Can They Pivot or Will They Stay Stay the Scary Course?

In 2012 I created a post giving “advice” to Republicans in wake of Mitt Romney’s presidential defeat. I pointed out how Romney seemed to win the nomination by being the most reasonable and least extreme of the potential Republican candidates. Then once he won the nomination, he pivoted and began adopting more extremist viewpoints and chose an extremist running mate.

If you poll Americans on issues rather than on candidates; if you remove the names from the questions; if you remove words like liberal and conservative from the ballots; you find most Americans tend to not agree with the positions espoused by the extreme right. Americans believe in abortion rights. They support gay rights. They want reasonable gun control and social safety nets. They want the government to do something about the way our healthcare system is run by out-of-control insurance companies. They want climate change mitigation. They want higher real wages. They want infrastructure. They want equal access to quality education for their children. They want corporations to pay their fair share of taxes.

(If anyone reading this personally disagrees with any of the points above, this isn’t meant to insult or ignore your belief. I am merely stating you are in the minority.)

In the past ten years I have become a bit older and wiser. I have come to accept a universal truth about elections. Americans don’t vote for issues. They vote for people. They vote for personalities.

We learned this painful lesson in 2016. The United States of America could not have a more qualified candidate for president than Hilary Clinton. She had a resume that included advocacy, education, business, law, legislation, and diplomacy. Unfortunately, Americans found her unlikeable. They didn’t like her personally, so they ignored her qualifications. Instead they chose Donald Trump, a bombastic and charismatic con man with a shady past and no qualifications in his background that made him suitable for public office. He used his smooth talking skills to convince voters this was an asset and not a liability. Trump espoused even more extremism than any other Republican candidate in my lifetime, but he won. He didn’t win the popular vote, so we know his ideas didn’t represent the majority, but we know he won in the places where it counts.

I think that’s beginning to change, and it’s time politics changed with it.

For decades politicians could rely on the patriotic language of Cold War politics to win elections. This was easy because the most reliable voters were older, more conservative, and more religious. Campaigns weren’t about issues. They were about platitudes. Campaigns talked in buzzwords like Freedom (without a real definition of freedom), National Security, and Family Values. The used fear to smear their enemies, accusing them of socialism (a scary word in the Cold War years) and even communism. They taught Americans to fear government rather than work with it. This language brought one large voting bloc to the polls. It didn’t matter if many voters were turned off, or felt their voices weren’t heard, or came to believe the government was so ineffective that voting was pointless. Those votes didn’t matter. Democrats could try to court them – and were sometimes successful - but the apathetic and the moderate still fell for Republican language and Republican fearmongering.

It was this apathy, this lack of willingness to vote, that allowed extremists like Trump to win. This was especially true in 2016. There were social media campaigns against Secretary Clinton to make her seem too conservative for liberal voters and too liberal to moderate voters. Many voters used this as an excuse to either roll the dice and vote for Trump – a radical act – or stay home on Election Day. Clinton espoused many of the views Americans care about, but people weren’t voting for issues.

It didn’t take long for voters to realize the mistake we made. Donald Trump was in way over his head when it came to doing anything meaningful in office. He spent his term in office doing what he does best. That was delivering more promises and propaganda to whatever audiences still wanted to buy it, while ignoring issues such as infrastructure and public health. He put extremist judges into the Supreme Court, which meant unaccountable judges would permanently enshrine into law the issues many Americans opposed.

After years of apathy, voters realized maybe the two political parties weren’t the same after all. They realized the danger of not voting. They realized the issues they cared about were on the chopping block if they didn’t start voting these dangerous extremists out of office. Every election since 2016 seems to be a repudiation of Trump’s policies. Republicans hoped Biden’s election would anger voters enough to radically flip Congress in 2022 and they failed to do so.

Now in 2023 Republican policies, and the politicians who uphold them, failed in key states. I like to believe Republicans should learn a lesson from this. Their policies are unpopular. The jingoistic Cold War tactics and talking points don’t work anymore because there is a large population of young voters who didn’t live through the Cold War. One would think the Republican response would be to take this to heart and start reconsidering its platform. Instead it has doubled down on the position and employed new tactics to stay in office.

First we have voter suppression tactics. We have Voter ID laws (the 21st Century version of poll tax), purging of voter rolls, closure of polling places in Democratic-leaning neighborhoods, battles against early voting, battles against dropboxes and absentee voting, battles against laws ensuring voters can take time off from work, and laws against bringing food and water to voters who have to wait hours in long lines to vote. So far this hasn’t been as effective as they hoped. Voters are determined to keep turning out despite every attempt at suppression.

Next they try to target young people by worming their way into the educational systems. At the highest level we had Betsy DeVos in charge of the Department of Education. At the lowest level we have quasi-fascist groups like Moms for Liberty infiltrating school boards. They claim schools are teaching Critical Race Theory, a law-school-level course about the way the justice system is rigged against BIPOC communities. They claim schools are encouraging children to be gay or trans. They say it's dangerous to make children "woke" because they will hate America. What they fear is not hating America. They fear teaching children about past and present injustice will create empathy. Empathy engenders responsibility, and a sense of responsibility could lead to action. Keeping children in ignorance is suppressing the vote before children hit the voting age.

They also have the tactic of divisive language. The idea that the country is irreparably divided is now embedded into our culture. According to Republicans, liberals and conservatives, coastal dwellers and "flyover" dwellers, city residents and rural residents are all fundamentally different . They don't have the same goals or the same values. That's crazy. Fundamentally we all want the same things. We want productive work, but we don't want to be worked to death. We want fair wages. We want food on the table. We want quality education for our children. We want connections with people we love. We want access to, and some discretionary cash for, recreational activities. We don't want to struggle to pay the basic necessities and fall behind and go into permanent debt. We don't want to choose between food and rent or medical care and food. None of us wants a government to tell us we're selfish for wanting any of this. All of us who contribute are entitled to be compensated for our contribution. I believe more Americans agree on that than not agree on that, but Republicans are doing everything they can to make us believe our differences outweigh our similarities.

Additionally they have the media at their disposal. At first it was only Fox News. Now we have Newsmax, The Daily Wire, The Blaze, Breitbart, Infowars, OneAmerica News, and Judicial Watch. They push the narrative of true extremists being on the left. They engage in constant fearmongering polished with a veneer or racism. They have several well-funded think tanks such as The Cato Institute, The Heritage Foundation, and ALEC feeding their pseudo-intellectual data to the news and to higher education. They have frightened more mainstream, once-respectable, news outlets into becoming mush-mouthed storybooks so they won't be seen as liberally biased.  Now even "neutral" news outlets relentlessly repeat the right-wing criticism of the left. The push the narrative that the left is as extreme as the right and is as worthy of criticism and derision, even neglecting the accomplishments of Democratic politicians. The legacy media have forgotten false equivalency is a logical fallacy. 

Finally, when all else fails, they create a panic over stupid crap. They act as if transgender Americans, a mere .06% of the population, are a threat to life as we know it. If you point out that transgender people do not cause harm, they talk about trans women in women's sports (an even tinier portion of an already tiny population).  They claim children are being pressured into changing their gender or are "mutilated" (doesn't happen) against their will. But what's even sillier is the panic over green M&Ms, Mr. Potato Head, and pancake syrup. Are any of these things a cause for alarm as a threat to civilized society?

When all these methods fail, they resort to violence. Remember Donald Trump attacking peaceful protestors with tear gas and rubber bullets? Remember January 6th? This is the American Right's final solution to making the rest of us accept their beliefs. They aren't afraid to invoke the Second Amendment.

So, what will be the Republicans’ next move? Will they become even more draconian in their attempts to suppress votes in the places where they still hold power, or will they realize their ideas are bad and start bringing their ideas into the twenty-first century?

I know there are politicians out there with deeply-held religious convictions, but maybe it’s time for them to realize they can’t impose their own moral rules on the entire country. Codifying your religious beliefs into law only drives behaviors underground. It doesn’t truly convert anyone to your way of thinking. It doesn’t make you look like an upstanding moral person when your goal is to punish and imprison people who don’t share your values. In fact, it makes you look like a tyrannical sadist who enjoys punishing people. Maybe it’s time to leave judgment and punishment of moral failings up to your God.

I also don’t feel we should let the religious posers off the hook. Too many Republican politicians pretend to be Christian and care about Christian morals to secure that voting bloc. Donald Trump is a prime example of this. Savvy voters see through this façade. We need to end this de facto religious test for politicians (The Constitution forbids it for one thing). Fewer voters care what you believe in private and want you to start working for all citizens.

Let’s be honest. There is no reason Republicans can’t pivot on these issues, because the driving principle of the Republican party isn’t moral values. It’s economic libertarianism. Culture wars drive a certain segment of voters to the polls, but that segment is shrinking. Politicians don’t need social issues to continue to promote and support supply side economics. Republicans are the party of the wealthy. They rely on corporations to succeed. Corporations don’t care about gay marriage. Corporations care about economic policies that benefit their bottom line. The Republican Party can still promote laissez-faire capitalism without advocating for extreme social issues. There are still plenty of voters out there who believe in economic conservatism more than they believe in egalitarian social policies. Corporate money will still pour in as long as you continue to support low capital gains taxes, low minimum wages, and union busting. The donors will look the other way if you legislate in their favor whether you care about transgender rights or not.

Corporations are learning a lesson the Republican politicians are not. Republican politicians are outraged by “woke” corporations, but woke can be profitable. The more groups a business courts, the more the profits come in. If a company takes a stand against the LGBTQ+ community, then it loses the business of the LGBTQ+ community and its allies. If you decorate your business in rainbow flags in June, then you attract those customers. Americans care more about conservation and climate change more than Republicans give them credit for. However, corporations know better and do what they can to greenwash their businesses. Republican politicians think the country fears diversity, while companies plaster their advertising with people of all races, creeds, and sexual preferences. Republican politicians will not lose corporate support for changing their extremist social views. 

But I fear the true Republican theocrats and Christian Nationalists will continue to use all the tools at their disposal to make sure people who disagree with their views can’t vote. The voter suppression is only the beginning. 

They have the means to stay the course. Can they accept their policies need to change, or will they continue to use these dirty tricks to stay in power with the same ugly policies? I wish I could predict that. I can't. I hope those of us who aren't on the far right continue to stay vigilant and keep resisting and keep voting. We can't give up hope of defeating them and creating the change the country desperately need. 

It seems the more they stay the course, the more they lose. So maybe they should stay the course. I am fine with Republicans losing elections.

On the other hand, if they lose, bullets might start flying. Let’s hope they pivot before that happens.