After the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe vs. Wade, I was chatting with someone who grew up in another country and hadn’t spent a lot of time in and around American politics. They were trying to understand the inherent contradictions between a theoretically conservative right that expands the government to legislate over personal decisions like the healthcare around a pregnancy.
It’s an interesting question—because when you examine the positions of the current Republican Party, they don’t seem to line up under any single philosophical framework. They might say that they’re pro-”life” but at almost every turn, when it comes to doing things that actually improve the health and welfare of people post-birth, they don’t want to spend the money on it. They consistently vote to take away healthcare benefits. They want to remove the tax credit for children. They don’t even want parents to have the ability to take extended leave from work to be with their newborns. They don’t want to provide education to these kids and they actively support the proliferation of weapons whose sole purpose is to take life away—even after school shootings kill multiple kids.
So, yeah… “Life” doesn’t seem to be the guiding principal—certainly not for a party that supports capital punishment.
It’s certainly not small government. They want to legislate pregnancy, marriage and there’s no end to which they’re willing to fund police forces and the military. A modern Republican government certainly isn’t a small one with a small reach into people’s lives.
How about personal freedom? Well, again, in a right-leaning American conservative government, people don’t have the ability to make choices for themselves on when they want to have kids, who they can marry, whether or not they want to smoke a plant that grows out of the ground, how they want to present their own gender to the world, if at all, or whether or not they can both be themselves and serve in the military. Right leaning American policy actually restricts more physical freedom than any other political movement in the world given the unique mass incarceration situation the U.S. has when compared to any other country.
So, a big “no” on freedom as being the thing.
What is it then?
Maybe it is, in fact, a theocratic philosophy.
Yet, I’d like to understand what religion shows such disdain for the poor. I grew up Catholic and I don’t remember any verses in the Bible that say, “Blessed are the poor, for they have learned the important life lesson that they should have worked harder.” I do know that when it comes to immigrant, Leviticus says, “When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt.” I don’t remember any MS-13 fear-mongering in the Bible or dire warnings of caravans at the border.
In fact, weren’t the Israelites just a really big caravan there for a while?
What about welfare? Did Jesus check to see if you were working or if you already had loaves and fishes earlier in the day when he was passing them out for free?
On the other hand, I do remember him as being more into financial regulation than conservatives… Remember when he called the money changers thieves?
Pretty sure he’d be really into the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
No, no. It’s definitely not a theocratic party. I guess that should have been obvious when they nominated a lying, serial adulterer as their nominee.
Maybe it’s just about some sense of “Traditional American Values” that harken back to some “before time”? Could be, but, traditionally, didn’t people used to live in communities where they helped their neighbors instead of fearing them? Wasn’t Americana built on the back of steady union jobs with good benefits and pension plans? Corporations used to act like supporting their town and their workers were part of their duty just as much as getting cash flow to the shareholders were. The “good old days” used to mean that housing was affordable enough that just a single earner could afford to save up for a house. Where’s the movement to bring back affordable paths to home ownership? Where’s the effort to bring down the cost of education to where it was back in the 50’s?
And to be honest, when you look back at “Traditional American Values” and start to add in things like slavery, segregation, the removal of Native Americans, Japanese internment camps—well, wait… maybe it is this kind of value set driving the right?
Close, but no—because even a long history of white supremacy doesn’t totally explain a set of beliefs that are also sure to keep poor white people in cycles of poverty for decades to come.
No, when it really comes down to it, the goal of Republicans in American government is just one, simple thing:
Power.
That’s it. They are simply willing to do whatever it takes to stay in power. They’re willing to fight a multi-front political war on seemingly contradictory issues as long as they’re meant to divide the other side. They’re willing to convince you that states are important and they should decide abortion laws but not gun laws. They’ll tell you that the government can’t afford to spend on a social safety net for working class people, while at the same time enacting a $2 trillion tax cut and making sure that the incomes of the rich get taxed at lower rates than everyone else.
It used to be about race and power. Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” turned opposition to the Civil Rights Act into a big red voting block in places that used to be consistently Democrat.
But now, it’s even more simple than that.
Why do all this work twisting policies into a pretzel, gerrymandering districts to keep your seat, and enacting policies that you know will suppress the votes of the poor and people of color who you know probably aren’t going to vote for you?
Because being elected to government in today’s American is one of the easiest ways to make money.
It’s a grift.
You can serve a few terms in Congress and flip to the other side to become a lobbyist to get paid a boatload of money for access. More than 400 former members of Congress are currently working as lobbyists or "senior advisors" performing very similar work. Even if it’s not lobbying work—being elevated to government gives you the opportunity to sit on corporate boards or enables you a media platform that you can monetize in today’s ecosystem.
You think Joe Manchin cares about West Virginians? If he did, he’d support bigger infrastructure bills that bring jobs to a state drowning on poverty. In West Virginia, 57% of those enrolled in two and four year colleges are women—but by not ending the filibuster to codify Roe, he’s going to eliminate the path that many West Virginia households have been able to find their way out of poverty—to bring educated women into the workforce and enable them to choose when it makes the most sense for them to have children.
No, he cares about his boat and his Maserati.
Now, you can easily say that it’s a grift for both sides—and that’s 100% true, but the left is actually trying to change that. It’s the Democrats that are trying to end the influence of dark money and who are trying to make it so that you can’t immediately become a lobbyist after doing your stint. They’re trying to make it less of a grift and the right is fighting so hard against it that they’re giving away the game.
So if you’re trying to understand American politics and the philosophy of the politicians on the right, it will all make a helluva lot more sense to you if you just consider what they would be saying if they just wanted to win the next election and stay in power.
That’s all they believe in.