GOP dysfunction prepares the way for an end to American democracy…
The GOP dysfunction may be more tactical than many would assume. Its roots have a distinctive Reaganesque lineage. The star-gazing so-called “Great Communicator” was no friend of government and put a fine point on the long-held Republican Party’s desire to choke it off by limiting government spending. In the words oft-quoted by Republicans from his first inaugural address, Reagan used the economic failures brought on by the disastrous war in Vietnam and the resultant “stagflation” that scuttled both his predecessors in office as a theme. He would use it to introduce his version of economic policy that called for stimulating the economy from the top down. The “trickle-down” model he proposed included his take on the efficacy of government to manage fiscal affairs equitably:
The economic ills we suffer have come upon us over several decades. They will not go away in days, weeks, or months, but they will go away. They will go away because we as Americans have the capacity now, as we’ve had in the past, to do whatever needs to be done to preserve this last and greatest bastion of freedom. In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we’ve been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price.
- First Inaugural Address, January 20, 1981
Direction which by definition is “a system of order for a nation, state, or other political unit responsible for creating and enforcing the rules of a society, defense, foreign affairs, the economy, and public services” is charged with a tall order. For it to become “the problem” begs the question — whose problem? Reagan, whose governing policies sometimes were filtered through astrologist Joan Quigly’s horoscopes, somehow divined that he agreed with the GOP’s long-stated goal of a small, limited Federal government. It had become (and remains) their best argument for doing little while in power. However, the real zinger in the speech’s opening foray against government fiscal policy is in the last line quoted. It was a pitch to donors and the GOP wealthiest elites among the GOP base that has had a lingering effect on our politics since. The “trickle” in the supply-side economics theory was introduced to Reagan by economic advisor David Stockman who could be accused of lipsticking a pig that had been rejected before. John Kenneth Galbraith an economic advisor to President Kennedy among others, weighed in on Stockman’s attempt to revive a theory discarded along with the Dodo:
Mr. David Stockman has said that supply-side economics was merely a cover for the trickle-down approach to economic policy-what an older and less elegant generation called the horse-and-sparrow theory: “If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.”
What Reagan left as his legacy to the Republican Party was the specter that the government, in all of its functions, was messy, clumsy, and ineffective in meeting the needs of its citizens. In a 1986 news conference that included issues ranging from American farmers and mental health care to Nicaragua and South Africa, Reagan managed to define Republican disdain for government while fighting like hell to take charge of it. In his prepared opening remarks, he made it a point to belittle those who depend on it as an organizing principle. Within the quip now remembered as the nine most terrifying words Reagan’s affable wit is reduced to sarcasm as he tells Americans that if they are looking for help, don’t look here:
Some sectors of our farm economy are hurting, and their anguish is a concern to all Americans. I think you all know that I’ve always felt the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”
Reagan was referring to farm policy, but his choice of placing the phrase in his prepared remarks suggests a much broader intent to emphasize his belief that the mechanisms of government are peripheral to governing. The dysfunction now evident in the party he once led can be directly attributed to Reagan’s discounting of government. Of course, both supply-side economics and the “nine most terrifying words” are interrelated. Governmental regulation and oversight are tools that curb abuses and help to ensure fairness. Equitable tax distribution, regulating monopolistic tendencies, and expanding the franchise to women and black Americans are generally considered democratic reforms. They have created a broad middle class by promoting policies that more fairly distributed the nation’s wealth- a good thing. The wealthy donors who have found a willing partner in the GOP would beg to differ. They never “got” that sharing lesson learned around the sandbox.
Courting the investment by the corporate class in the reduction of governmental regulation has replaced the role of governance in the Republican Party. It has been helped along by an increasingly reactionary Supreme Court whose decision in 2008 to inject dark money into the political bloodstream has led to the dysfunctional party that refuses to govern because it is bad for the base. If less government is desirable, then no government at all has got to be better. They have perfected the Reagan model.
So as we watch a party in disarray, its evolution to this point has served its donors well. Their elected leaders including the clever-dim ex-president whose skills are more suited to survival than leadership are leading this debacle and owe it to the movement’s lineage. The philosophical nihilism that fuels its grievance and hatred or rules and order is beyond Trump. More than the “party of Trump” this is the party of Santos, Boebert, Gaetz, and Green- totally corrupt and inept. The protracted dismantling of democratic principles, and the numbing of norms, are beyond their ken. The return of fascist strongmen taking control of governments in Europe and Asia is a trend that includes Trump as more a tool than a frontman. The real movers and shakers are the answer to the question “cui bono?” Who benefits from weakened central governments? from political chaos? from popular divisions, or cultural disintegration? The answer is as obvious as it is disheartening. Those who profit are the ones least affected by the swirling chaos and who stand in the shadows and gain more wealth and power as governments fall to fascist rule.
Robert Paxton’s definition and description of fascism in his book, “The Anatomy of Fascism” (2004) reads like a playbook for the modern Republican Party and its ruling philosophy:
A form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.
It fits with the oxymoronic conservative doctrine that change is always distrusted- its pace is always too fast. Yet, in their view, to preserve the past something in the present has to change:
Paxton also argues that fascism’s foundations lie in a set of “mobilizing passions” rather than an elaborated doctrine. He argues these passions can explain much of the behaviour of fascists:
a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions;
the primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether individual or universal, and the subordination of the individual to it;
the belief that one’s group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external;
dread of the group’s decline under the corrosive effects of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences;
the need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary;
the need for authority by natural chiefs (always male), culminating in a national chieftain who alone is capable of incarnating the group’s historical destiny;
the superiority of the leader’s instincts over abstract and universal reason;
the beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group’s success;
the right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind of human or divine law, right being decided by the sole criterion of the group’s prowess within a Darwinian struggle.
As the GOP implodes and distances itself from conventional leadership, its vestiges haunt our future. A look at the immediate future finds it adrift in a sea of uncertainty. Our next election offers both hope and despair. Domestic policies await court dates with the future taken up with regaining rather than expanding rights once thought unassailable. The fate of our democracy is tested abroad by the weirdness of a Republican Party that once would have no trouble picking sides in Ukraine and would support the foreign policies of a sitting president of either party.
No more. The Republican Party has succumbed under the weight of its inner chaos leaving fertile ground for the rise of authoritarian rule in America.
Originally published at https://vincerizzo.substack.com.
