Republican post-mortem

Well, here we are, post-election and nearly post-holidays.
Apparently the nation has "been defeated", as McCain put it before it the election. Socialism is now to be the order of the day, if the weak and desperate spin of the McCain campaign is to be believed. Let's pause to look back at what the Republicans offered to the nation in their defeated effort.

They offered FEAR, and lots of it. Obama has something to hide, and "questions remain". The "questions" were, of course, answered, but the Republicans simply didn't like the answers or didn't believe them. Thus, these 'questions' remained. And there never really was any way to "answer" these so-called 'questions', because they weren't really questions at all; they were slanders designed to induce vague doubts that could not be proven or really disproved. All that was clear was that Republicans were completely convinced that Obama was some kind of Marxist radical who had a diabolical (but absolutely vague) scheme to destroy America. There was no evidence, merely associations backed up by an incredible amount of exaggeration, speculation, and wild leaps of logic. Republicans believed in the validity of these 'questions', largely because other Republicans believed in their validity, and that was good enough for them.

One of the biggest (and stupidest) gambles the Republicans made in the election was in believing that their Party still had credibility. Thus, if the Republicans said Obama was a Marxist radical bent on destroying America, then the electorate would believe it. The Republicans had spent so much time in their echo chamber, isolated from the rest of the world, that they had really come to believe that those outside of their artificial world agreed with them. Anyone outside of the bubble could have seen that the Republicans stopped trying to persuade anyone over to their beliefs years ago. Instead, they wrote off the non-Republicans as some tiny core of "far-leftists" who were universally despised as traitors, defeatists, and degenerates. Their messages were drenched in circular logic and the premises of those messages were only accepted by the "faithful". Apparently, everyone "knew" that the typical Democrat really longed for a Soviet-style state, cheered on terrorists, and rejoiced at our nation's every troop casualty. On top of this, the typical Democrat was "known" to have no "values", and they celebrated every abortion, engaged in promiscuous and dangerous sexual acts, were addicted to hard drugs, and would probably kill you if you didn't have several guns already.

Thus, it was inconceivable to the typical Republican that Americans would embrace a Democratic candidate. It was "obvious" that the Democratic party stood for Satanism, Stalinism, and the Sixties. The Republicans merely had to point this out, and McCain was guaranteed to win.

The truth is that Republican credibility suffered a mortal blow in 2005, and never really recovered. Katrina showed the inept and incompetent Administration lackeys, who were given jobs solely based on loyalty and their ability to parrot talking points. As Iraq became a quagmire, the Decider made wildly upbeat and optimistic statements on an almost daily basis, backed up by his Party. Expressing doubt or scepticism was clearly a sign that one was a traitor or a terrorist sympathiser who wanted America to "lose". The nation saw a Party that not only demanded blind obedience and faith, but that also put on a bizarre Tinkerbell-like performance: if we all clap loud enough and believe in the Decider, then we will win the War On Terror. In general, the nation saw an Administration that chose the outcome it wanted and then believed that the outcome was guaranteed simply because they envisioned it, with facts and arms twisted to conform with that vision. The economy began a slow slide that ended with a sharp drop off the cliff just before the election, and the Republicans continued their sunny, logically-deficient optimism until it was far too late to back-pedal.

And yet they still believed that they had credibility.

The GOP had essentially turned itself into a religion instead of a political organisation. They were the Believers, in more ways than one. No dissent was tolerated, for that would be a sign of Doubt. If one did not believe, completely and blindly, in the Party, then one did not believe in America and one wished for the nation's demise. Just as fundamentalist Christians dismiss all other religions as cults, idol-worshipping, or just a variation of good old-fashioned Satanism, so too did the Party set up a false dichotomy in the political arena. There were only Patriots and Communists, and the only way to be a good Patriot was to be a good Republican. To believe otherwise was contrary to the "religion", and since the majority of Americans did not want to see the country destroyed, then they would surely vote Republican.

This is why we see the promulgation of the "centre-right country" myth. It is a feeble and desperate attempt on the Republicans' part to preserve their "religion". The country still believes in everything that the Party believes in, per this myth, but the electorate failed to cast their votes for the Party. Thus, if a Marxist hell is avoided, it will be because the electorate firmly believes in the Republicans' ideals, not due to anything that the Obama Administration does or does not do. If Christians are not persecuted and hunted down, it will be because the vast majority believe in the GOP and will not permit the Democrats to carry out their Satanic schemes. And so forth and so on. The religion of the Republican party is thus preserved among the Faithful.

Aside from ramming fundamentalist Christianity down the nation's collective throats, what else did the Republicans offer in the McCain campaign?

War, and lots of it. There are always unfortunate situations that require military action, especially when this is the only permissible tool in the policy toolbox. Thus, the only way to be safe is to bankrupt our economy in more quagmires, which we can never disengage from lest it be seen as a sign of weakness. To do anything less is the equivalent of lining up our nation's children and shooting them - which is probably one of the Obama Administration's secret plans, anyway.

Police-state powers, and lots of them - to preserve our freedom, of course. Total, absolute secrecy is regrettably required, because the "terrorists might be listening". Scapegoats must be created and identified, with guilt presumed beforehand. Some will not confess immediately, in order to make our leaders look bad, but eventually it will become clear that we were right all along to suspect them if we are allowed to "take the gloves off". Who really knows what torture is, anyway? The Party with blinding moral clarity and simplistic answers at the ready is oddly philosophical here, isn't it? Suddenly, "moral relativism" can be embraced in this situation.

So we have fear, war, and paranoia as the primary campaign themes. The only real policy issue that was covered by the McCain campaign was health care. In reality, the Republican scheme would have caused millions to lose their coverage, since employers would drop their health plans in response. Certainly, nothing in the Republican plan requires the employer to do so, but it seems obvious that if the government is providing a deduction for individuals to buy their own health insurance that the employer can safely get out of the health care business. And somehow, simply giving people $5000 to buy insurance is not socialism, though it is a refundable tax credit. And giving everyone $5k doesn't cost any money, because it's just taxes the government wouldn't be collecting in the first place, right? Really, though, you would never even see that money. It would go straight to the insurance company. And McCain promised that his Administration would "work with" insurance companies on the issue of pre-existing conditions. What does that mean, exactly? It means nothing, except that you would not be covered for pre-existing conditions, meaning that only the healthy would have health coverage. What a step forward. Likewise, any idea that a "high-risk pool" would ensure coverage under the $5k limit was abandoned as 'regulation'.

In states where auto liability insurance is mandatory, there is a "high risk pool" mandated to be maintained by the insurance companies. This means that if you have had seven accidents in the past year and a DUI on your record, you can still obtain insurance at an astronomical cost from the "high risk pool". You cannot be denied liability coverage if you are a licensed driver.

Now, suppose you are a sick person with leukaemia and require about $15k a year in medical treatment. What insurance company will provide you with coverage for only $5k a year? None of them. Either that, or they would sell you coverage and deny all claims based on a "pre-existing condition". How would a McCain Administration persuade an insurance company to lose $10k a year when they "work with" them on coverage for pre-existing conditions? The answer is, they don't. The likely result is that our hypothetical patient would get $5k of the $20k needed to obtain health insurance, meaning they would still pay as much for health care as they did when they were 'uninsured'. This is how the insurance industry would "work with" the Administration on pre-existing conditions.

Meanwhile, the loss of $5k per taxpayer in revenue is a definite "cost", isn't it? Is there a real difference in the bottom line between the federal government paying a certain amount of money and not getting a certain amount of money to begin with? Only in ideological terms.

Republicans argue against "single-payer" not only on ideological grounds, but also on cost.
"If you think health care is expensive now, just wait until it's free", is the glib mantra. The problem is that, under the McCain proposal, more people would have coverage than they do now and costs would go up. The only way to limit cost is to deny treatment, or provide treatment in a pro-active manner. The latter method costs money up front, and saves money in the long term. The former method means that more uninsured individuals show up in the emergency room with avoidable conditions at a greater cost for treatment. It is notable that one of the McCain "advisers" on health care policy claimed that everyone is "insured" under the current scheme because they have access to emergency room care. Likewise, the idea that the average person is going to "shop around" and contest payments is absurd. Who has the time to "shop around" for the lowest price on an office visit, then "shop around" for the lowest price on a certain lab procedure, then search out the lowest price on follow-up care, and then "shop around" for the lowest price on a prescription? Is there transportation to get you to the slightly cheaper lab, doctor, or pharmacy 40 miles away? What happens to continuity of care when you spread your medical treatment out between a dozen different providers? Mistakes are made, efforts are duplicated, links are missed, and costs go up. But we manage to avoid the ideological hazard of 'socialism', so it's okay.

So we see that the McCain campaign was not only peddling very, very few actual ideas, but that these ideas were bad in practical terms. By and large, they were trying to sell fear and doubt, with a side of jingoism.

But what really killed the Republican effort was the economy.
This was not some magical mishap that befell the Party, but rather the logical result of their policies. The real collapse of the "mortgage industry" was not in making bad loans, but rather in the sale of insurance for those bad loans. Insurance on mortgages was traded by institutions that had no idea how risky those loans were, to people who had no idea that they were on the hook if those loans failed. They were merely pieces of paper that gained value every time they were traded, as if by magic. We allowed institutions to act as banks without the regulations governing banks. And the Republicans pointed to the money being made by these institutions as "proof" that regulations were bad. At the same time, those tax cuts that were supposed to be invested domestically in the creation of jobs were, once again, ploughed into offshore ventures or kept "within the family" by way of huge bonuses. Just as with Reagan's supply-side economics, the wealthy once again failed to step up to the plate and instead took the money and ran. Pointing this out, of course, is "class warfare" to Republicans. Republicans are fond of putting their shills on parade and parroting talking points, such as "I've never been employed by a poor man". You know what, though? If nobody has money to buy what the rich man is selling, that shill won't get employed in the first place. History has shown that the wealthy have repeatedly balked at employing that shill, when they can move their operations to China and employ people at less cost. Then Wal-Mart sells the wealthy person's products at a lower price, killing off local jobs. The end result is we all end up working for Wal-Mart, looking over our shoulders at some poor desperate sap who is willing to take our job for ten cents less an hour, while our government has less money to invest in infrastructure or training to improve the economy, and the wealthy get a bigger pile of cash which they refuse to risk by lending to us.

But we avoid those terrifying ideological hazards of 'socialism'. Instead, we work harder for less money and no benefits, with no job security, while every means to better ourselves is eliminated by budget cuts due to declining tax revenue. That is the economic vision the Republicans offer. We keep more of our "hard-earned money", while making it ever more unlikely that we will see it to begin with and working even harder to earn it.

I would respect the Republicans more if they were willing to take the wealthy to task for failing to hold up their end of the supply-side "bargain", but they won't. Instead, they abjure the middle class to spend more, while berating them for accumulating the consumer debt that enables them to do so. Oddly, the solution is always more tax cuts for the wealthy, because this time the wealthy will use it to our benefit. Really. We really, really mean it this time. And if that doesn't work, well, there's always more tax cuts for the wealthy. It can't fail now. And so forth and so on.

And so, the last defence for the Republicans is the Culture War.
Yes, re-fighting the Sixties is completely relevant to people who never lived through it, right?
It turns out that it really isn't. Not only that, but the people who did live through it aren't at all interested in re-visiting it. Ward and June Cleaver are dead. We aren't going back to the Fifties, which was a time of widespread poverty that is glossed over in nostalgia. Besides, a case can certainly be made that the worst excesses of the Sixties were in response to the heavy-handed repression of the Culture Warriors to begin with. The "values" that the Republicans are really pushing are bigotry, conformity, unquestioning obedience to authority, and "knowing one's place" in the social order. It doesn't matter who you are, it matters who people think you are. All of the other "values" preached by the Republicans are readily sacrificed with pride in the name of preserving the values I just mentioned. Thus, beating someone up that doesn't conform is your sacred duty, not some aberration of "values", for example. If the police arrest someone for a crime, obviously it is because they were guilty, so let's not "second-guess" authority. Any violation of the Republican's putative "values" is also acceptable if nobody finds out about it. It's an ugly paradigm that guarantees that those on the bottom will stay on the bottom, as part of God's Will, or something.

Now that a Democrat is soon to be in the White House, we can expect that the Republican concept of "criticising a sitting President during time of war is tantamount to treason" to conveniently disappear. Once again, dissent will be one's sacred duty, and not something that only whiners and traitors engage in. Republicans who presided over Bush's record debt will now be very concerned about fiscal restraint. We also will be admonished about the limits of Executive power by those who once asserted that those limits did not exist. Government "intrusion" will soon be something to be terrified of, not at all like the warrantless wiretaps, data mining, and rampant use of 'security letters' that the Bush Administration was so brave in carrying out. We can also look forward to the very odd phenomenon of criticising foreign policy as part of 'supporting the troops', when just yesterday it was 'undermining the morale of the troops'. Magically, criticising the Bush Administration and it's policies will suddenly become "divisive" by those who will showed no quarter in employing the basest of slanders against their opponents.

Because, you see, the Republicans are "the good guys", and anything that the good guys do is okay. When the bad guys do the same thing, however, it merely proves how bad they really are. For example, if Georgia attacks Russia and gets slapped down, that is disproportionate and evil. If Gaza does the same thing, anything goes in the name of self-defence. It's not so much that there are two standards as that there is one standard that is only applied in selected cases. For all of the talk about "American Exceptionalism", the bottom line is that it really means that America is excepted from the rules it applies to to other nations, and Republicans are excepted by virtue of being the voice of "true Americans".

So watch for that.