I never entirely agreed with Republican principles as I understood them.
When I was a toddler, they were the party of civil rights. That was the main reason my grandparent and parents were enthusiastic Republicans, at least at that time. I would have been as well, had they allowed twelve year old kids to vote.
The libertarian wing of the party had taken hold by the time I was a teenager. It was called classic conservatism in those days. The emphasis was on militant balancing of the federal budget, limited government, and elimination of the social safety net. The exaggerated embrace of states’ rights was part of the same ideological package. So was your right to sell your house to whomever you wanted – or to refuse to sell to anyone you disliked for any reason.
The flirtation with what was euphemistically called “racial conservatism” seems inevitable in retrospect. White racial resentment of black progress spilled into anger at any hint that somewhere, somehow, some undeserving black person might be getting away with something.
What were classic conservatives to do? Turn away those who wanted many of the same things, but for the wrong reasons?
The surrender to temptation came in increments.
Ideological conservatives would not tolerate racist talk, but they often did deny that racism existed, except in very rare cases. This allowed many to condemn civil rights agitators for stirring up trouble over imaginary wrongs. Racism was an artifact from the past, a mere rhetorical cudgel: an unfair weapon in a contrived war of words.
Throughout it all, conservatives made valiant efforts to advance their clear principles. Until those principles eroded, melted away by the alliance many denied.
Every four years political parties have reaffirmed the values by which their existence is justified. Political platforms are usually disregarded by political campaigns and ignored by office holders between elections. But they are valuable within themselves. They are a mechanism by which political parties affirm to the faithful that they stand for something, and that the something for which they stand is worth fighting for, is worth voting for.
This year has been a special year in that regard. We watched as the slow erosion became a meltdown.
The party of fiscal responsibility became one in which taxes are slashed for the wealthiest while expenses are driven upward.
The party of limited government puts children in cages and clubs protesters for the sake of presidential photo ops.
The party of civil rights has completed the process of repudiation even of the pretense. Voter suppression and the violation of basic liberties is now very much in the open. Democracy itself is seen as a partisan issue.
Many of us have waited with curiosity, wondering what sort of alternate facts, what manner of pretzel logic, would be shone in this year’s quadrennial statement of principle. And now we have an implicit acknowledgment, unexpected but truthful after a fashion. The statement of principles, the Republican platform, has been reduced to this: We don’t know what Republicans stand for, and we don’t know who to ask.
The RNC has unanimously voted to forego the Convention Committee on Platform, in appreciation of the fact that it did not want a small contingent of delegates formulating a new platform without the breadth of perspectives within the ever-growing Republican movement;
The Republican National Committee (RNC) (pdf)
You don’t need a decoder ring this year. There are no dog-whistles in that sentence.
What is on the list of Republican principles? What do they stand for?
According to Republicans:
Nothing we know of.
Nothing at all.
Lazy platform for a lazy President. They couldn’t even have been bothered to even edit it to make it appropriate to 2020. Hell, some of the language in the platform, since they didn’t change it at all, makes it sound like Donald Trump is running a campaign against himself.
But after watching Day 1 of the RNC Convention, and I did watch it beginning to end, I see why there’s no platform. We’re going total fear mongering. Which still boggles my mind. Projecting riots in the streets and violence onto a future Biden administration by pointing to the riots in the streets and violence currently occurring TODAY in a Trump administration… and this projection is to convince us to vote Trump over Biden.
Nikki Haley referenced the 1984 election and made parallels to today and I think harkening back to Reagan would be the optimal choice for the Republicans during their convention. Where’s the city on a hill rhetoric? Is that all we have left, Republicans? Your fearful base is already mobilized. The base already believes the Orcs are at the gates of Gondor (Or a gated community in St Louis). Is it really a winning strategy to whip up the mob into a frenzy over fictional issues rather than addressing the actual issues plaguing us? There are no Orcs. Thankfully, as we don’t have enough rich personal injury attorneys to defend us from them with their poor trigger control, entitlement, and sociopathy.
On a side note, I really wonder if Republicans and “conservatives” even know what Marxism is. I would have gotten drunk if I was participating in a drinking game last night. At least when the Democrats reference fascism, they can point to instances that are fascistic. I’m sure Kimberly Guilfoyle’s… fervid, yeah we’ll call it that, speech will provide tons of fodder for such accusations.
Good observations, Trey.
I would say “fervid” is a polite enough word choice.
Reminds me of one ad in the 1992 campaign. A deep voiced announcer talked of the dark future if Bill Clinton defeated President George Bush. On screen a charred tree stood smoldering at the center of a burned out forest, smoke still rising from the ashes. According to surveys, viewers laughed at it.
I do think the racism actually goes back a long way. Even William F Buckley was a segregationist early on, if memory serves, though he changed his views later. And the Republicans have been the party of increased deficits, irresponsible tax cuts, and destroying the social safety net for as long as I can remember.
Over the last few decades the party raised up a golem of sixty million knuckle-dragging Deliverance mutants to bring them to power, and now they cannot put it down. That mass of fundamentalist bigots they’ve been pandering to in order to keep getting elected has now taken over, through Trump, and become the reality of the party. To the extent that they ever really had any principles, the incoherent hate, rage, and stupidity of their “base” has now replaced them. Of course they can’t have a platform. How to you write down and codify a permanent temper tantrum?
You may be right on Buckley. If he wasn’t a segregationist, he was close. I recall one polemic in which he defended the right of white voters to keep what he thought of as primitive black people from participating in elections, even if they needed to resort to violence. And he did come to regret that early stance. His brother James, who was for a time Senator James, opposed voting rights enforcement by the federal government, although from more libertarian reasoning. He also evolved, later saying he was glad his side had lost that policy debate.
I do think Republicans were deficit hawks into the early sixties. I don’t think Laffer curve economics came to dominate until the late seventies.
You are, of course, correct that dominance in the alliance shifted at some point from supply side with a racial aside to rage-based with incidental tax cuts for the wealthy.
Good comment. Thank you.
In his article, “The Grand Old Meltdown”, Politico’s Tim Alberta was asked a question he couldn’t answer.
Earlier this month, while speaking via Zoom to a promising group of politically inclined high school students, I was met with an abrupt line of inquiry. “I’m sorry, but I still don’t understand,” said one young man, his pitch a blend of curiosity and exasperation. “What do Republicans believe? What does it mean to be a Republican?”
…I did not have a good answer to the student’s question. Vexed, I began to wonder who might… I decided to call Frank Luntz. Perhaps no person alive has spent more time polling Republican voters and counseling Republican politicians than Luntz, the 58-year-old focus group guru.
“You know, I don’t have a history of dodging questions. But I don’t know how to answer that. There is no consistent philosophy,” Luntz responded. “You can’t say it’s about making America great again at a time of Covid and economic distress and social unrest. It’s just not credible.”
Luntz thought for a moment. “I think it’s about promoting—” he stopped suddenly. “But I can’t, I don’t—” he took a pause. “That’s the best I can do.”
When I pressed, Luntz sounded as exasperated as the student whose question I was relaying. “Look, I’m the one guy who’s going to give you a straight answer. I don’t give a shit—I had a stroke in January, so there’s nothing anyone can do to me to make my life suck,” he said. “I’ve tried to give you an answer and I can’t do it. You can ask it any different way. But I don’t know the answer. For the first time in my life, I don’t know the answer.”
I’d think the answer is quite obvious. Just Trump.
No principles. No honesty. No decency. No platform. No policies. No agenda. Basically whatever Dear Leader says, like attacking the press, demonizing dissent, marginalizing minorities, rewarding crony criminals, tax cuts for the rich and corporations, de-regulation of polluters and Wall Street , emboldening racism and police brutality, coddling white nationalism, betraying allies, and ending payroll taxes, leading to the gutting of Social Security and Medicare.
I take it back. This isn’t just Trump. It’s the culmination of the American Right’s agenda all along.
That is a revealing conversation.
Thanks, Dave