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In the 2020 presidential contest, the Republican Party
did not bother to announce a platform. The effective platform became
whatever Donald Trump or other GOP office seekers promised voters. This
year, the Republican Party has put forward an actual
platform, albeit one with pie-in-the-sky objectives and little
indication as to how those objectives might be met (or even whether they
are consistent with one another). The platform is something of a
list of Donald Trump’s greatest hits.
Democrats fear that the real Republican Party agenda is
articulated in the 900-page Project 2025 report, “Mandate
for Leadership: The Conservative Promise” from the right-wing
Heritage Foundation. Readers with a strong stomach and time on their
hands are invited to read the Project 2025 document.
What I want to offer here is a concise overview of what
the Republican Party is really about—what its actual goals are—rather
than over-broad declarations or a litany of all the small steps required to achieve
GOP goals.
Despite all the talk of Donald Trump’s “base,” those
Fox-News-Obsessed viewers who continue to enrich Trump’s coffers despite
his reputed wealth and documented depravity, such people are not calling
the shots for the party and are not the GOP’s most important donors. The
party has long been seen as the party of business and has traditionally
had many business owners and managers of small businesses as supporters.
That view of the GOP is outdated and naďve.
Today, the big donors and architects of GOP strategy are
corporate magnates and the super rich. In the political science sense,
these folks are neither liberal nor conservative. On the whole, they are
unprincipled libertarians whose primary object is to retain and
increase their wealth. Their self-aggrandizing strategy is threefold:
In a sense, everything could be subsumed under the third
item, but the above division is helpful for exposition.
The primary goal of the GOP movers and shakers is wealth
accumulation. Pandering to the masses is a way to gain support not so
much for implementing the promised policies, policies not really of
interest in and of themselves, but for obtaining positions facilitating
the implementing their wealth-oriented policies. Obtaining and
maintaining power makes all things possible.
Benefit the Wealthy
The ultimate goal of Republican Party policies is to
protect wealth and to allow the wealthy to become richer still. Most of
the policies designed to favor the favored are transparently useful to
the wealthy class. These objectives are either not mentioned on the
campaign trail or are misrepresented, disguising their real purpose.
These policies include the following:
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Reduce taxes. Usually, middle-class tax cuts
are mentioned, but the intended cuts are for corporations and the
rich. Donors want to avoid higher taxes or a dreaded wealth tax.
-
Oppose unions. Union busting makes moneymaking
cheaper.
-
Eliminate government regulations. Health and
safety regulations increase corporate costs.
-
Oppose climate change measures. These impose
restrictions on industry. In an age when business’s interest seldom
extends beyond the next quarter, climate change is too long-term to
be of much concern.
-
Support extractive industries at home an
abroad. Extractive industries are needed for manufacturing.
This includes supporting industry exploitation of public lands. Moreover, major donors are from extractive industries.
-
Make the judiciary more libertarian. This
policy has already been a great success, as the Supreme Court has
been captured by anti-government, pro-business forces. Increasingly,
the judiciary is the determiner of policy, not the legislative or
executive branches.
-
Reduce spending on social safety-net programs.
Among other things, this reduces the needs for taxes.
-
Reduce most foreign aid. This, too, reduces
the need for taxes, though aid to countries that supply raw
materials can reduce supply chain costs.
-
Ignore human rights concerns overseas. This
helps to maintain cheap labor, which keeps supply chain costs low.
-
Impose widely applied tariffs. This reduces
foreign competition on American businesses. Potential, tariff income
could replace the income tax. This, of course, would favor the rich
and penalize the non-rich. It likely would also destroy both the
American and world economy.
-
Minimize support for NATO and Ukraine. Support
costs money.
-
Support debt reduction. This is ironic, as Republican administrations have a habit of increasing the
federal debt. But reducing the national debt necessarily drains
money from less desirable federal programs.
Pander to Voter Prejudices
Electing sympathetic politicians and maintaining voter
enthusiasm for them is needed to retain supporters of the radical
libertarian programs. Whereas some of these policy choices advance that
agenda directly, their main purpose is to attract votes, not to actually
implement the promised policies, which include the following:
-
Outlaw abortions, This has been an especially
useful goal, as anti-abortion voters have tended to be both
passionate and single-minded. However, having gotten a Supreme Court
that overturned Roe v. Wade, the GOP becomes that dog that
has finally caught the car. What happens next? The anti-abortion
crowd, now wants a nationwide ban on abortion, a ban on in vitro
fertilization, and even a ban on contraception. These extreme
positions are widely unpopular and favor Democrats, not Republicans.
-
Privilege “Christian” litigants. The GOP-dominated Supreme Court has increasingly expanded the notion of
freedom of religion guaranteed by the First Amendment. Evangelical
Christians are, with GOP support, claiming religious discrimination
in various contexts that earlier would have been laughed at. These are mostly GOP voters, but mainline
Christians and non-Christians tend to favor Democrats, so this
strategy is risky.
-
Oppose gun regulations of any kind. Like
anti-abortion folks, Second-Amendment zealots tend to be
single-minded.
-
Oppose rights for minorities of every stripe.
The GOP has largely become the party of older, straight white males.
It is unsympathetic to LGBTQ+ folks and, largely, to non-whites.
Emphasis here has lately focused on transgender youth and their
physical and emotional needs. The country has always needed someone
to hate, and transgender youth are the latest group to fulfill that
role.
-
Support publicly funded private schools. This
policy has many advantages. It favors those who see public schools
as too liberal and those who prefer schools that promote Christian
indoctrination. It deprives public schools of funding and weakens
teacher unions in public schools.
-
Oppose teaching of balanced U.S. history. This
allows Republicans to claim to be patriots and lovers of America.
Those who believe that history should cover American racism,
colonialism, and economic exploitation are characterized as
unpatriotic America-haters.
-
Oppose teaching children about sex. This is
partly a sop to right-wing Christians who have always considered sex
either sinful or nearly so. Republicans also do not what to suggest
that LGBTQ+ are normal and worthy of concern. This obsession with
sex also leads to book banning.
-
Disparage colleges and universities.
Institutions of higher learning are seen as liberal bastions
producing liberal voters. Not incidentally did Trump declare, “I
love the “poorly educated.” Not only do Republicans hope to make
academia less liberal, but they want to play into the unfortunate
anti-intellectual strain that has long been present in America.
-
Oppose immigration generally and “unlawful”
immigration in particular. Although America was built by immigrants,
there has always been a strain of xenophobia and a hostility to
newcomers, particularly those who are not northern Europeans. For
GOP funders, this position is somewhat problematic. With its aging
workforce and decreasing fertility, business needs new sources of
workers. This is a longer-term concern, of course, having little
effect on the next quarter.
-
Deport non-citizens. This has been especially
promoted by Donald Trump, but this would be very disruptive both
socially and economically. Likewise, Republicans would include
Dreamers in deportations.
-
Oppose electric vehicles. Republicans portray
encouraging the purchase of electric cars and electric appliances as
limiting consumer “freedom.”
-
Support Israel unconditionally. Whereas this
may seem like a fruitless attempt to garner Jewish votes, it is
more likely aimed at the Evangelical Christian vote, whose adherents
see Middle East conflict as potentially ushering in the end times.
On the whole, it is ironic that Republicans, who so
vigorously promote “freedom,” spend so much time and energy trying to
limit the freedom of their fellow Americans.
Obtain and Retain Power
Clearly, many of the policies mentioned above encourage
support of GOP politicians. Additionally, Republicans have tried to
foster structural arrangements that favor their party. These policies
include the following:
-
Oppose statehood for the District of Columbia
and Puerto Rico. These areas, despite any objective claim they might have
on statehood, are viewed as having Democratic-leaning populations.
Offering one or both statehood would make the Electoral College less
attractive for Republicans.
-
Make it harder for citizens to vote.
Republicans fulminate about election integrity, but they are not
really concerned about illegal residents voting. They are concerned
about anyone who is not an old white male (and likely a Republican)
voting. Their attempts to make voting more difficult are legion and
do not need to be enumerated here.
-
Oppose ranked choice voting. Such voting
schemes tends to elect more moderate candidates, rather than
right-wing ideologues.
-
Use gerrymandering to increase the number of
GOP legislators. Republicans have been increasingly adept at
designing districts that favor their own party. It is unfortunate
that when redistricting needs to be done every decade, Republicans
frequently find themselves in control of state legislatures. Of
course, the design of the U.S. Senate gives Republican a structural
advantage. All states, regardless of population, get two Senators,
but less populated states tend to be rural and Republican-leaning.
Thus, the representation of Wyoming and California in the Senate is the same.
Republicans will do nothing that might destroy this built-in
advantage.
-
Replace the Civil Service with an old-time
spoils system. Republicans want to replace bureaucrats and subject
experts in government with Republican partisans. This is part of an
attempt to place the entirety of the Executive Branch of government
under the direct control of a Republican president. Likewise,
Republicans would have the Justice Department commanded by the
president rather than being an independent administrator of justice.
-
Favor a compliant judiciary. As mentioned
earlier, the GOP has done a fine job of placing young, partisan,
often poorly qualified judges into lifelong positions.
-
Oppose campaign finance reforms. Big
Republican donors want to contribute big bucks and to hide the fact
from the public.
Summary
There you have a summary of what the GOP is about.
Whatever the Republican Party platform says, whatever Donald Trump or JV
Vance says, whatever the Project 2025 report says, what you see above is
the essence of what the Republican Party in 2024 is about. It is my hope
that intelligent supporters of the American Republic will oppose this
agenda with all their strength and resources.
— LED, 7/27/2024 |
