Republicans, Unreality, And Democracy

Perhaps it is because they are really a minority party, having lost the popular vote in six out of the last seven national elections, but Republicans seem to have a penchant for believing they can create an alternate reality. And, because they won the Presidency in two of those elections where they lost the majority vote, it is understandable to see why they might hold that belief. Sure, there has always been an element of obfuscation in all political rhetoric, but, starting in the 1980s, the GOP started taking it to real extremes. “Voodoo economics” was the correct analysis of supply-side economic theory, but that theory is still a mainstay of the Republican platform. Frank Luntz introduced Republicans to “framing” and the inheritance tax that broke up the legacy power of plutocratic families became the “death tax” that kept poor farmers from passing their land on to their children, despite the fact that the tax only ever effected a handful farms. In the 1990s, Newt Gingrich took this attitude toward framing even further with his adoption of apocalyptic rhetoric on virtually every issue, constantly denouncing Democrats as “traitors” and in 1994 even saying, “People like me are what stand between us and Auschwitz”.

Masha Gessen, who recently wrote the six rules for surviving autocracy, was on “On the Media” over the weekend and she made an important point that constant lies are an expression of power and designed to undermine our ability to counter that power with facts. Please listen to the whole interview here, it is definitely worth it. She quotes Gary Kasparov, the famed Russian chess champion who quit the game in order to politically oppose Putin and provided the metaphor that playing chess with Putin would be like playing chess with a person who simply just knocks all the pieces off the board. The details of your individual move are irrelevant because your opponent is not even playing the game. And, in knocking the pieces off the board, they are expressing not only contempt for the game but their power over it.

This attitude became clear with the Republican party when it began to simply abandon the traditional norms of democracy in the 1990s. There were the government shutdowns, essentially an attempt at blackmail or extortion, and then the impeachment of a President over what was essentially an extra-marital affair. With the anointment of George Bush as President in 2000 by the Supreme Court despite his loss of the popular vote in addition to the likelihood of his not getting the most votes in Florida, Republicans belief in their ability to create their own reality became stronger and more explicit. Karl Rove challenged reporter Ron Suskind on living in a reality-based world, saying, “That’s not the way the world works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judisciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” This attitude, of course, led the Bush administration to lie to the American people in order to “create” the disastrous war in Iraq. It led to the unconstitutional spying on US citizens and the use of torture in contravention of international norms and US law. Republicans also began engaging in radical gerrymandering techniques for purely political gain and, in Texas, even used a mid-term gerrymander, breaking a long-held governing norm, in order to take control of the state’s House of Representatives. All these actions further eroded the standards and norms of American democracy.

Under Obama, Republican obstruction continued to defy the norms of governance. GOP Senators refused to act on Obama’s judicial appointments, leaving one vacancy open for over a decade now, and culminating in the refusal to give Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, even a hearing. Republicans also destroyed another norm in American foreign policy with their decision to invite Netanyahu to address Congress over the President’s objections. With aggressive actions to restrict the voting rights of certain Americans, the GOP broke another long-time norm of expanding the franchise and showed a lack of belief in actual democracy. And, of course, there was the constant drumbeat to delegitimize Obama with the racist “birther” issue and the idea that Obama is a closet Muslim who is plotting with Islamic terrorists to take over America.

Every step of the way, the Republican party has set about destroying the norms of governance or, at best, been willing to be complicit with it. As President Obama noted, Donald Trump is merely the logical progression of the Republican party for the last quarter century. With the enormous focus on Trump’s provocations and lies, yet another norm that required a presidential candidate to release their taxes was destroyed. Republicans were absolutely on board with a foreign government interfering in our election, simply because it favored their candidate. Toward the end of the campaign, there was talk among Republicans about not even accepting the results of the election. And, once again, Republicans are again talking about creating their own reality.  Steve Bannon is echoing Karl Rove with his infrequent rhetoric, saying, “Dick Cheney, Darth Vader, Satan, that’s power it only helps us when they get it wrong, when they’re blind to who we are and what we’re doing.” Trump surrogate Scottie Nell Hughes just declared, “There’s no such thing, unfortunately, anymore as facts.” In her interview, Gessen analyzed Trump’s continual lies as an important component of his power, saying, “His constant contradictions are a message in itself, and that message is part of my power lies in my ability to control reality…He is going to be creating this cacophony of nonsense precisely to undermine our ability to exist in a fact-based reality.” Without a fact based reality, it is difficult to provide a meaningful opposition. But the Republican party is quite happy to play along with Trump. Just look at the way Mike Pence dodged the questions about Trump’s fictitious claim that millions voted illegally, saying “Well, it’s his right to express his opinion as president-elect of the United States. I think one of the things that’s refreshing about our president-elect and one of the reasons why I think he made such an incredible connection with people all across this country is because he tells you what’s on his mind.” Not only does Pence deny Trump is lying, he calls his lies refreshing. All these statements are basically a display of power that says we can do what we want and you can not stop us.

Today’s New York Times Op-Ed page has three articles that focus on the dangers that the Trump administration poses. Evan McMullin writes about the dangers to the constitution, Charles Blow writes about staring into the abyss of “the potential abrogation of fundamental American ideals”, and Krugman writes about a “government by bait and switch”. McMullin’s article does not mention Republicans; Blow’s cites Trump political advisers Conway, Lewandowski, and the aforementioned Hughes. Krugman focuses on how the GOP will avoid the political costs surrounding Obamacare. So, while accurately describing the dangers facing the country, all of these commentators avoid mentioning the complicity of the Republican party in the damage that has already been done to American democracy and potential damage that Trump and his administration can do to that democracy and its ideals. (As an aside, it is also interesting to note that the editorial page is running a series entitled “What’s At Stake” which “discusses how America might change during the Trump administration”. It might have been nice if the Times had focused on these issues before the election.)

For far too long, the media and, yes, even the Democrats have focused on the individual elements of GOP lies and obstruction but have simply refused to acknowledge that the Republican party has ceased to believe in the norms of our democracy but is solely focused on gaining and maintaining its own power. Much of that is driven by the fact the party represents a minority that still believes it is a majority. Another drive is that most of the Republican policies are not popular with the American people, so it requires deception to implement. To use Kasparov’s analogy, Republicans have been knocking pieces off the chessboard of American democracy for decades. In Trump, they have found their grandmaster.