GOP's Ugly Evolution -- Part One
The
Republican Party today is not what it was 50 years ago. Nor even 30
years ago.
Since
the 1980s, Republicans have held together a coalition around a woolly
vision of “limited-government conservatism” that could mean
different things to different people. Libertarian-minded business
owners saw it as low taxes and deregulation. Conservative Christians
saw it in terms of religious liberty or not extending rights to LGBTQ
citizens. Middle-class whites who scored high on racial resentment
scales saw it as government not taking their money to give free
things to freeloading black and brown people.
These
different groups can be kept in the same big-tent coalition because
they all understood that on the values they cared about most, the
Democratic Party was not the party for people like them. Over time,
as they identified as conservatives
and Republicans,
they learned the orthodoxies that “people like them” stood for,
and were pulled along for the sake of keeping the governing coalition
together, understanding that any defection would spell defeat in a
two-party system.
Prior
to the ’80s, both parties represented much broader coalitions,
which cut much more across racial, cultural, and regional identities.
Parties were moderate because after the New Deal, they really were
national parties, but with different identities in different regions.
Even 30 years ago, you could be a culturally conservative Democrat or
a culturally liberal Republican. These overlaps made the parties less
distinct. They also made it easier to find common ground with
opposing partisans based on other shared identities.
These
overlaps were the foundation for a political center and multiple
coalitions. Moderation existed not because politicians and voters had
identified as “moderates” but because they faced cross-pressure
from competing and overlapping values and identities, and the center
was the place where these values overlapped.
But
as partisan identity has become more closely linked with racial,
cultural, and regional identities in the wake of the
post-civil rights party realignment,
these overlaps have vanished. Our collective sense of cultural,
regional, and ethnic status is now more and more linked to the status
of our two political parties.
Broadly
speaking, the wealthy and corporations have used money (through
campaign contributions and lobbying) to shape economic policy so that
it disproportionately benefits the rich and corporations. This money
has made it harder for the Democratic Party to truly be the party of
the working class (one reason … that Democrats have remained
moderate).
But
its more consequential effect was that it pulled the Republican Party
very far right on economic issues. And because many of these
far-right economic positions are broadly unpopular on their own, the
Republican Party has had to work even harder to disqualify Democrats,
turning up negative partisanship to ever higher levels and having to
rely more and more on anti-elite/anti-government and now increasingly
overt racial demagoguery in order to keep Republicans voting
Republican (Drutman 5-7).
…
it's
not just a matter [today]
of
different opinions on policy, says Robert Jones, CEO of PRRI, a
nonpartisan group that studies politics, culture and religion. People
have largely picked a side, and they really don't like the other one.
Nearly
half the country (48%) thinks the Republican Party has been taken
over by racists, a view held by 80% of Democrats. And the Democratic
Party? Nationally, 44% think it's been taken over by socialists –
and 82% of Republicans share that opinion, according to the extensive
study, "Fractured Nation: Widening Partisan Polarization and Key
Issues in 2020 Presidential Elections."
The
two major parties themselves, Jones says, have largely come to
reflect the two Americas, with Republicans encompassing white
Christians who feel victimized by the cultural and social changes,
and Democrats, the African-Americans, Latinos and women who are
driving many of those demographic and social changes.
White
evangelicals flocked to the GOP after the civil rights movement took
hold in the late 1960s, Jones says, and the Democratic Party became
identified with the civil rights movement. That started a "sorting
out" that mingles party identification with race and religion,
he says.
The
trend really took hold during the Reagan years, but "we're
seeing it hit at an extreme level," Jones says. "The
partisan polarization is driven less by the fact that people love
their own party as much as that they hate the other one. They really
see each other as the enemy."
More
than two-thirds (69%) of Republicans believe discrimination against
whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against blacks,
compared to 21% of Democrats who feel that way, according to PRRI.
For Republicans who cite Fox News as their primary news source, the
number rises to 77%.
Asked
if they agreed that "immigrants are invading the country and
changing American culture," 63% of Republicans said yes, and 20%
of Democrats agreed. When it comes to gender roles and the MeToo
movement, Republicans felt threatened: a majority of Republicans
(53%) believe men are punished "just for being men," and
65% of GOPers think society as a whole has become "too soft and
feminine." Among Democrats, 23% agreed men were being punished
for being male, and 26% agreed the nation was becoming "too soft
and feminine."
More
than half of Republicans (55%) believe it's necessary to believe in
God to be a moral person, compared with 35% of Democrats who think
that way (Milligan 1-2).
The
Republican Party today is basically a coalition of grievances united
by one thing: hatred. Hatred of immigrants, hatred of minorities,
hatred of intellectuals, hatred of gays, feminists and many other
groups too numerous to mention. What binds them together is hatred of
Democrats because they are welcoming to every group that Republicans
reject.
I
do not know exactly when hatred became the binding force in the
Republican Party, but its takeover of the once “Solid South” of
the Democratic Party was the key turning point. When the Civil Rights
and Voting Rights Acts broke the Democratic Party’s hold on that
region, the G.O.P. moved in to replace it. But in the process,
Republicans absorbed the traditions of racism, bigotry, populism and
rule by plutocrats called “Bourbons” that defined the politics of
the South after the Civil War. They also inherited an obsession with
self-defense, allegiance to evangelical Christianity, chauvinism,
xenophobia and other cultural characteristics long cultivated in the
South.
The Bourbons
maintained their power by dividing the poor and working classes along
racial lines so that they would not unify for their mutual betterment
by raising taxes on the wealthy, improving schools and making
government responsive to the needs of the masses rather than
protecting the wealth and position of the Bourbons.
The Southern
states have long followed what are now doctrinaire Republican
policies: minuscule taxes, no unions, aggressive pro-business
policies, privatized public services and strong police forces that
kept minorities in their place. Yet the South is and always has been
our poorest region and shows no sign of converging with the
Northeast, which has long followed progressive policies opposite
those in the South and been the wealthiest region as well (Bartlett
1-2).
The
few Republicans and conservatives tut-tutting Trump’s rampage of
racist rancor ought to know that the history is clear: Their party
has been exploiting bigotry and acrimony for decades. There was
Richard Nixon’s Southern
Strategy,
which aimed to attract white voters opposed to civil rights advances.
Ronald Reagan famously campaigned against “welfare queens” and
hailed “states’ rights”—barely coded language deployed to
achieve the same results (Corn
1).
Lee
Atwater, party chairman, aide to Ronald Reagan and campaign manager
for George H.W. Bush, explained this in a 1981 interview with
political scientist Alexander Lamis: “You start out in 1954 by
saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger.’ By 1968 you can’t say
‘nigger’ — that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like,
forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff …”
For
half a century, then, the GOP has taught white voters racial
resentment, taught them to prioritize concerns about white
prerogative over concerns about shuttered factories, dirty water,
lack of health care, foreclosed futures. It did this in code —
“Willie Horton,” “tax cuts,” “welfare queen” — which,
while obvious to all but the most gullible, still allowed respectable
white men and women to maintain fig leaves of deniability.
So
politicians accepted the votes, but never had to acknowledge the
means of their manufacture. White voters gave them the votes, but
never had to confront the reasons they did so (Pitts Jr. 1).
The
pattern is obvious: The guys at the top of the Republican Party have
long tried to take advantage of racial conflict and political
divisiveness. At times, they have even encouraged it, believing that
would help them win elections. And there’s no better example than
Newt Gingrich.
Decades
before Gingrich was a Trump-adoring Fox News bloviator, he was
speaker of the House. And before that he was a bomb-thrower. In fact,
he became speaker partly because he weaponized hate. Elected in 1978,
Gingrich was a back-bencher in the House of Representatives when the
Republicans appeared to be in a permanent minority. His strategy was
to blow up his own party so he could take control and lead it to the
majority—and one of his big ideas was that the GOP, in order to
succeed, had to create more division within the national discourse.
He
established a political action committee called GOPAC to help
Republican candidates across the country become more effective
campaigners. And in 1990, the group distributed to GOP contenders a
pamphlet called
“Language: A Key Mechanism of Control,” which encouraged the
candidates to “speak like Newt”—that is, to rely upon sharp and
divisive rhetoric. It presented a list of 30 “optimistic positive”
words to use, including “freedom,” “truth,” and “family.”
It also provided a list of “contrasting” words: “crisis,”
“decay,” and “red tape.” And this second list recommended
going to extremes. Republican candidates, it noted, should call
Democrats “shallow,” “radical,” “incompetent,”
“pathetic,” “sick,” “bizarre,” and “traitors.”
Gingrich’s group was urging GOPers to engage in all-out rhetorical
war, going beyond arguing over policies to engaging in the politics
of personal destruction. Which was one of Gingrich’s own favorite
tools. (The good Newt loved to talk about policy; the bad Newt
embraced and relished hostile name-calling and discordant combat.)
And
the nastiness paid off. The belligerent Gingrich led his Republicans
to the majority in the House in 1994.
Not
every Republican candidate has adopted this memo as his or her
playbook in the past three decades. But its spirit has certainly
imbued a significant amount of GOP action. … (Corn 1-3).
The
year 1994 … was a major moment in politics. After a rocky start to
Bill Clinton's presidency, Republicans were looking to capitalize in
the midterm elections. Newt Gingrich, then the House minority whip,
began the 1994 campaign by releasing the "Contract With
America," a list of 10 bills congressional Republicans pledged
to pass if they regained the House majority.
The
document was loaded with buzzwords influenced by President Ronald
Reagan's 1985 State of the Union address. It talked about "tax
relief," "job creation," and "personal
responsibility." It proposed "taking back our streets"
by toughening the death penalty and building more prisons, and it
suggested imposing term limits on "career politicians" so
they could be replaced with "citizen legislators."
The
campaign worked — Republicans routed Democrats for a 54-seat swing
in the House of Representatives, giving the GOP its first majority in
the House since the 1950s. Political messaging had changed.
One
of the main architects of the "Contract With America" was a
Republican pollster named Frank Luntz, who has been at the forefront
of political messaging for 30 years. Luntz is credited inside and
outside Washington, DC, with teaching a generation of Republican
politicians that "it might not matter what we say so much as how
we say it," ...
Throughout
the '90s, Luntz developed theories on political messaging and
engineered countless phrases that subtly promote conservative ideals.
Those ideas have since been absorbed into classes at the Leadership
Institute, a conservative nonprofit that it says teaches "political
technology" to prospective politicians and activists. His
rhetorical tips and phrases are regularly
distributed among Republican
circles. …
Luntz's
greatest contributions to Republican messaging can be found in "The
New American Lexicon," a playbook published annually by Luntz
since the early 1990s. A leaked copy of the 2006 edition provides
fascinating insight into Luntz's rhetorical strategy. In a section
titled
"14 Words Never To Use," Luntz instructs to never say
"government" when one could say "Washington"
instead.
"Most
Americans appreciate their local government that picks up their
trash, cleans their streets, and provides police and transportation
services," Luntz said. "Washington is the problem. Remind
voters again and again about Washington spending, Washington waste,
Washington taxation, Washington bureaucracy, Washington rules and
Washington regulations."
Luntz
suggested replacing "drilling for oil" with "exploring
for energy;" "undocumented workers" with "illegal
aliens;" and "estate tax" with "death tax."
The substitutions often work — an April Ipsos/NPR poll found
that support for abolishing the estate tax jumps to 76% from 65% when
you call it the death tax.
"It
was completely revolutionary," Republican consultant Jim Dornan
told Business Insider. "He detected phrases and single
words that could change how people thought about the issues"
(Abadi 1).
Cited
Works:
Abadi, Mark, “Democrats and Republicans Speak Different Languages — and It Helps Explain Why We're So Divided.” Business Insider, August 11, 2017. Web. https://www.businessinsider.com/political-language-rhetoric-framing-messaging-lakoff-luntz-2017-8
Bartlett, Bruce, “The Republican Party Has Become the Party of Hate. New York Times, July 21, 2016. Web. https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/07/21/what-is-the-republican-party/the-republican-party-has-become-the-party-of-hate
Corn, David, “Donald Trump’s Politics of Hate Began with a ‘Cynical and Evil’ GOP Memo,” Mother Jones, July 18, 2019. Web. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/07/donald-trumps-politics-of-hate-began-with-a-cynical-and-evil-gop-memo/
Drutman, Lee, “Yes, the Republican Party Has Become Pathological. But Why?
We’re
Not Going to Fix American Democracy until We Can Explain Why the GOP
Went Crazy.” Vox,
September
22, 2017.
Web.
https://www.vox.com/polyarchy/2017/9/22/16345194/republican-party-pathological
