In the late 1970's, the Republican party got some bad news. That news was that they were outgunned. The sheer number of people who identified as “Democrat” significantly outnumbered the voters who identified as “Republican”. With the ethnic diversification and urbanization of the United States ever increasing, the strongholds of what might be Democratic power seemed to growing as the primarily rural and white mainstays of the Republican party were shrinking.
Now put down your value judgments on any of this and step slowly away. Just understand the environment. Just before the 1980's, the Republican core America was, in fact, shrinking. The Democratic core America was, in fact, growing. It was a reality of the time that has shifted with many Latinos later joining the Republican party which at the time was unexpected by Democrats and with certain Urban areas remaining conservative despite conditions normally friendly to Democrats, something unexpected by Republicans. But we're interested in what it looked like back then, 30 years ago.
Republicans saw what looked like their own political extinction on the horizon. What happened next was not accidental. Credit where credit's due, the Republican party has always been more organized, more disciplined, and with a longer view towards their political objectives than their counterparts. They knew that Democrats suffered from a high degree of voter apathy and low voter turn out. The fact is that Democrats had almost always outnumbered Republicans since the 1920's, but they often couldn't be bothered to vote. The danger seen looming was that this passive apathy was no longer going to be enough to give Republicans electoral victories if trends in voting continued as they were.
So the Republican party, broadly speaking, took to a new strategy. That strategy wasn't nefarious, it was common sense based on the electorate. Making more Republicans out of voters didn't seem practical considering how the platforms were divided up, a gulf that was widening each year with an ever increasing division between rich and poor consolidating the numbers more and more in Democratic hands. However the actual number of Democrats and Republicans didn't really matter. What mattered was how many of the Democrats and Republicans actually voted, and in the late 70's, voter turnout was abysmal.
So the new plan had two structural goals.
First, make sure voting required people to jump through some very low hoops that would provide a litmus test for 'give-a-damn'. This was not voter disenfranchisement, it was an attempt to make sure the sometimes almost unconscious Democrats couldn't just be herded blindly into the booth to press 'all Democrat' on the ticket during elections. Republicans wanted to weed out the truly unmotivated by making them do something that required minimal motivation. It was that simple. If apathy is truly a Democratic plague, then many self identified 'Democrats' wouldn't figure into politics if voting was even mildly inconvenient.
Second: Motivate Republicans. REALLY motivate Republicans. As in start changing who Republicans cater to based specifically on how motivated they can be. Identify the groups that have the highest voter turn-out and wed the party to their cause. Start using media and political language that spoke to the emotions of voters and brought their turn-out rates far above the national average. During the 1980's, the Republican party picked out hotbutton single topic voter groups they could appeal to including Christian evangelicals, 2nd Amendment NRA enthusiasts and others who could be counted on to vote in the 80 to 90% saturation rage whereas voter interests nationwide was below 50% even on presidential elections.
Combined, these two strategies meant that the lower total number of Republicans didn't matter. Democrats were being thinned by their own apathy and basic voter regulations and Republicans were tailor building a party of highly motivated extremely loyal organizations often consumed by very specific issues such as abortion, religion, firearms, and aggressive military policy.
It worked.
In fact it worked brilliantly. For the next 30 years, despite being outnumbered, the Republicans would hold the Presidency for 2 out of every 3 years. Political tides would ebb and flow, but the new Republican strategy of using motivation as the primary tool instead of message seemed to have proven itself beyond their wildest dreams. Aware of the power of the focus on motivation, Republicans moved to media and in 1988 Rush Limbaugh started the first truly effective right wing political talk show and paved the way for numerous others that would unify voters in a way nothing else had. Taking a lesson from this success, Fox News came online in 1996, the motivation machine roared forward at full speed.
The Democrats were completely caught off guard by all of this. They missed the point of the Republican effort entirely. They pointed out the often shoddy and fact-spun stories being propagated by the new media outlets and the alter-call style substance-less political 'sermons' being delivered by regional Republican politicians and sat back smug in their ability to find factual error and inconsistency in the arguments of their opponents.
They then got creamed at the ballot box. Republicans were not speaking to intellectuals or historians or political scientists they were speaking to the hearts of their core voters. Hearts that wanted to hear a certain vehemence and dedication more than they cared whether the facts were accurate or the argument made logical sense. These Republicans were motivated, willing to be led and loyal.
But then something went wrong.
Emotional motivation is unsustainable. Fear, anger, hatred, passion, fervent devotion – these emotions are peaks that people simply can't stay on their whole lives. They often love to get there, but it's the change from where they were before that makes it exciting. Keep them there too long, and it becomes the 'new norm' and you have to up the ante to get them excited again. In order to sustain the energy and high turnout of their voters, the Republicans had to keep ramping up their message, outdoing one another, and making more and more alarming claims to their newly energized political army. Rush Limbaugh gave way to Ann Coulter and Randy Savage. Fox News went from a right wing slant in the late 90's to Bill O'Reily to Hannity to Glenn Beck and his right wing conspiracies. The rural Republican electorate, crowned dittoheads, stopped trying to be fair and balanced, and ran with the ideas they were saturated with, not ever looking to see if those ideas fit into reality. This steady march to the right shed more and more moderate and fiscal conservatives, slowly turning the primary process over to steadily more radical base.
When the economy collapsed in 2008 coupled with Obama's election, the whipped up, ignorant, passionate, xenophobic, terrified remnant of the baby boomer generation stoked itself into self righteous fury. Fueling itself on the propaganda machine run amok just post election, this new group started to buck their handlers.
The Tea Party was born.
Sarah Palin. Sharan Angle. Michele Bachmann. Christine O'Donnel. Joe Miller. The ideas espoused by these men and women were not conservative, they were borderline fascist. These players deviated so far to the right that even men like Karl Rove were disgusted.
Between 2008 and 2010, this Tea Party figured out that for years the Republican Party, now too liberal for them, had been leaving party seats in local party politics empty, passing the authority they conveyed in primary elections up the chain to the state or even national establishment party heads. The Tea party filled these seats and took control of the Republican primary system on the local level. With it, they ensured tea party members got on the ballot and establishment RHINOS were kicked to the curb. By this time 'RHINO' meant any conservative not willing to declare open war on outsiders. Combine this with a post Obamatory depression dramatically increasing Democratic apathy when it became clear that the new president was not the savior many had anticipated, and 2010 became a landmark opportunity for Republican resurgence this time led by uncompromising ideologues.
Under their control, the machine created to fight Democratic numbers continued unabated. But that machine required constraints – an intelligent operator who could know exactly how far to push the message and exactly how carefully to tweak voter controls to keep the process from rousing the sleeping dragon that was Democratic backlash. The Tea Party lacked the discipline, foresight, and understanding necessary and with the backing of ideological billionaires launched forward in a crusade of draconian voting, redistricting, and identification laws that raised alarms all over the country. Seething with their own hatred of anything not exactly like them, the Tea Party candidates passed more social, electoral and anti abortion laws than all other forms of economic legislation combined during the worst recession of our nation's history.
The Republican establishment watched in horror as the delicate balance they had achieved in the 1980's was turned from a scalpel into a bludgeon and used to rouse the largest Democratic and union backlash since the industrial revolution. Powerless to prevent it, the party has been at war with itself, becoming a vitriolic, violent, hateful group of infighting xenophobes that no longer reflects any of the core conservative values that used to make up its voter base.
This story is not about hating conservatives or conservative thought. This story is about how a party that represented one of America's oldest and most valuable political traditions was consumed by a monster of its own creation. How it has become something that has no connection to what it meant to be 'Republican' even ten years ago. Today, the establishment tries to carefully push Mitt Romney into the center and just survive the process. Deep in the back rooms of Republican politics, the far sighted thoughtful conservatives know that 2012 is probably a lost cause and they reign in men like Jeb Bush and Chris Christy for 2016 after they've had some time to get the children out of the driver's seat, off the sugar cereal, and back where they belong so the vehicle that is true conservative politics can one again get back on the road.
Now put down your value judgments on any of this and step slowly away. Just understand the environment. Just before the 1980's, the Republican core America was, in fact, shrinking. The Democratic core America was, in fact, growing. It was a reality of the time that has shifted with many Latinos later joining the Republican party which at the time was unexpected by Democrats and with certain Urban areas remaining conservative despite conditions normally friendly to Democrats, something unexpected by Republicans. But we're interested in what it looked like back then, 30 years ago.
Republicans saw what looked like their own political extinction on the horizon. What happened next was not accidental. Credit where credit's due, the Republican party has always been more organized, more disciplined, and with a longer view towards their political objectives than their counterparts. They knew that Democrats suffered from a high degree of voter apathy and low voter turn out. The fact is that Democrats had almost always outnumbered Republicans since the 1920's, but they often couldn't be bothered to vote. The danger seen looming was that this passive apathy was no longer going to be enough to give Republicans electoral victories if trends in voting continued as they were.
So the Republican party, broadly speaking, took to a new strategy. That strategy wasn't nefarious, it was common sense based on the electorate. Making more Republicans out of voters didn't seem practical considering how the platforms were divided up, a gulf that was widening each year with an ever increasing division between rich and poor consolidating the numbers more and more in Democratic hands. However the actual number of Democrats and Republicans didn't really matter. What mattered was how many of the Democrats and Republicans actually voted, and in the late 70's, voter turnout was abysmal.
So the new plan had two structural goals.
First, make sure voting required people to jump through some very low hoops that would provide a litmus test for 'give-a-damn'. This was not voter disenfranchisement, it was an attempt to make sure the sometimes almost unconscious Democrats couldn't just be herded blindly into the booth to press 'all Democrat' on the ticket during elections. Republicans wanted to weed out the truly unmotivated by making them do something that required minimal motivation. It was that simple. If apathy is truly a Democratic plague, then many self identified 'Democrats' wouldn't figure into politics if voting was even mildly inconvenient.
Second: Motivate Republicans. REALLY motivate Republicans. As in start changing who Republicans cater to based specifically on how motivated they can be. Identify the groups that have the highest voter turn-out and wed the party to their cause. Start using media and political language that spoke to the emotions of voters and brought their turn-out rates far above the national average. During the 1980's, the Republican party picked out hotbutton single topic voter groups they could appeal to including Christian evangelicals, 2nd Amendment NRA enthusiasts and others who could be counted on to vote in the 80 to 90% saturation rage whereas voter interests nationwide was below 50% even on presidential elections.
Combined, these two strategies meant that the lower total number of Republicans didn't matter. Democrats were being thinned by their own apathy and basic voter regulations and Republicans were tailor building a party of highly motivated extremely loyal organizations often consumed by very specific issues such as abortion, religion, firearms, and aggressive military policy.
It worked.
In fact it worked brilliantly. For the next 30 years, despite being outnumbered, the Republicans would hold the Presidency for 2 out of every 3 years. Political tides would ebb and flow, but the new Republican strategy of using motivation as the primary tool instead of message seemed to have proven itself beyond their wildest dreams. Aware of the power of the focus on motivation, Republicans moved to media and in 1988 Rush Limbaugh started the first truly effective right wing political talk show and paved the way for numerous others that would unify voters in a way nothing else had. Taking a lesson from this success, Fox News came online in 1996, the motivation machine roared forward at full speed.
The Democrats were completely caught off guard by all of this. They missed the point of the Republican effort entirely. They pointed out the often shoddy and fact-spun stories being propagated by the new media outlets and the alter-call style substance-less political 'sermons' being delivered by regional Republican politicians and sat back smug in their ability to find factual error and inconsistency in the arguments of their opponents.
They then got creamed at the ballot box. Republicans were not speaking to intellectuals or historians or political scientists they were speaking to the hearts of their core voters. Hearts that wanted to hear a certain vehemence and dedication more than they cared whether the facts were accurate or the argument made logical sense. These Republicans were motivated, willing to be led and loyal.
But then something went wrong.
Emotional motivation is unsustainable. Fear, anger, hatred, passion, fervent devotion – these emotions are peaks that people simply can't stay on their whole lives. They often love to get there, but it's the change from where they were before that makes it exciting. Keep them there too long, and it becomes the 'new norm' and you have to up the ante to get them excited again. In order to sustain the energy and high turnout of their voters, the Republicans had to keep ramping up their message, outdoing one another, and making more and more alarming claims to their newly energized political army. Rush Limbaugh gave way to Ann Coulter and Randy Savage. Fox News went from a right wing slant in the late 90's to Bill O'Reily to Hannity to Glenn Beck and his right wing conspiracies. The rural Republican electorate, crowned dittoheads, stopped trying to be fair and balanced, and ran with the ideas they were saturated with, not ever looking to see if those ideas fit into reality. This steady march to the right shed more and more moderate and fiscal conservatives, slowly turning the primary process over to steadily more radical base.
When the economy collapsed in 2008 coupled with Obama's election, the whipped up, ignorant, passionate, xenophobic, terrified remnant of the baby boomer generation stoked itself into self righteous fury. Fueling itself on the propaganda machine run amok just post election, this new group started to buck their handlers.
The Tea Party was born.
Sarah Palin. Sharan Angle. Michele Bachmann. Christine O'Donnel. Joe Miller. The ideas espoused by these men and women were not conservative, they were borderline fascist. These players deviated so far to the right that even men like Karl Rove were disgusted.
Between 2008 and 2010, this Tea Party figured out that for years the Republican Party, now too liberal for them, had been leaving party seats in local party politics empty, passing the authority they conveyed in primary elections up the chain to the state or even national establishment party heads. The Tea party filled these seats and took control of the Republican primary system on the local level. With it, they ensured tea party members got on the ballot and establishment RHINOS were kicked to the curb. By this time 'RHINO' meant any conservative not willing to declare open war on outsiders. Combine this with a post Obamatory depression dramatically increasing Democratic apathy when it became clear that the new president was not the savior many had anticipated, and 2010 became a landmark opportunity for Republican resurgence this time led by uncompromising ideologues.
Under their control, the machine created to fight Democratic numbers continued unabated. But that machine required constraints – an intelligent operator who could know exactly how far to push the message and exactly how carefully to tweak voter controls to keep the process from rousing the sleeping dragon that was Democratic backlash. The Tea Party lacked the discipline, foresight, and understanding necessary and with the backing of ideological billionaires launched forward in a crusade of draconian voting, redistricting, and identification laws that raised alarms all over the country. Seething with their own hatred of anything not exactly like them, the Tea Party candidates passed more social, electoral and anti abortion laws than all other forms of economic legislation combined during the worst recession of our nation's history.
The Republican establishment watched in horror as the delicate balance they had achieved in the 1980's was turned from a scalpel into a bludgeon and used to rouse the largest Democratic and union backlash since the industrial revolution. Powerless to prevent it, the party has been at war with itself, becoming a vitriolic, violent, hateful group of infighting xenophobes that no longer reflects any of the core conservative values that used to make up its voter base.
This story is not about hating conservatives or conservative thought. This story is about how a party that represented one of America's oldest and most valuable political traditions was consumed by a monster of its own creation. How it has become something that has no connection to what it meant to be 'Republican' even ten years ago. Today, the establishment tries to carefully push Mitt Romney into the center and just survive the process. Deep in the back rooms of Republican politics, the far sighted thoughtful conservatives know that 2012 is probably a lost cause and they reign in men like Jeb Bush and Chris Christy for 2016 after they've had some time to get the children out of the driver's seat, off the sugar cereal, and back where they belong so the vehicle that is true conservative politics can one again get back on the road.
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