The Same Old Party

By Deauwand Myers

Throughout history, one can observe European powers conquering the world, dispensing misery along the way.

There are some benefactors of these actions in America, as there are in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Conversely, others continue to languish behind after this period of imperialism: including the African Diaspora and other indigenous populations.

But this is an old story. Now, Americans of a certain age, color, and political disposition watch as “their” country changes. In short, the days of white, male supremacist power ruling over this world are coming to an inexorable, immutable end. And not soon enough.

The conservative entertainment establishment has argued that President Obama is a radical, socialist quasi-dictator bent on seeing the shrinking white majority enslaved en masse. Yet, by any objective measure, he is none of these things. Corporations, the stock market, and the wealthiest amongst us have prospered under Obama more so than under any Republican president, indeed, any American president, in the last hundred years.

Nixon’s health care initiatives, though never realized, were to the left of Obama’s. In fact, a great many of Obama’s policies are actually recycled Republican ideas of the past, when the GOP still believed in science, numbers, empirical evidence, reality, in other words.

The GOP, of which hard right conservatives have overtaken, is now locked in a struggle to rebrand and re-imagine itself before the next presidential election. As I’ve written before, rebranding is impossibility. Social and Christian activists within that party believe in outlawing abortion and excluding undocumented immigrants…the very things that the majority of Americans no longer believe.

If the GOP were to change or even moderate its position on these aforementioned issues, the party would be relegated to minority status more so than it already is, because social and Christian activists would leave it in droves.

I have written before that demographic groups, including more liberal-minded youth, Hispanics, African-Americans, single women, and the highly-educated, are growing in number and are ascendant in political power. This spells doom for the GOP.

I was right, but an understanding of the picture is incomplete. Even without these population trends, conservatives are swimming against the irresistible tide of history. Americans, indeed white Americans in every demographic group, no longer see abortion as tantamount to genocide, or immigrants as roving criminals on the streets, or homosexuals as subhuman deviants.

For generations, Republicans played to the lowest common denominator in order to achieve political success. Bigotries, fears, prejudices, nativism, and religious fundamentalism worked well enough to secure the Old South, states in the Midwest, and of course, even Ohio (the banning of gay marriage enshrined in a constitutional amendment put on Ohio’s ballot during the 2004 presidential elections, promoted by Bush’s chief political adviser, Karl Rove, energized Christian fundamentalists to come out in droves, just enough to win that state, and the election, for Bush).

These same cultural and social issues are now an albatross around the neck of the GOP. What I find most fascinating is the Republicans’ blindness to a fact perhaps more salient than the electorate becoming less male and white: Republicans don’t appreciate how disastrous the Bush presidency was, and how members of the GOP are viewed as not just inadequate in their philosophy, but also ineffective in the implementation of it.

Republicans were supposed to be the strongest on national security, yet 9/11 happened on their watch. (A fact not exploited by Democrats during the 2004 election, an example of the Democrats’ political malpractice. Imagine if Al Gore was president and 9/11 happened during his administration. Republicans would have pounced on his weakness on national security).

Republicans were supposed to be fiscal conservatives, yet they amassed trillions of dollars in debt with two ill-conceived and mismanaged wars, an unfunded Medicare supplement, and tax cuts skewed to the wealthy. According to conservative doctrine, tax cuts are supposed to stimulate the economy, promote job growth, increase wages, and make everyone more prosperous.

The exact opposite occurred: The Great Recession. Still, those who were defeated by Obama support the same old ideas: Sarah Palin, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Paul Ryan (who just recently found economically-austere religion, because he voted for those unfunded wars and tax cuts and didn’t say a word about them being fiscally unsound).

Now, Americans are supposed to entrust the nation to the GOP again, so they can enact all their failed policies with more vigor than before? Over half of America isn’t that stupid or forgetful.

There are intelligent, thoughtful white men. Even old, white men. Even old, white guys who happen to be conservative Republicans. I have just met so few in real life, and seen even fewer in elected office, display anything close to being accurate, sane or right.

The writer holds a master's degree in English literature and literary theory and is currently an English professor outside of Seoul. He can be reached at deauwand@hotmail.com.