Republican craziness could drive politics left

By Joshua Gass Source:Global Times Published: 2015-8-3 20:43:01

Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

The current field of Republicans vying for the party's presidential nomination is a strange sight. Sixteen hopefuls and counting, almost twice the usual number at this stage, none of them with wide support in the population at large, and all, it seems, are trying to outdo each other in proclaiming the most extreme positions imaginable.

Each time one of them speaks, he moves further from the mainstream of American political thought and opinion. Last week, candidate Mike Huckabee suggested that as president he would use the military to prevent abortions within US borders. Ben Carson has compared national healthcare to antebellum slavery. Meanwhile, Jeb Bush boasted that his brother, George W. Bush, would be his trusted advisor on international relations despite his unfavorable reputation in terms of foreign policy, and Ted Cruz's opinions on our negotiations with Iran cast Obama as "the world's leading financier of radical Islamic terrorism."

To some extent, this extreme rhetoric is an effect of the structure of our elections: only more ideologically committed voters participate in primaries, so candidates exaggerate their positions early on and then dial them back during the general election.

But this level of alienating speech is beyond the reach of such an explanation: our elections have had the same structure for over a century but haven't usually created this kind of rhetoric. It would seem that statements like these would be too radical to back away from: how could you explain to the general population your former statement that healthcare is equivalent to slavery?

In fact, the change began during the last election cycle and derives from a number of other factors.

One reason for this campaigning style is the massive benefits of having run to those who lose. Ever since Sarah Palin quit her job as Alaska governor, after losing her bid for the vice-presidency, in order to host a reality show, many have realized the profit potential of running for president.

For this purpose, it's actually better to lose the nomination - no one is asking failed contender Mitt Romney to star in his own television show - and for the book deals, commentator posts, and television work that will be offered to the losers in the primary. The more famously flashy your rhetoric has been, the better.

The result is that the line between media personality and politician has largely disappeared.

Because of this new career path, the Republican nomination process has become a venue for acting out the resentful fantasies of its waning but still powerful audience, rather than a forum for examining the actual problems and policies of the nation.

A second cause for the change in our national political rhetoric reflects an even more deleterious reality.

The sad fact of the matter is that the exaggerated statements of Republican hopefuls indicate a fundamental change in the constituency they serve. The actual base of the Republican Party is no longer the more conservative sector of the population, or even several million hard-line conservative primary voters, but a few hundred conservative billionaires.

In previous cycles, Republicans chose their candidates using a traditional party structure that emphasized seniority and voter support. Under that system, the party itself, run by the Republican National Committee (RNC), was the actual power choosing which candidates got to run.

In recent weeks, information has been filtering out that various aspects of the RNC's activities have been taken over by companies and non-profit organizations run by the billionaire Koch brothers. These wealthy industrialists and their cohort, always important in electoral politics, are now consuming the Republican Party.

Because this small group of people both choose and fund the candidates, none of those running for office are really trying to appeal to voters; rather, they are like trick dogs trying to please their masters, saying whatever they are directed to say, or whatever they think will please that rarefied constituency who will profit from the complete collapse of the public sphere.

This behavior naturally turns normal people off, explaining why it's so difficult to find a front-runner: no real voter actually cares about the candidates' statements because those statements aren't directed at their real lives and problems. Average Republications sense this, and are becoming disengaged from the political process because of it.

Thus the crush of candidates and the lack of any real front-runner. In essence, the campaign structure of US politics has become a billion-dollar apathy machine, totally divorced from what affects the average voter.

Even more deadening is the fact that the presumed Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, is barely any different; her backers are many of the same Wall Street banks and international conglomerates that fund the Republicans. She uses a number of low-cost social issues to advertise her difference from her Republican rivals, but in terms of the most important questions, who benefits from our economic system, how our military is used, and the role capitalism and global trade play in our democracy and in governments around the world, she is essentially the same, putting a liberal face on the same policies and priorities.

Despite this bleak outlook, a more hopeful possibility does exist. What we may be seeing is the early stages of a shift in US politics: the antics of the Republican Party show what it looks like when a major political institution dies without bloodshed. As the mainstream of the Democratic Party becomes more and more "centrist," and more and more like the Republican Party of a more reasonable time, its policies will become increasingly unacceptable to left-wing voters who actually pay attention to politics. With any luck, this will cause a split in the Democrats, between the left-wing Warren Democrats who want the US to follow the lead of other first-world countries, and the centrist, business-as-usual "Democratic Party."

The author is a PhD candidate at Ohio State University. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn

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