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It’s all coming unwound, in a mad procession of shocking political ineptitude.
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Since Ronald Reagan first turned our nation’s attention toward what was, in his view, the relentless excesses of big government, the GOP has won election after election harnessing and directing the rage of white conservative voters. But what’s coming next is the logical outcome of a forty year GOP strategy of attacking the federal institutions that govern us.
The Republican Party is now barreling down the road to dysfunctional extremist irrelevance with no brakes left to apply.
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The challenge with this historically winning GOP strategy is that it has required candidates to ante up each election cycle with increasing levels of disdain toward our federal institutions.
Eventually, even their most articulate leaders have been forced to pass a mandatory litmus test of incendiary rhetoric. More moderate GOP voices have failed the test, unseated by Tea Party candidates like Ted Cruz. Accordingly, the Republican Party is now barreling down the road to dysfunctional extremist irrelevance with no brakes left to apply.
White conservative voters and difference
White conservative voters have a problem. To this day, they remain deeply alarmed by the wide ranging social, religious, sexual and gender diversity that is inherent to the human condition. The miraculously diverse nature of humanity can no more be constrained or limited than the falling of summer rain. That’s the glory of being human. It’s built into our DNA. And we’re lucky to have it.
Here in America, we’re not racists. Oh my, no. We’re nice people.
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Pity the poor white conservative American voters. They spend their lives pissed off by the fact that people are different. That said, rest assured, here in America, we’re not racists. Oh my, no. We’re nice people. We just want everybody else to be nice exactly like us.
And so, to assuage any lingering pangs of guilt, the Republican Party has for decades created powerful coded political messaging, setting aside the ugly barking of the Klu Klux Klan and other more radical hate groups. They have created language nice people can rely on to motivate and coalesce voters around issues of race, gender and sexuality. Language that lets them rage about big government, while in the darkness of their hearts what they really hate is something much more fundamental.
For decades, the GOP has talked about family values when what they really mean is that gay people should be brutalized.
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For decades, the GOP has talked about family values when what they really mean is that gay people should be brutalized. For decades they have talked about others being weak on crime when they really mean that black people should be incarcerated en mass. For decades they have raged against political correctness when what they really mean is that women should shut up and do what they’re told. And, of course, they have talked about the rest of us being weak on terrorism when what they really intend is that we should send our children to fight endless wars in foreign lands; wars that turn a tidy profit for the wealthiest here at home.
But now, thanks to Donald Trump, decades of carefully crafted coded language, designed to grant angry white voters a way to support institutional racism and sexism while speaking in the parlance of the Sunday morning news shows, is officially useless. Decades of work by highly paid conservative political consultants and pollsters is in the toilet. Ashes on the rhetorical wind.
Trump’s scorched earth race politics
The open and unashamed racist electioneering practiced by Trump has taken these decades of messaging and rendered them useless; messaging designed to slowly and carefully tiptoe up to the nasty razor’s edge of bigotry and then, at the last minute, duck back into plausible deniability.
“No, we’re not talking about denying opportunity to poor people, we’re talking about reverse discrimination.”
“No, we’re not talking about restricting birth control, we’re talking about religious freedom.”
The genius of Willie Horton ads, the wonder of the welfare mothers, and subtle nuance of family values, all of this hard work is shot to hell. All this lovingly crafted language is useless nowk because the dam has broken. We have seen the face of the monster clearly. We have seen candidate Donald Trump.
In order for coded language to work, you need plausible deniability. Once you openly attack people on the basis of race, religion or gender there is no ducking back into coded language.
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In order for coded language to work, you need plausible deniability. Once you openly attack people on the basis of race, religion or gender there is no ducking back into coded language.
The Republican Party’s political dialogues are now openly racist, violent and bigoted. Women’s bodies, world religions, entire cultures and races, all are to be attacked and denigrated. And this nasty brew of rage and hatred has spilled out onto the internet with unrestrained passion, permanently enshrined for all to see.
Thank you Donald Trump for bringing the Republican strategy of hate and division to its logical conclusion. I was beginning to wonder if it would ever happen. Thank you for stating in no uncertain terms what we have always known. That hundred of millions of us are viewed by the GOP base as contemptible, as disposable, as subhuman.
Any future GOP issue or initiative, threaded as they are with the coded language designed to appease the GOP base, will now conjure the hate speech of Donald Trump.
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Any future GOP issue or initiative, threaded with the coded language designed to subtly signal bigotry to the GOP base, will now instead conjure the hate speech of Donald Trump and the equally hateful speech of Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and all the others who are desperate to match the blunt effectiveness of Trump’s terrifying grip on the Republican base.
The GOP is a racist party. This is no longer up for debate. There is no more sitting on the fence. No more compassionate conservatism. No more big tent of the GOP. The Republican Party’s focus-grouped plan to keep serving up candy coated bigotry in pithy little self satisfied bites is now officially dead.
The chaos that is the modern GOP
It is the decades of hate rhetoric on Fox News and AM Talk Radio that led the GOP to its logical end. The spewing of course condescending contempt for difference at every opportunity. The sewing of entitled white rage as the central tenant of our political discourse.
They had a good run, but every hate filled electoral victory required they ante up more rage and white victimhood for the next. They created their hate beast and set it loose on American politics and nothing Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes can do now will stop it. The beast is blind with rage, turning on its own handlers. They have bitten bloody the hand of the Koch Brothers and all their wealthy pals. This shit is completely out of control.
The Republican Party is fracturing. Each reactionary constituency refusing to give an inch, mimicking the overblown belligerency of their AM hate radio icons.
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The Republican Party is fracturing. Each reactionary constituency refusing to give an inch, mimicking the overblown belligerency of their AM hate radio icons. Every group, babbling inane hocus pocus about the Constitution, each declaring themselves to be the freedom this and the freedom that, climbing over each other in a mad rush to claim millions in unregulated corporate money with which to savage each other further. Reactive Tea Party candidates, every one more entitled than the next, flog the GOP status quo while gun toting libertarians stare down professors in our universities and walk their AR-15s through race riots. It’s all coming unwound in a mad procession of shocking ineptitude.
Believe me, this is giving moderate and independent voters pause.
From now on, when people hear coded Republican messaging about welfare cheats or immigration policy, there will be no plausible deniability. Trump has seen to that. It will be the undoing of the Grand Old Party. The GOP’s political armageddon will come because no self respecting banker, doctor or lawyer who publicly professes to be color blind will be able to support the GOP without making their true politics painfully obvious. And although many in America are happy to openly hate difference, tens of millions more are finally going to have to go to the mirror and take a long hard look.
“If I pull that lever, I’m a bigot.”
We have reached the tipping point. We can never again dance around the question of race, religion, gender or sexuality in American politics.
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I truly believe the majority of us want a rich and diverse world, not some choke-chained conformist suburban nightmare from the 1950’s. The stark choices we are now facing will give rise to our better angels. We will stop falling prey to subtle and devious messages that divide and isolate us. We will rise collectively for what we know to be right. A society that is robust, inclusive and diverse; every color, every creed, every kind of love. For us, for our children who will follow us, this is how we can become finally and fully alive.
We have reached the tipping point. We can never again dance around the question of race, religion, gender or sexuality in American politics. There is no convenient self deception left for us to take refuge behind, no coded hate candy to assuage our guilt. Those days are gone. The battle for our collective souls is here.
Donald Trump is a huge threat. We cannot take his candidacy lightly. He represents a future we should fear. But a healthy dose of fear is what we need to get organized and busy. The tattered mask of racial and sexual civility has been ripped off the GOP. We can now prove exactly what they represent, word for ugly word.
And we have Donald Trump to thank for it.
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Source: 30dB.com – Republican Party
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Read more by Mark Greene:
Guess What? Women Also Struggle With Emotional Expression
When “Check Your Male Privilege” Becomes a Bludgeon
Why Are Death Rates Rising for Middle Aged White Americans?
When Men Keep Demanding Sex From Their Partners Over and Over
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Richard, great timing in what you said here. When I look at GMP web site, the words “We eat stereotypes for lunch around here” resonates.. As evidenced in countless articles, they stereotyping people of faith, Republicans, conservatives… those stereotypes are alive and well here at GMP and by no means challenged much less recognized at stereotyping.
I have no answers here, but I continue to have more and more questions. The first of those are whether he’s just being handled, or handling himself. Is this all a façade aimed at tapping into the psyche of a frustrated American Public? The guys is a businessman with a samurai’s attitude. He’s also a genius with unlimited recourse. I ask that when he grants a nod to a fringe group is he just calculating bottom line as a function of electoral collage rather then income: that the calculated gains of the fringe vote will outweigh the loss of the… Read more »
Richard, in my eyes, the Trump movement represents the last gasps of the thousand year global rein of white guys. After a thousand years of which, we have arrived at the enlightened conclusion that larger clips for our AR-15s is the answer to the world’s problems. Enjoy it while it lasts. but the whole white man power structure is fading away. People are becoming light brown. People are becoming a wider range of genders and religions. And there’s nothing Donald Trump or anyone else can do about it. I won’t debate your talking points here any more because you and… Read more »
Same, same, Michael, and very much appreciated.
My native language is, Joesixpack, my grammar almost criminal, and compared to some of the writers here I often feel as if I’m scratching symbols on the wall of a cave! Good to know that I make at least some sense!
G. It didn’t. What’s your answer?
Richard, it should have imploded it the American people had gotten off their rear end and wake up to what was happening to them and learn their lessons. But like Mike Papantonio of the show Ring of fire, Americans have short-term memory.
The GoP should have imploded after 12 years of Republican presidential rule under Reagan and Bush, Senior, or should have imploded after the first or second term of Bush, Jr.,
Ebbing my general frustration, I have a somewhat different take on this contention, not within the realm of hard political debate, but the human element (fear or anger) that is driving this election. I would contend that it is not actually anger, but more frustration with the middle class. I look at the recent tax hikes slipped in under the heading of “Obamacare”: Medicare tax from 1.45% to 2.35% · Top Income tax bracket went from 35% to 39.6% · Top Income payroll tax went from 37.4% to 52.2% · Capital Gains tax went from 15% to 28% · Dividend… Read more »
Love your style and measured thoughts D.J. 🙂
As a European, I am watching these primaries with a growing sense of unease at the possibility of a Trump presidency. The “Angry White American Voter” is an easy target though, I think you need to look closer to home – the role of the American media on both sides has always appeared hyperbolic and fear-mongering to me. Lighting the touch paper and then acting surprised that a bomb looks as if it is ready to explode is as crass as it is naive. The media created this with its divisive and incendiary tone, now the average American is paying… Read more »
(I’m having some trouble with the direct ‘reply’ button, so I’ll put this as a new post) Mark, I suspect you’re presently better positioned to make that determination than I, thus I’m inclined to differ to a more direct POV. Though if I may indulge in some conjecture here for a bit; again at the risk of error or contradiction- Assume for a moment that under the conservative banner there are indeed less Machiavellians, and far more true-believers than is often given credit for. That is, (speculatively, I grant you), there are lots of people who voted (or are voting) Republican… Read more »
Mark, I can’t speak for anyone else on this- and I’m sure it will be open for disagreement or contradiction: Regardless, I thought your first three paragraphs were an excellent & concise summation (albeit brief) of the dynamic of the last 35 years, the impact of Reagan on the shifting American political spectrum; its tilt to the right, and the increasingly antagonistic, detrimental dispositions towards the public institutions that are there -after all- to buttress & enable democracy, liberty, prosperity and equality, not to impede it. If I may be so bold, Reagan -in his zeal to combat inefficiencies, irrelevancies, and perceived… Read more »
Mostly 123, Thanks for your thoughts on this. I appreciate your point of view on Reagan’s likely motivations. I subscribe to a different POV. I believe that the most progressive actions of the Federal Government (The Civil Rights Act, Roe V. Wade, The Voting Rights Act, Environmental Legislation, etc.) led conservatives to conclude that the federal government would always be a threat to the interests of their sponsors, corporations, the military industrial complex and so on. Accordingly, realizing they would never be able to guarantee a lock on Washington, their corporate sponsors instead determined that owning and managing state governments… Read more »
Thanks, Michael. Much appreciated.
Brilliant article Mark! While never “declared” for any particular party, I considered myself to be a fiscal conservative / social liberal. The GOP has finally, completely and utterly imploded. However, someone like DT only shows up when there is a big enough vacuum due to an absence of real leadership. This is a condition both parties have been exhibiting for some time now. There is anger on both sides, just for different reasons (thankfully). I personally cannot stand any of the Clintons where lying for them is like breathing. However, in the event Bernie doesn’t get nominated, I’ll take a… Read more »