What does it look like when a social organization, like a church, corporation, or political party, is fundamentally changed by a new interest? Let's assume that interest is one that might sing a similar tune to the existing choir, but is just different enough that it ultimately shifts the direction and purpose of the group to something novel.
Would you know it if it happened to you?
Chances are you wouldn't. At least not at first. Let's explore.
First let's distinguish between two core components within the Republican party's membership (not the only divisions with, but the two important to this point). The corporatists represent big business. They are generally wealthy and because of that money and other resources they are the engine of Republican campaigns. Politics cost money, businesses have it, therefore these men and women representing private industry are generally the de facto leaders of the party. The second group is the average American conservative. This group is much more numerous than the first and generally believes in the core platform values of small government, fiscal responsibility, personal initiative, the uncompromising strength of the United States and private enterprise. This group brings the votes to the table. The two generally make a happy political pair.
The corporatist agenda to move obstacles such as regulation, taxation, oversight, and labor costs out of the way of business is not what changed in the Republican party in the last five to ten years. This agenda has been constant. However economics HAS changed. The increase in the liquidity of capital has had the following effects:
1. Business no longer needs to invest in local communities to make money.
2. Profits made in a local community are now almost always internationally invested, siphoning them away from their production locale.
3. Capital – the physical assets of doing business such as factories – is now VERY mobile.
4. US law encourages business to move resources outside the country often allowing them to avoid taxes altogether.
5. Business can 'forum shop' not just early in their existence, but can move their capital to new states or countries anytime conditions change.
So what happened to the Republican party doesn't start with a nefarious plot at all. It starts with the fact that the fundamental economic theory of the Republican party BECOMES wrong. Not that is was always wrong, but instead it becomes wrong in a period of a few decades as the very nature of business changes. That theory, that the financial success of US business will have a uplifting effect on the local community and national economy creating an upward push on all US citizen if private industry is allowed to flourish unimpeded BECOMES wrong.
This theory lies at the root of the party. It is, arguably, one of the core components of the conservative version of the American dream. But business has shifted to allow large corporations the ability to draw profits WITHOUT the natural positive consequence to the regions where they operate.
To draw an analogy, imagine the economy in terms of the recording industry during the Napster years. For years and years, the recording industry took for granted that the production of music would absolutely always include a medium which would need to be manufactured, packaged, and sold by retailers – records, tapes, CDs. Even as the first hints of danger started to rise that maybe the medium wasn't going to be needed, the industry chugged on and demanded that it would and could and needed to.
The one day the music, like business capital, became so mobile that the medium was no longer required at all – the effect of creating music no longer automatically led to the print of a CD. The medium of music had shifted on a core level, and with it the assumed theory that the music industry would always exist as it had came crashing down. Likewise, the Republican party assumes the idea that private industry growth is ALWAYS good and would ALWAYS lead to gains by the US economy and it's citizen's standard of living.
But after years of flat income gains by average Americans while CEO salaries increased as much as 27% in a single year, and in a time when corporate profits are the highest they've been since the 1950's the US standard of living has completely stalled out. States knife-fight over small percentage business tax cuts to lure corporations who stay only so long as they are getting the best deal, their new mobility letting them jump ship the moment they don't at little to no comparative cost.
To the corporatists – remember, mostly big business – this was success. Profits were soaring as productivity costs took a nose dive fueled by the ability to forum shop for labor, tax law, and resources with a fluidity unheard of in American history. However the failure of the former economic rules to yield current results wasn't missed by the Republican voter block. They started to get angry as they watched their lives mostly stay steady or even regress in quality as corporate wealth as business profits soared. For a while, this growing dissatisfaction was turned on liberals; It was easier to me angry at a group of people who openly disagree with you than to be introspective about the fact that the Democrats held leadership only 33% of the time the Republicans did in the last 30 years. Why were things not better?
Enter the Tea Party. It's convenient to use the first 2 years of Obama's presidency as some kind of explanation for the grass roots movement that took the Republican party apart at the seams after 2008. But the reality is that the outrage while openly directed at liberals was far more aggressively a referendum on the Republicans as representatives of conservative interests. These people were so angered at the performance and direction of their party that they grabbed onto often irrational and idealistically ignorant notions of how to run government and be conservative that horrified liberals but made classic conservative political theorists facepalm if not outright roll their eyes.
The take away point here is that the Tea Party represents a schism between the corporatists and the conservative voter block within the Republican party. Now because the Tea Party is mostly made up of political ideologues who barely understand the US political process, they have become unwitting tools by some conservative corporatist leaders, but the motive lying at the heart of their discontent is with Republican product. They ultimately want their party back and they want it to be a party about them, their country, their lives, their futures, and their jobs and prosperity. In this regard, I have a strange love/hate relationship with the Tea Party however much I loathe most of their rhetoric and practices. They are a juvenile attempt to express a sense of disenfranchisement that has been practiced on them by corporate leaders who have taken their conservative voters for granted for too long.
I'll wind this down starting with this observation. Senator Fitzgerald broke the law here in Wisconsin to rush the union breaking provisions of the Budget Repair Bill through a hastily convened irregular conference committee and then a less than ten minute Senate session risking the possibility that the whole thing would have to be done over. It seems reckless. It seems almost stupid. However he may have done it because he saw the support base for the move crumbling out from under him. He may have made the call believing that it was truly now or never.
I believe the corporatists are doing something similar. They are making their end-game move on a national stage in a potentially politically suicidal effort to eliminate their organized competition because they feel their support among their core voters slipping. Conservative voters know they don’t' want to be liberal, but also seem to know they do NOT like what they see Republican leadership doing.
I think a new conservative economic strategy is needed. A new look by conservatives at what role government should play in ensuring that the profits of private industry has a positive effect on the the US. Republicans need to back away from the idea that all regulation is bad, all taxation is bad, and all business is good, and explore the idea of how does a conservative in THIS economy with THESE kinds of global corporations dominating the landscape, manage to still hold it's head high and stand with the United States of America.
It starts by doing what the record industry did in the late 90's: Acknowledging defeat. Not defeat by the liberals or defeat because they were always wrong, but defeat because the economic ideological engine that had driven Republicans for so long has been outgrown by the business environment that now defines private industry. The time has come for conservatives to change – not an easy thing with that crowd, but if they don't, they risk watching their party rip itself apart as they cling to what they think should be instead of what is.
Would you know it if it happened to you?
Chances are you wouldn't. At least not at first. Let's explore.
First let's distinguish between two core components within the Republican party's membership (not the only divisions with, but the two important to this point). The corporatists represent big business. They are generally wealthy and because of that money and other resources they are the engine of Republican campaigns. Politics cost money, businesses have it, therefore these men and women representing private industry are generally the de facto leaders of the party. The second group is the average American conservative. This group is much more numerous than the first and generally believes in the core platform values of small government, fiscal responsibility, personal initiative, the uncompromising strength of the United States and private enterprise. This group brings the votes to the table. The two generally make a happy political pair.
The corporatist agenda to move obstacles such as regulation, taxation, oversight, and labor costs out of the way of business is not what changed in the Republican party in the last five to ten years. This agenda has been constant. However economics HAS changed. The increase in the liquidity of capital has had the following effects:
1. Business no longer needs to invest in local communities to make money.
2. Profits made in a local community are now almost always internationally invested, siphoning them away from their production locale.
3. Capital – the physical assets of doing business such as factories – is now VERY mobile.
4. US law encourages business to move resources outside the country often allowing them to avoid taxes altogether.
5. Business can 'forum shop' not just early in their existence, but can move their capital to new states or countries anytime conditions change.
So what happened to the Republican party doesn't start with a nefarious plot at all. It starts with the fact that the fundamental economic theory of the Republican party BECOMES wrong. Not that is was always wrong, but instead it becomes wrong in a period of a few decades as the very nature of business changes. That theory, that the financial success of US business will have a uplifting effect on the local community and national economy creating an upward push on all US citizen if private industry is allowed to flourish unimpeded BECOMES wrong.
This theory lies at the root of the party. It is, arguably, one of the core components of the conservative version of the American dream. But business has shifted to allow large corporations the ability to draw profits WITHOUT the natural positive consequence to the regions where they operate.
To draw an analogy, imagine the economy in terms of the recording industry during the Napster years. For years and years, the recording industry took for granted that the production of music would absolutely always include a medium which would need to be manufactured, packaged, and sold by retailers – records, tapes, CDs. Even as the first hints of danger started to rise that maybe the medium wasn't going to be needed, the industry chugged on and demanded that it would and could and needed to.
The one day the music, like business capital, became so mobile that the medium was no longer required at all – the effect of creating music no longer automatically led to the print of a CD. The medium of music had shifted on a core level, and with it the assumed theory that the music industry would always exist as it had came crashing down. Likewise, the Republican party assumes the idea that private industry growth is ALWAYS good and would ALWAYS lead to gains by the US economy and it's citizen's standard of living.
But after years of flat income gains by average Americans while CEO salaries increased as much as 27% in a single year, and in a time when corporate profits are the highest they've been since the 1950's the US standard of living has completely stalled out. States knife-fight over small percentage business tax cuts to lure corporations who stay only so long as they are getting the best deal, their new mobility letting them jump ship the moment they don't at little to no comparative cost.
To the corporatists – remember, mostly big business – this was success. Profits were soaring as productivity costs took a nose dive fueled by the ability to forum shop for labor, tax law, and resources with a fluidity unheard of in American history. However the failure of the former economic rules to yield current results wasn't missed by the Republican voter block. They started to get angry as they watched their lives mostly stay steady or even regress in quality as corporate wealth as business profits soared. For a while, this growing dissatisfaction was turned on liberals; It was easier to me angry at a group of people who openly disagree with you than to be introspective about the fact that the Democrats held leadership only 33% of the time the Republicans did in the last 30 years. Why were things not better?
Enter the Tea Party. It's convenient to use the first 2 years of Obama's presidency as some kind of explanation for the grass roots movement that took the Republican party apart at the seams after 2008. But the reality is that the outrage while openly directed at liberals was far more aggressively a referendum on the Republicans as representatives of conservative interests. These people were so angered at the performance and direction of their party that they grabbed onto often irrational and idealistically ignorant notions of how to run government and be conservative that horrified liberals but made classic conservative political theorists facepalm if not outright roll their eyes.
The take away point here is that the Tea Party represents a schism between the corporatists and the conservative voter block within the Republican party. Now because the Tea Party is mostly made up of political ideologues who barely understand the US political process, they have become unwitting tools by some conservative corporatist leaders, but the motive lying at the heart of their discontent is with Republican product. They ultimately want their party back and they want it to be a party about them, their country, their lives, their futures, and their jobs and prosperity. In this regard, I have a strange love/hate relationship with the Tea Party however much I loathe most of their rhetoric and practices. They are a juvenile attempt to express a sense of disenfranchisement that has been practiced on them by corporate leaders who have taken their conservative voters for granted for too long.
I'll wind this down starting with this observation. Senator Fitzgerald broke the law here in Wisconsin to rush the union breaking provisions of the Budget Repair Bill through a hastily convened irregular conference committee and then a less than ten minute Senate session risking the possibility that the whole thing would have to be done over. It seems reckless. It seems almost stupid. However he may have done it because he saw the support base for the move crumbling out from under him. He may have made the call believing that it was truly now or never.
I believe the corporatists are doing something similar. They are making their end-game move on a national stage in a potentially politically suicidal effort to eliminate their organized competition because they feel their support among their core voters slipping. Conservative voters know they don’t' want to be liberal, but also seem to know they do NOT like what they see Republican leadership doing.
I think a new conservative economic strategy is needed. A new look by conservatives at what role government should play in ensuring that the profits of private industry has a positive effect on the the US. Republicans need to back away from the idea that all regulation is bad, all taxation is bad, and all business is good, and explore the idea of how does a conservative in THIS economy with THESE kinds of global corporations dominating the landscape, manage to still hold it's head high and stand with the United States of America.
It starts by doing what the record industry did in the late 90's: Acknowledging defeat. Not defeat by the liberals or defeat because they were always wrong, but defeat because the economic ideological engine that had driven Republicans for so long has been outgrown by the business environment that now defines private industry. The time has come for conservatives to change – not an easy thing with that crowd, but if they don't, they risk watching their party rip itself apart as they cling to what they think should be instead of what is.
Are conservatives having a "boiling frog" experience?
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