't take my snarky word for it, click on the link and read the whole thing.