More Than Ayn Rand: The Republican Coalition

December 08, 2011 at 9:21 AM

By FRANK LAWLOR

I have been struggling to understand just what it is that the Democratic Party is up against in the political arena.  It seems to me that the present day Republican Party is an uncomfortable coalition of at least four disparate political viewpoints.
 
First,  there is the traditional group of old money,  Ivy League,  establishment Republicans epitomized by the older generations of the Bush family,  the Rockefellers,  and those who aspire to their ranks.   These are traditionally cautious,  male dominated, Ivy League, country club, gated community golfers and yachters,  sophisticated,  well educated,  conservative in a non-ideological sense,  status quo,  “what is good for business is good for America”.  For them a prosperous middle class and a quiescent lower class is good for business.  This is a small but powerful group who once controlled and funded the party but who now have have been replaced by the ideology and money of  radicals such as the Koch brothers.  They have a strong intellectual history in the US and an historical openness to many liberal social values.  They see the state as secular and founded the public school system.  The old establishment today is intimidated by the other more ideological members of the GOP coalition and now has much less influence on policy and a sharply reduced media exposure.

In no particular order of influence or importance,  a second segment of the  GOP is now those who might be labeled “Libertarians”.  They have long been a semi- autonomous part of the party and have the Koch founded Cato Institute as their ideological incubator and public face.  They have been a strong voice for limited government,  isolationism, weak to no regulation of commerce, free choice trumping legal restrictions.  Increasingly in recent years,  the most vocal  and influential Libertarians have been what used to be a small cohort of cult-like acolytes who have embraced the doctrines of the late novelist and self-styled philosopher,  the Russian emigre Ayn Rand.  Her novel “Atlas Shrugged” gives flesh to her invented “Objectivist”  philosophy.  This book is said to have outsold any other novel ever written and has been number one on US campuses. Its converts are now active at high levels in politics and business.  Alan Greenspan was a friend and student of Rand and put her economic philosophy into practice until its doctrine of deregulation of financial markets under Greenspan’s leadership led inevitably to the great depression of 2007-8-9-10-11-?.  Greenspan publicly recognized the flaws in the Objectivist economic philosophy only after the present financial disaster had demolished his life’s work and came close to destroying the nation’s and even the world’s economy. 
On the present political stage the most famous Objectivist, Ron Paul,  has a huge following in his bid for the Republican presidential nomination.  He calmly and reasonably preaches the Ayn Rand doctrines summed up in the pithy phrase,  “ethical egoism”.  His son, Rand Paul is now an up-and-coming US Senator and avid apostle of Objectivism as is Congressman Paul Ryan.  It should be noted that Objectivist politics hold that laissez-faire (totally unregulated) capitalism is “the only moral social system”.  It also holds that Objectivism "rejects all notions of collective rights or rights belonging to anything other than an individual human being."  "Social engineering" is anathema,  science trumps religion.   Ayn Rand argued that religion of any kind is incompatible with American ideals and that the religious right poses a threat to individual rights (abortion is OK,  drug laws are not OK).  In the Objectivist catechism "the environmental movement is hostile to technology and to humanity itself."  Other enemies to be destroyed are public education and even child labor laws.  The “virtue of selfishness”  is primary in this ideology.  That this extreme version of Libertarianism should be to any extent embraced by the new GOP is astonishing and totally incompatible with other recently emerged elements in the GOP coalition.  The Tea Party embraces many of  these doctrines despite its fundamentalist religious incompatibility with the other Tea bag beliefs.

A third partner in the coalition is “The Christian Right”  whose major constituency are the members of the American evangelical churches.  This is a strange bedfellow in the GOP with the atheistic Objectivists and the openminded High Church establishment and with their long standing opposition to the newly enlisted Catholic "Whore of Rome".  The fundamentalists are newcomers on the political scene having traditionally eschewed active participation in worldly political battles.  They now hope that their huge following,  especially in the South and the Midwest,  can restore what they see as the religious ideals of the “Founding Fathers”.  They do not realize that these forebears embraced the irreligious credos of the Enlightenment. They reject the historical record that characterizes these men as more Deist than Christian in their theology.  For the Christian Right,  the founding of  the Republic was an act of God bestowing a status of “Chosen People”,  “God’s People”,  the biblical “Shining Nation on a Hilltop”.  This is their justification for "American Exceptionalism".  Their social agenda is aimed at making abortion a crime,  even one of murder;  rejecting the acceptance of homosexuality in society especially the right to same-sex marriage,  and protecting all of what they identify as “family values”.   The separation of Church and State for them is a recent error.  Prayer in public schools is required,  a secular state is not OK.  The Family Values Institute is their rallying point.  Revs  Huckabee,  Robinson,  and Hagee are prominent on this political scene.  The Constitution itself  is treated by them as a sacred book,  infallible and unchanging,  to be taken literally for all generations.  Given their scriptural fidelity it is hard to understand their rejection of the traditionally Christian social agenda except in the context of Calvinist theology which sees wealth as a sign of God's approval.  For them science is anathema, therefore evolution,  global warming,  etc.  are false doctrines.  Theirs is a history of anti-intellectualism in the US.

A fourth member of the unlikely coalition is the Roman Catholic conservative Right.  Traditionally the members and clerical leaders of the Catholic Church in the US have been the immediate descendants of Irish,  Italian,  and German immigrants.  These mostly urban groups were for almost a century social outcasts and restricted to low wage menial jobs.  They were embraced by the urban Democratic political machines in cities like New York, Chicago, and Boston which gave them a voice in local politics which they soon dominated.  Their first bid for higher political power came with the failed candidacy of Al Smith for the presidency in 1932.  After the massive higher education surge following WW II (the GI Bill) there was a breakdown of the old social restrictions in the corporate and financial world.  Catholic names became common at the highest levels of the corporate  hierarchy and even in the leadership of  the bastions of old money,  major brokerages,  investment banks and the New York Stock Exchange itself.  The election of John Kennedy was a major breakthrough and an indication of a new element in the leadership of the Democratic Party.  In Catholic belief there is a long intellectual tradition accepting the findings of science, however,  sexual morality is not open to change.  Public schools were avoided at great expense for one hundred years because of fears of Protestant indoctrination but now are financially unavoidable and opposed to any kind of religious teachings.
This story took an inevitable turn as Catholic lay participation in top social circles,  membership in the power and financial elite,  led to Republican inroads among ranks of  successful Catholics and among those striving for the top.  This change was accompanied by a radical change in the leadership of the Catholic Church in the US.  The passing of the older politically liberal Irish Cardinals and Bishops in leadership positions within the US Church led to a new hierarchy appointed by the very religiously conservative pope,  John Paul II. The Church in the US is now led by a dogmatically compliant cohort of  American Bishops whose priority was the preservation of Catholic adherence to anti-abortion moral doctrine,  anti-contraception regulations,  strict condemnation of homosexuality.  The older Catholic priorities of  social/economic justice promoting the welfare of  the worker,  union rights,  social safety nets,  a living wage,  etc.  were trumped by the new hierarchs in favor of making the law of the land reflect Catholic sexual morality.  These Bishops now urge the most orthodox members of their flocks to join with the evangelical religious right in the new Republican support for this faith based agenda.  They even threaten non-compliant politicians with excommunication for voting their conscience rather than orthodox dogma.  This change brought another unlikely,  new and very large voting bloc into the GOP coalition.

If  this analysis is in any way valid,  it is apparent that the rise to dominance of the strange “Tea Party”  within the Republican ranks is not separate from these four categories.  In fact,  the doctrines of this radical group cross the boundaries between the four cohorts.  There are elements of the old order (an aging membership,  big tricornered hats and frock coats) plus the Libertarian cant for the good old says of  “small government”.  Stirred into the tea pot is a big dollop of religious right raving against the decline in morality (abortion and homosexuality).  All of this will supposedly bring us back our freedom and restore the old-time values of Democracy and unrestricted Capitalism.  The Tea Party "takes no prisoners" and has succeeded in bringing an aura of terror into even the establishment Republicans in Congress.  The new message is:  "Get in line with the new orthodoxy or hit the road!"  The orthodoxy demanded by the newly powerful coalition ideologues does not permit either dialogue or compromise.

An important question arises.  Can a coalition of such ideologically conflicting elements survive for the long term?  Is it not inherently unstable?  Right now there is unifying agreement in the GOP concerning the "Great Satan" - Barack Obama,  and a confluence of  economic (no taxes, small government) and nineteenth century social policies.  There is also a high success rate in the GOP leadership in forcing almost total conformity with the ultra-right agenda.  Will this last?  Will it succeed in defeating Obama?  Will it outlast this present struggle?

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