© 2008, UrbisMedia
As I write, this George W. Bush is probably checking over his last (thank you, Lord!) State of the Union address, to a union, the state of which, thanks to George W. Bush, mirrors the failure and mess that is the rest of the life of George W. Bush. His name is not even invoked by Republicans running to replace him and he is not asked for endorsements or to join the contestants on the hustings. As he is for the nation he is for them, this kiss of death, George will imply that he was a “decider” who had to make tough, unpopular decisions for his country (yeah, like big tax cuts for the rich, torturing detainees, and spying on his own people), but that history will exonerate and enshrine him in the halls of apotheosized Republican scumbags alongside the venerable St. Ronnie the Gypper.
The one good thing that George W. Bush might have done is fracture the coalition of fats cats, racists, evangelicals and less odious Republicans that gave him enough votes for Scalia to make him president. In that bunch of dolts lined up at the Republican candidate debates is an unwieldy rainbow of contemporary Republicanism, from Giuliani to Paul, and hardly a one of them really favored by the party kingmakers.
These days Republicans are trying to find out who, or what they are. There is a long distance from Abe Lincoln to Ike, and a like distance from Ike to George W. Bush. They are not agreement on the likes of Mike Huckabee, or John McCain, who respective populism, or renegade status, are neither GWB, or their dear apotheosizes, and dead, Ronnie.
There are at least four major groupings of Republicans: basic, working-class (W/Cs), Suburban middle class; evangelical-Christian, and Country-club. There are shades of difference within these, and regional differences as well. But when they keep it together, they are usually in power.
It has always amazed me that those working-class Republicans get sucked in to the “we are the party looking out for the mall guy getting screwed (taxed) by big government (read Democrats). I can sort of understand it on issues related to national defense. The Republicans have been successful in convincing the w/c Republicans that Vietnam was a war that would stem the advance of Communism in countries most of them couldn’t find on a map, that it wasn’t a civil war, and that we lost. 911 made it easy to convince that Iraq (or Islam) was our enemy and that it was all right to invade and start a civil war. They don’t get it that it will be their sons and daughter mostly who will have to fight, dies or returned maimed in these ill-considered wars. But then they buy into the military thing. Once the Republican biggies get the W/C kids into uniform, they have got the whole family. Then it doesn’t matter if the screw these people over by cutting programs or funding for programs that would benefit them, shift enormous chunks of national wealth to the top one percent, but I can understand that they are so dumb they don’t mind. They seem to go like sheep to the slaughter when, for a recent example, the Republicans deregulate the securities and baking system such that they prey unsuspecting people with sub prim mortgages. Millions are losing their homes, but mainly because the fat-cat Republicans are concerned about the stock market, they W/Cs will $800 bucks in compensations. How can they not get that? Panem et circenses has worked with these sorts of people since Roman times.
Though there are some overlaps with the W/Cs, the Suburban Republicans may share social values with some of the W/Cs but they are less concerned about their jobs being exported, since more of them are in the service sector than the manufacturing sector. They want security, or to move up the income ladder and they see Republican economic values—particularly no new taxes—enhancing their disposable income. Their kids will go to college and not the military. What drives them nuts is that their family-centered, gated community mentality seems under assault by things beyond their control—mass media, the internet, mass entertainment, illegal immigration, drugs, gays running amuck, that sort of stuff. They cannot control the values their kids are exposed to; their homes are assaulted by new and radical ideas they way the sun’s radiation penetrates the roofs of their oversized houses. They assign most of the blame for social change to “liberals and Democrats.” Republican politicians are very effective at convincing them that they are a bastion against these un-American social changes (even while sole of their fellow Republicans are profiting mightily from those same changes).
It is the country-club Republicans who are exporting the W/C’s jobs to China and S. America, and who are also controlling the mass media (while using that same media to claim that it’s the “liberals and international Jewish conspiracy” who control the media) and are heavily invested in mass entertainment, profiting from illegal immigration, run both the legal and illegal drug cartels. They are the ones who corporations have the K Street lobbyists influencing public policy to increase the value of their stock positions, they are the ones with the high executive salaries, share options and pensions, from which they can mover, arbitrages, liquidate, or just screw up an industry (and the lives and communities of its workers) and head off to that chalet in Vail or waterfront mansion in Miami with a severance package that is larger than the GNP of some countries. A lot of this is “accepted” under that old Reaganesque social logic that, if people are rich they must have earned it, and id people are poor, they must be a bunch of lazy, “Cadillac welfare queens.” So, if there are S&L scams, junk bonds, and sub prime cons, deregulation of everything in sight, lobbying, special favors and outright cheating, all for the sake of increasing corporate profit, well that’s the Darwinian (they wouldn’t use this term, of course) way of it. It is tolerated and envied, sort of the way in which Evangelical preachers are who rake in millions and live like aristocrats.
Which brings us to that other Republican cohort, the one that has really made an electoral and policy difference. Halleluiah! Praise Jesus! They are mostly small, town, rural, and Southern, but they spread across the W/Cs and the Suburban Republicans as well. They are the American Taliban, soldiers of Christ (at least the version of Christ they have conjured), and they want to lay siege to the wall that separates church and state (without sacrificing the tax break that churches get, of course). The flag, the little silver ichthus on the backs of the vehicles, or one of those “Support Our Troops” stick-on “ribbons” on the back of the SUV, are their insignia. America is God’s country, right or wrong, because even wrong we are right. They are a fusion of faith and patriotism (you can throw in football and NASCAR, too). They are values voters foremost—anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, ant-immigration, anti-medical marijuana, anti-Hillary, etc—and for replacing the Constitution with the Bible and sticking their values into the homes and schools that Republicans used to say should be protected from governmental intrusion. Of the lot, they are the Repugnantcans.
It is a motley coalition of Republicans, with freaky threads of neo-Nazis, Log Cabin Republicans, and such on the edges and in the cracks. But George W. Bush might be bringing it to an end—if, the Democrats cannot find a way to give them a re-unifying issue (like the way they did with pushing gay marriage just before the 2004 election). Even Republicans have lamented what has been termed the “hijacking” of their party. “Moderate” Republicans are outnumbered by the Republicans you can find hanging out in airport men’s rooms or preying on Congressional pages. But the leadership of the party might be fracturing into different factions that want to take the helm in the post Bush dynasty years: Huckabee representing the populist, Christian common man faction; Romney, the corporatist, country-club ranks; McCain, the warrior-America uber alles division; Paul, the quirky-cultish Libertarian fringe; Giuliani, the phony “great homeland protector.” Only Romney comes close to acceptability by party, maybe because he is a plastic-president pull-toy whose weirdest feature is his Mormon underwear. A bigger bunch of “losers” would be hard to assemble; but the Republicans are notorious for turning losers into political winners. If you need confirmation of that, just tune into Bush’s last (Oh, thank you Jesus!) State of the #*&%-ed-Up Union address.
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©2008, James A. Clapp (UrbisMedia Ltd. Pub. 1.26.2008)