Ideas, the Republicans, and Us

The Republicans really do need Obama to fail.  The reason is not

that this will lead to Republican electoral victories, though it

may.  The reason is much deeper.

The Republican party is committed in a fundamental and

thoroughgoing way to a certain ideology.  (I’m not using the term

ideology in a pejorative sense here — I just mean a set of ideas

that people use to organize how they view the political world.

Everyone has some form of ideology, whether they consciously

express it or not.)

The Republican ideology is one of extreme individualism.  In this

view what one person does individually is what makes the world

good.  What people do collectively is counterproductive,

ineffective, or corrupt.  So for instance, individual retirement

accounts are good.  Social Security is not good.  Any kind of

government program that attempts to provide for real needs just

encourages dependence and sloth.

A key component of this way of looking at things — and certainly

the key way of promoting this world-view — is a real cynicism

about government.

And cynicism about government and about other forms of collective

endeavor is something that the Republicans have peddled very

successfully for generations now, to the point where large

numbers of otherwise progressive people actually believe that the

government is inefficient (and by the way, with the exception of

the military, this is probably not true — my impression is that

government is more efficient than most large corporations), and

that taxation and government regulations and oversight are

burdens on the really productive members of society.

I have a friend, for instance, who some years ago told me that he

didn’t want the government telling him what kind of health care

he could get.  I mentioned to him that while it is often hard to

change government policies, I felt that I had more control over

what the Massachusetts state legislature does than over my HMO.

He was really taken aback — it had never occurred to him to

think about it that way.  And this was a person who kept up with

the news, was generally progressive, absolutely hated G.W. Bush,

and voted regularly.

There are, to be sure, other reasons why people support the

Republican party.  There are the wedge issues, for example.  And

there is a significant amount of dishonesty even in their basic

position — they do their best to artificially enrich their large

corporate friends and disenfranchise the rest of us, in spite of

their supposed beliefs in the “free market”.

But the absolute core of their world-view is cynicism about

government.  And if Obama does not fail but rather succeeds — if

government can be shown to work, to get us out of this deep

economic problem the Republicans and right-wing Democrats have

gotten us into, to make a start at providing universal health

care, to addressing the real needs that the Republican have been

defunding for over a generation now — if this happens, then the

entire Republican world-view is in shambles.  This is not just a

matter of winning or losing the next election.  It is the very

basis of their party.  Without it they have nothing.

I think it is important for us to respond to this as such.  We

should not treat Limbaugh’s statement as just him being bonkers.

We should take it seriously.  We should take it as seriously as

they do.  And we should explain to people why the Republican

world-view is so destructive and why they are so threatened by a

progressive politics that talks about “us” rather than “me”.  We

need to talk about why government is important, why what it does

is good, useful, and necessary.  We need to stop giving “business

leaders” credibility in having any understanding whatsoever about

public affairs, including economic affairs.  We need to talk in

terms of what we can do together — to make this kind of talk an

acceptable form of political discourse.

This is the Republicans’ worst fear.  And it is our best hope.

           –Carl Offner

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