THE GREAT REPUBLICAN CHALLENGE
We live in a confusing political world. Democrats in this country are frustrated because many of the voters they view themselves as trying to help, constantly seem to vote against their own best interests. They continue to vote for congressional Republicans even though Republicans really want to do nothing for the working class voters who now make up such a large proportion of their party’s base.
What is really happening is that liberals in this country impose on politics an economic model. Their unspoken assumption is that voters will (and should) vote for the party which promises them the greatest economic gain. When voters ignore economic gain and vote about cultural issues, liberals obviously feel frustration.
The truth is that many of the least prosperous American voters gave up on winning the economic wars long ago. They, often realistically, see no pathway to wealth and many are ambivalent about it anyway. They may fear, often unconsciously, having to leave their family, friends and way of life behind.
Instead they focus their frustration on what to them are natural rights and moral wrongs. They do believe that people have the right to own guns. Evil people out there are trying to take their guns away. They do believe that abortion is murder and that they are righteous in opposing it.
Republican candidates, who could present more reasoned approaches on both issues, don’t. They don’t because, without programs offering any real economic gains, cultural issues are all that is left. There has been a subtle shift for Republican candidates. They have in the past, as a business party, run on their administration skills and their competence. In the Trump era running on competence is a clear loser.
It is not that Republican candidates do not believe in the economic model, they do. And, their real patrons do. The professional and corporately wealthy who largely finance national Republican campaigns are consumed with economics. Money and its accumulation and preservation are the absolute center of most of their lives.
Republican candidates who often depend on the largesse of big givers certainly think in terms of an economic model themselves. Their continuing careers often depend on the kinds of people whose lives center on wealth (candidates may make pilgrimages to the Hamptons).
They also depend on ordinary working class voters but they avoid promising them economic gains. Republican candidates can’t to that. To offer them gains (think about the fifteen dollar minimum wage), they would run the danger of losing their lifeline to wealthy givers. So, they let them eat guns, border walls and imaginary radicals. If they do that, the contributions come in (Marjorie Greene, the infamous new Qanon Congresswoman from Georgia took in 3.2 million dollars during the first quarter of this year, a new record.).
Therein lies a problem for Democrats. Their voters are simply not so emotionally moved by cultural issues. They are not because conservatives have cultivated a multitude of rural and small town followers for whom cultural grievances have replaced an interest in any other intellectual life. Liberal voters also do not have an army of conservative talk show hosts and right wing media (read Fox News) constantly trumpeting the latest imaginary horror. There is no liberal Tucker Carlson or Shawn Hannity. .
There is also a problem for Democrats because the cultural issues they have promoted involve so few voters. The fight for gay marriage (which seems to have been successful), or the right of trans-athletes, the support of Black activism, have tended to arouse conservative rejection more than they activated liberals. For Democrats, cultural issues have often been self defeating.
Joseph Biden and his new Democratic Administration have an opportunity to provide real economic gains for people who have too long been accustomed to a diet of cultural pablum (baby food). The Democrats are in the happy position of having the only real economic plans in town. The Republicans have none, and with their mix of unprepared cultural warriors and cowed traditional conservatives, probably can’t produce one.
The exotic radical dangers that the right wing media have promoted will seem less real when highways are being fixed; ancient sewers are being redone, and if real childcare and real financial support for families becomes a reality. Then, given a choice between actual improvements and media induced nightmares, those voters will begin to move to the new reality.
That means that Republicans may finally have to compete in the real world. The party of business will be forced to give up the blarney and finally deal with the real economic wellbeing of its constituents. The alternative will be to cease to function as a political party and to become a kind of tag along for Donald Trump or who ever tries to succeed him.
Donald Trump is incapable of leading a serious political party. To follow his lead is to lose. To win, Republicans will ultimately have to compete with the Biden programs even if Biden’s goals become temporarily stalled. For the moment Republican chances of doing that seem grim indeed.
H.J. Rishel
5/04/2021
