The
Republican Party often gets a bad rap for being racist, sexist,
homophobic, Islamophobic and anti-poor. There is a simple reason for
this: many of them openly display their bigotry as a badge of honor. The
Nixon/Goldwater Southern Strategy irreparably tainted the soul of the
Republican Party by convincing its more conscientious members to look
the other way when their fellow conservatives use
xenophobic hatred as a political tool. Decades later, the Grand Old
Party still jealously guards every breed of virulent discrimination that
has served it in the past.
Republicans have a documented
history of making their party a safe place for bigots to hide within the
American political system, and yet they pretend to be outraged whenever
someone has the audacity to point it out. The typical rebuttal is that
"Democrats can be prejudiced too," and that—as with many similar
critiques—this is an unfair stigma which only reveals the depths of the
media's Liberal Bias. From the Defense of Marriage Act, to defunding
women's health services, to multiple bills in Southern states which aim
to ban Islam under the auspices of "protecting against Sharia Law," the
facts beg to differ.
By failing to call out anyone on their own
"team" for flagrantly bigoted remarks and policies, Republicans have
styled themselves as a rock in the River of History. Their pride and
obstinacy have frozen them in time, and meanwhile, the nation keeps
evolving all around them. This explains how they could have fallen so
far behind the societal learning curve on issues like gay marriage and
undocumented immigrants: anything that smacks of progress is labeled
"political correctness" and dismissed out of hand. Theirs is a
politically counterintuitive position, because they no longer get to
weigh in on the most promising changes taking place in our society. All
that's left is to gather together all those who decry societal
evolution under one roof, through nationalistic rallying cries like
"This isn't the America I grew up in!" or "We want our country back!"
Some in the party seem worried that in not keeping pace with American
society, Republicans are becoming marginalized to the point that their
half of the electoral duopoly is at risk. This is a moot point, because
they know that it's far too late to catch up with the status quo on
issues like gay rights and retain a competitive advantage. First off,
they wouldn't know how to begin making amends for the last half-century.
There's also the fact that most party leaders are Social Darwinists
(read: "sociopaths"), a quasi-religious paradigm whose followers view
dominance as the ultimate virtue and eschew ethical constraints. For
such people, admitting to fault is considered to be the ultimate
expression of personal weakness.
Republicans' unity in
resisting the tides of change has become a major liability, but it
should be said that the Democratic party faces the exact opposite
problem. Liberals in Washington do a miserable job of presenting a
united front, instead preferring to cannibalize one another, while
appeasing the base by boasting about their superior tolerance and the
radical change that's just around the corner. Democrats in Washington
seem to have no idea how to fight for the peace, freedom, and social
justice which they claim to champion—from the Blue Dog Democrats who
actively sabotaged Obama's first term, to Hillary Clinton's endlessly
beating the War Drum on Iran policy, to all the sell-outs who voted for
the Iraq invasion and the Patriot Act. In lieu of any broad consensus
on what they actually stand for, Congressional Democrats reassure
themselves that they're less nefarious than Republicans and call it
"virtue."
Mind you, none of this is going to change unless
there is a major campaign finance overhaul. Democrats and Republicans
in Washington take their marching orders from transnational corporations
(often the same ones) which bankroll their campaigns. These companies
depend on the endless political theater of "The Maybe-Racists versus the
Maybe-Socialists" to distract the American public from what's really
going on behind the scenes. The fact is, the two major parties in
America seem to get along quite well when it comes to shielding Monsanto
from criminal liability, letting White Collar criminals off the hook,
or passing draconian new National Defense Authorization bills.
Even if some of the more savvy conservatives in Washington recognize
the pitfalls of standing behind righteous bigotry, there is little hope
for evolution within the party, because they have embraced a
"groupthink" social model reminiscent of the Borg in Star Trek. Their
credo: "Think as one, never back down, and use strength in numbers to
convince all opponents that resistance is futile." The rationale is
that since unified consensus is their main advantage over the Democrats,
those in the party who publicly criticize their more bigoted colleagues
are betraying the team. The other rationale, which you will never hear
them say publicly, is "Hatred works, and we're very good at it."
The only exception to the Borg Rule is that when someone in the GOP is
not conservative enough, the whole party will converge like a pack of
wild dogs, singling that person out as a R.I.N.O. and "primarying" them.
They almost never go after the shameless bigots, though, because their
base in the Deep South depends on racial, religious and gender
discrimination to survive. The Prejudice Pride Movement, like the
Southern Strategy that preceded it, is mostly a product of cold logic:
GOP leaders understand the metrics, which show that the only way for the
modern Republican brand to stay competitive is to maintain a Big Tent
which welcomes all manner of openly hateful positions.
With no
other options left on the table, party leaders have gone into endgame
mode. Instead of carrying on a pretense of getting a bad rap, they've
stepped up the hate campaign to a fever pitch. Republican-controlled
state legislatures all over the United States are now openly
disenfranchising the sectors of society which they have historically
oppressed: women, people of color, gays, Muslims, and above all, the
Working Poor. The linchpin of this Southern Strategy revival is a
state-by-state effort to make abortion illegal and restrict voting
rights, and they have been phenomenally successful on both counts.
The "pay to play" structure in Washington opens the door for corruption
at the highest levels of the American government, but by no means does
it make the two ruling parties in this country equivalent when it comes
to archaic prejudices. On that score, the GOP are worse and everyone
knows it... even most Republicans. Their vaunted pride is giving way to
desperation as they watch the world growing up around them while they
remain in ideological infancy. Republicans have chosen their path and
are realizing, too late, that it's a road to extinction.
Short of a coup, the only way for the GOP to remain relevant in American
politics is to ferret out the worst of the bigots. In the long term,
this means ceasing hostilities toward the non-white, non-rich,
non-straight and non-male. It also means supporting rising stars like
Meghan McCain who are advocating an end to the culture wars, before
those young people give up and change their party affiliation. As a
natural-born Pollyanna, I'd love to see all of this come to fruition,
but I can't say I've found many reasons for optimism lately. Something
tells me that these Social Darwinists are about to learn the ultimate
lesson in natural selection.
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