This turn of
events was baffling to many of us. How
does promising jobs lead to restricting access to healthcare? How did so many Republicans decide to take the
same seemingly random turn at the same time?
My hypothesis: this can be explained as an artifact of Republicans
restructuring their party as a religion.
The
Republican drive to restructure their organization from that of a standard
political party to something that more closely resembles a religion started to
take shape under Reagan, but solidified under Gingrich's Contract with
America. As with most things, this
restructuring came with both good news and bad news.
The good
news was that political opponents became blasphemers. Debates on the merits of policy became
battles between good and evil. This
created a base of true believers whose faith could never be shaken by policy failure
or broken promises. In a political
party, you can switch if the other side is providing better results. In a religion, you can't join the devil just
because God isn't delivering.
The bad news
was that policy became dogma. There was
no longer any middle ground for policy that has merits but isn't the right
solution for the moment. Policy could
only be good or evil. This meant that
Republicans could never add new ideas.
They were limited to the policies already approved, since they had just
declared all other ideas to be blasphemous.
So when Republicans want to stir things up, or differentiate themselves
in a primary, they either have to turn against an idea that they formerly
supported, or take an old idea to a new extreme. The Contract with America built a house and
destroyed all of the extra building material, so the only way Republicans can
alter their house is to burn down one of the existing rooms.
This put the
Republican class of 2010 in a tight spot.
They had run on economic reform, but the only economic tools left to
them were tax cuts for the wealthy and deregulation, and there wasn't much left
to do with those tools. So their choice
was to sit in the echoing silence of their inaction, or distract the American
people with noise of some other kind.
Once again, strict dogma had given them very few choices. They could champion gun rights, but there are
few rights gun owners don't already have.
They could start in on gay marriage again, but that theme was growing
tired. So that left reproductive
rights.
Clearly
there are many severe social conservatives in the Republican party who have
been itching to go medieval on America for decades, but the question is: why
did the entire party pick this moment to let loose? I think the answer is that Republicans have
so limited themselves in terms of policy that this was the only path left
without a self-imposed roadblock. It was
a choice between attacking woman's rights, or doing absolutely nothing. In the end, risking half the vote was
preferable to letting the public see that, for Republicans, taking action on
the economy is an impossibility.
P.S.
This also
helps explain the seemingly self-destructive "Incredible Shrinking
Tent" tactic of the modern Republican.
If everyone outside the party is evil, then you can never make new
friends, you can only turn former friends into enemies (since old enemies get
stale after a while and you need to do something to keep the base energized). So the Republicans have had to keep turning
against new segments of the American population: liberals, gays, atheists, Muslims, Hispanics,
immigrants, people who live on coasts, people who care about the environment,
Americans with college degrees, poor people, African Americans, women and now
people who like sex. Inexplicably, polls
show that this leaves 50% of the population, although you would think the only
demographic left to attack would be ultra-wealthy celibate white men.
Next thing
you know, Republicans will be going after people who like to share cute cat
photos online.
