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Sunday, Nov 8, 2015 3:30 PM UTC
White Republicans are revolting: They keep winning elections, and keep getting angrier
Want to understand the roots of modern GOP anger? Look no further than white, male, religious insecurity and fear
Topics: Republicans, Elections 2016, Gerrymandering, Paul Ryan, John Boehner, Editor's Picks, aol_on, News, Politics News
When John Boehner stepped down, he became just the second speaker since the beginning of the 20th century to resign mid-session, and the only one to do so without an ethics investigation looming over his head. The ensuing rise of Speaker Paul Ryan has been historic in its own right, but not enough attention has been paid to what precisely led Republican activists and primary voters to demand that their own party leadership resign. In one poll, an astounding 72 percent of GOP voters said they were dissatisfied with then-Speaker Boehner’s and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s performance in Congress. That’s not all that different from how Democrats felt about those same Republican leaders.
How did we get here? And where is this strain of Republican anger coming from?
After years writing and researching this topic, my official answer is this: There has been a massive “deleveraging” of the economic, political and social power that a coalition of predominately white, male and Christian individuals and allies have enjoyed for a very long time, and that because congressional control can never restore more than a fraction of the old guard’s former power, a broad majority of these individuals—today’s Republican activists—now suspect that their own leadership must be the true reason why things haven’t changed for the better.
There’s a lot to unpack here, but essentially, the thrust of the past 50 years of American history has been the expansion of economic and political rights for women, people of color, LGBT Americans, immigrants and even citizens of foreign countries through free trade agreements and global economic competition. In other words, power that was once artificially “leveraged” to give outsize economic and political advantage to the few has been dispersed to broader swaths of the country and the rest of the world.
In reaction to these trends, Republican activists have quite intuitively mobilized to restore their old power and to “make America great again.” The election of our first African-American president, a massive economic recession, and the creation of a new entitlement through healthcare reform brought these Republican activists to the political forefront and gave the movement tremendous energy.
But as most of us realize, the drivers of the deleveraging are here to stay. Global economic competition isn’t going away, women aren’t going to withdraw from the workforce, and the continued diversification of our nation is only going to speed up. So as Republican activists have demanded that their elected representatives “releverage” their old power, they’ve butted up against the reality that the old America is long gone.
All of this makes Republican activists quite angry: They keep winning elections, but their day-to-day power doesn’t seem to have increased. And of course, Republicans aren’t the only ones who are angry about broader economic and political changes. By plenty of survey measures, Democrats are angrier about the government than Republicans. But for some reason, Republican anger doesn’t get foisted just on the opposing party—it somehow metastasizes and lands on the Republican Party as well. Democrats are just as angry, but they’re not threatening to shut down the government and send Nancy Pelosi into an early retirement. What makes these two forms of anger different?
The key difference is that Democratic anger is fueled by government inaction due to perceived corporate power and money, and this creates an entirely different set of behaviors and norms for Democratic voters. Democrats understand that under our system of checks and balances, the only way you can make progress is by forming coalitions and compromising with potential opponents. It’s why survey after survey shows that the most liberal Democrats are most in favor of political compromise:
But look who opposes compromise the most: conservative Republicans. These are the folks who are most active in the party, who turn out in the greatest numbers in primary elections, and who provide the decisive support candidates need to get to Congress in the first place. And these Republican primary voters simply do not want their elected officials compromising with Democrats or even moderate Republicans.
But why such hatred of political compromise? Why deny reality and insist on shutting down the government or defaulting on our debt when our system of government demands compromise at some point?
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