Notes on a Notion
BYOC: Click to distract.
Sculptor said:
curious poll
Who should own the Republican Party?
and
The 2 respondents(100%) checked "an elite few"
curiouser and curiouser
It's not the strongest poll.
But we might consider a couple aspects―
(1) Republic and Democracy ― I have some affection for Bill Maher's explanation, reflecting on how raw democracy rendered California ungovernable under a ballot initiative scheme that broke the state's finances. The Republic was set up as a republic, and not a democracy, specifically because the Founding Fathers knew better; Maher's punch line suggests that left to direct democracy, Americans would vote for "free beer, no taxes, and vagina trees". More realistic examples are the use of the ballot box as a weapon, such as we've seen in the Gay Fray. Consider that the Trump Year pretty much coincides with a generation of voters coming of age having spent their whole lives hearing complaints about judicial activism and subversion of democracy. I'm using a particular marker, Romer v. Evans, which conservatives are still not over; Colorado voters passed a law to ostracize homosexuals, and the Court said the Constitution forbids using the ballot box like that. Yes, it's been twenty-three years since the first preliminary injunction against Colorado Amendment 2. Conservatives have focused a lot of effort on these sorts of things, pushing provocative policies that will not withstand constitutional scrutiny and complaining about the denigration of democracy because the Constitution says they can't have what they want. Indeed, this is part of the frustration driving the Trump movement. Women, homosexuals, the transgender, Hispanics, Muslims―we're not having a pogrom, and these voters are pissed about that.
(2) Party and Organization ― In the U.S., we elect certain public officials. Okay, that's a duh statement, of course, but the thing is that elections are competitions. They are not, ultimately, individual competitions between specific candidates, because the candidates need teams to help in the fight. And somewhere between the duh of the abstract proposition that we might somehow actually be able to legislate that our elections are individual competitions with no teams to help the candidates, and the duh of wondering about the psychological and societal health of the "permanent campaign" is an inchoate answer. Something goes here about the question of whether or not the Party committees are organizing with heavy hands, and perhaps we might get away with calling that question more realistic. In order to organize, there must necessarily be some manner of functional hierarchy. Whether warfare or sports or commerce, what happens if everyone in the "organization" is making decisions independently? Try business, and imagine not simply the departments themselves, but every individual in Advertising, Marketing, and Public Relations, is doing and saying whatever according to their inclination in the moment. Would it be an understatement to suggest that Legal would ask them to please stop? Imagine a Super Bowl in which every player called his own play.
―and recognize that "an elite few" is probably closer to the practical necessity. That is, it's not a great answer, but the alternatives are either demonstratively ("all registered Republicans") or discouragingly ("others") impractical. ("Discouraging"? Okay, what others? How does that work? It is essentially an invititation and necessary demand to outline a replacement structure, at which point I can't tell you whether the question of what constitutes a "few" is an obvious or occulted question; it seems important, though, if one intends to split the difference.
A third point about the difference 'twixt
public service and
civic leadership also applies, and should we suggest that the two need not be so different, well, 'tis at once a simple point and a complex, difficult explanation. Nonetheless, provocative ballot measures and legislation, as well as naked rhetorical appeals to supremacism, have driven conservative politics for a long, long time. Party leaders have increasingly relied on bigotry to rally passions and call support. Disguised as
public service, the humble submission of a politician to the voters' will, the Republican course has too often lacked any reasonable or functional context of
civic leadership.
If everybody jumped off a bridge? How about if your voters want vigilantism in the streets? Morality police? Supremacism as equality? Republcians have chosen to exploit those regressive passions instead of cultivate conservative progress; the Trump phenomenon and concomitant leadership ("ownership") crisis in the Party is pretty much inevitable.
There is a time when the leaders must look at the people and say, "No". Republicans not only failed to do this, but also demonized this aspect of civic leadership. If what we're witnessing in the Republican Party was simply their own much-deserved mess, that would be one thing. But this also has serious potential implications for everyone else.
Which in turn, I suppose, says a thing or three about the terminology in the discourse. It is reflective of both need and outcome, but words like "elite" and "establishment" are loaded with distrust. On the Democratic side we have this weird issue going on in which the dispute over the Establishment includes in that disdain millions of voters over the years who have calculated the political bargains they make when they vote. Voter responsibility is a complex issue, the current Democratic questions regarding the Establishment serve it none. But there has long been a need that someone, somewhere in the Republican organization, with enough influence should stand up and tell their rabid bigot wing, "No"°. Such an action, however, is inherently subject to complaints of elitism; if it is successful, it becomes part of the Establishment.
But, yes, these notions do occur to me. Depending on how we define a few, perhaps we might replace "elite" with "sane", and hope for the best.
____________________
Notes:
° Interestingly, this might actually be starting, with Republican governors in South Dakota and Georgia saying no to bathroom bills. Unlike Gov. McRory (R-NC), Govs. Dugaard (R-SD) and Deal (R-GA) didn't need an actual demonstration of what happens when one says yes to stupidity and bigotry. We might also recall former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R), who vetoed SB 1062, an anti-gay bill. She faced a term limit, so we don't know how the veto would have affected her standing among Arizona conservatives in the 2014 election, but we might also note that between Republicans and the business community, there is now an open and apparently effective question of when to say no to stupidity and bigotry. Oh, yeah, there was also the time the Republican-led Louisiana legislature watched what happened in Indiana and decided a religious freedom bill empowering anti-gay discrimination just wasn't a good idea for the Pelican State. Then again, former Gov. Bobby Jindal's attempt to implement the bill as an executive order probably isn't the reason voters elected a Democrat to replace him.
