You've seen them. Maybe it's a friend or a sibling. Someone you see out in public. Maybe, even, you've pondered the past and recognize it might have been your parents, or maybe even you: indulgent parents. Parents who never set limits, never enforce boundaries. Parents who never tell their children no. And you know what happens. Their kids usually grow up to be monsters, or face a tough transition to adulthood, because they think everything should be handed to them on a silver platter. They can't understand why the world doesn't roll over for them the way their parents did. They often become embittered and disillusioned, and sometimes even nihilistic. And their parents often experience shame and regret, and feel like they've become hostage to the monsters they helped create.
In American politics, the spoiled children struggling to deal with a reality they don't like and didn't expect are those voters who make up the rightwing of the Republican base. The indulgent parents of American politics are the leaders, elected officials and apparatchiks of the Republican party.
It wasn't always so. The Republican party wasn't always hostile to progress, tolerance and good governance. After WWII, it still contained some retrograde elements who wanted to go back to 1928 and wipe out an expansive role for the federal government. But most top Republicans at least tried to live in reality and be responsible about governance. That began to change, however, after their landslide loss in 1964. The Goldwater insurgency marked the beginning of a long-term takeover of the GOP by the rightwing ultras who viewed the world through an unyielding ideological prism.
Initially, the main wedge employed by the newer, meaner Republican party was race. In 1960, just before the election, John Kennedy reached out to Coretta Scott King to offer his support in getting her husband released from jail, and subsequently earned the endorsement of Martin Luther King, Sr. Nevertheless, Richard Nixon still won a third of the Black vote. By the end of that decade, however, Nixon had embraced the Southern Strategy which began the break up of the Democrats' "Solid South." Ronald Reagan kicked off his 1980 campaign in Philadelphia, MS—where murdered civil rights workers Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner were buried in 1964—and talked about states rights. Republicans not only didn't compete for Black votes, they often race-baited for the votes of angry Whites. Racist appeals were often crucial to Republican successes, especially in the south and in White suburban areas ringing predominately Black cities like Detroit.
Many of the ultras that came in to the GOP through the Goldwater campaign were suburban reactionaries from the Midwest and the Sun Belt. Some were extremely religious, but many weren't. They never saw Nixon as one of their own, and they hated Republican "squishes" like Nelson Rockefeller, who they saw as tax-and-spend liberals. As the ultras expanded their control over the party and increasingly determined the results of Republican primaries, the Republican party took on an aggressive agenda of eliminating taxes and regulations and rejecting the legitimacy of nearly all government action (except on issue of bellicose foreign policy and domestic law-and-order),
However, it wasn't until the newly-organized religious right became important to GOP success that the reactionary social issues gained a more important place in the agenda and the campaign messaging of the Republican party. Because of the rise of the religious right, the GOP increasingly accepted and eventually embraced social intolerance and a view of the world that in numerous ways—especially in regards to science, reason, faith and tolerance of individual differences—rejected the Enlightenment.
The political ascendancy of socially conservative Christians—including conservative Catholics—began with the national success of Ronald Reagan. In 1976, evangelical Christian Jimmy Carter carried the white evangelical vote. In 1980, Reagan did, as has every Republican presidential candidate since. From the late 70's through the presidency of George W. Bush, politically active evangelical Christians joined with the libertarians, xenophobes, anticommunists, neocons and other various "movement conservatives" in solidifying their hold over the Republican party.
Not all White evangelicals are social and political conservatives, but a disproportionate percentage of white evangelicals are. They're also heavily concentrated in the states of the Confederacy, although there are social conservatives just about everywhere in the country. This bloc of voters, and the politicians they've sent to Washington, have increasingly exerted control over the national Republican party.
Since Reagan the Republican party's centers of power shifted from the rural Midwest, northern upscale suburbs and the Sunbelt of California and the Southwest to Texas and the states of the Confederacy. But because of the organization of the Christian rightwing, they were able to apply pressure and often determine the winners of Republican primaries in most of the country.
As the Republican power base shifted southward, the litmus test issues of the far right increasingly became litmus test issues for the Republican party everywhere. Republicans usually opposed taxes and often—especially if they were outside the Northeast—took a more conservative view on social issues. But even in to the 1990's there were plenty of socially tolerant Republicans who respected good governance (and could support taxes as a "necessary evil"), and didn't demagogue on social issues.
Three developments in the early and mid-1990's solidified the hold of the radical right over the GOP, and are the reason why nobody in the GOP can stand up to the monster they created.
First, George HW Bush lost the 1992 election. Bill Clinton was good for the radical right, because they imbue him with all the supposed evils of the cultural change that had taken off in the 1960's. More crucial, in retrospect, is the belief that spread through Republican circles that Bush lost because he didn't attend to the rightwing GOP base. Two matters, in particular, fueled the anger against Bush. First, his decision to raise taxes to deal with the burgeoning federal debt. Second, his appointment of David Souter to the Supreme Court, and Souter's subsequent affirmation of Roe v Wade. It's a dubious proposition, that Bush lost in 1992 because he lost the rightwing base—most "conservative" Republicans aren't conservatives, they're authoritarians, and as such still tend to support the most authoritarian candidate—but this belief became Republican orthodoxy, and the most effective proponent of this belief was the "brains" behind George W. Bush, Karl Rove.
The second major development that allowed the radical right to take over the GOP and the rightwing base to determine the winners of Republican primaries was the rise of Rush Limbaugh and rightwing talk radio. Meshing with the conservative think tanks funded by rich reactionaries, conservative foundations and corporations from industries hostile to government regulation, the radical right now had an effective propaganda machine more effective than the Republican party itself.
Third was the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994. The Republican success that year validated the rightwing ideology and opportunism of Newt Gingrich. Rush Limbaugh became the de facto chief propagandist of the party and Karl Rove as the enforcer and implementer of the doctrine, the far rightwing Republican base had gained control over the party.
Karl Rove, George Bush and the Republicans' Congressional Leadership gave everything they could to the far right of the Republican base. They were told they would be given whatever they asked for.
Ronald Reagan had begun the indulgence of the Republican base with the idiocy of supply side economics and the Laffer Curve. He told Americans that if you cut taxes, revenues would rise. In essence, he told Americans they can get something for nothing.
By the administration of George W. Bush, the Republican game plan was to give the social conservatives just about whatever they wanted, although it had to be delivered quietly and spoken about in code. The extreme conservative base is xenophobic, homophobic, rejects science and is intolerant. And the Republican leadership has indulged them so completely and for so long, they can't be told "no, you don't get everything you want."
The eventual problem, for the Republicans, is the same as the problem for parents who never tell their kids no: eventually, they lost control. What makes this so deadly for the Republican party is that they've lost control to a reactionary base that wants to take the country back to an idyllic Christian, anti-Enlightenment past that never existed as societal and cultural change render the beliefs of the radical right increasingly anachronistic and rejected by the American mainstream.
Continued>>>
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/5/3/727462/-Republicans:-The-Indulgent-Parents
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