GOP ↔️ Racism

Over at SplinterNews, Hamilton Nolan argues that the GOP is "existentially racist."

The Republican Party exists primarily to enable rich people to get richer. Its most powerful tool for drawing public support to this niche cause is racism. Indeed, research shows it.

In the American system, money can directly purchase political power. Wealthy people and business interests have used money to purchase an entire political party. (And much of the other party, too, but at least that’s a mixed bag.) The entities who fund the Republican Party do so as an investment. And that investment pays off in the form of tax cuts and deregulation. You’ll notice that tax cuts are the only thing this inept Republican Congress actually managed to achieve so far.  

Because “cut taxes on multimillionaires” is not a strong “populist” message, the Republican Party uses religion and patriotic flag-waving and culture wars to attract votes, out of necessity. But what works better than anything for this purpose? Racism. It is well understood and widely accepted that the shift among Southern voters from the Democratic to Republican Party occurred largely as a result of direct racist appeals by the Republicans, spurred by the civil rights movement. For the Republicans, civil rights were simply an opportunity to capture racist voters. And it worked. [...]  

Anyone who rejects racism cannot in good conscience be a member of the Republican Party. It’s that simple. If you are a Republican who believes racism is evil, either vote Democratic, vote for a third party, or don’t vote. 

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Conservative "freedom" means power, that is all

Commenter ifanyinterest nails it:

Conservatives don't want freedom. They want power. Freedom for those at the top is power over everyone else. Freedom for those at the bottom is a threat to power at the top.

"Freedom" for the GOP means taking out the government's ability to balance out the needs of the many against the needs of the few. Who cares if clean air regulations save literally thousands of lives? They cost shareholders money. Privatize the gains from polluting, but shove the cost onto the public.

In this case, regulation means putting the thumb on the scale to ensure that Facebook and Google become vehicles for conservative propaganda. It's never been about freedom. It's always been about power and control.

"States rights" = the freedom to oppress black people. It was about protecting slavery and then Jim Crow. "States rights" advocate Scalia still argued for the government's right to regulate marijuana. "States rights" has always been about protecting the power of old white conservatives. It was never a real ideology. It was always about power over others.

"The right to bear arms" = the right for white people to bear arms. Ronald Reagan and the Republican-controlled legislature in California repealed open-carry? Why? Because the Black Panthers carried openly. "Stand your ground" often doesn't apply to black people.

The TEA Party was created by Big Tobacco. The entire "get government off our backs" movement was funded by major corporations fighting deregulation. The TEA Party, which supposedly cared about the federal deficit, has gone entirely silent as Donald Trump blows up the deficit. It existed entirely to hamstring The Democratic Party's ability to control federal spending. They didn't want "freedom" from government healthcare. They wanted "freedom" for one of "their" guys to decide the budget, to work it so they get enormous subsidies in the form of unpaid tax cuts.

"Tough on crime" = "tough on poverty". Crimes associated with having none, such as property crimes, are responded to with the full force of the police state. SWAT teams are called out 50,000 times a year, often to serve warrants. Property crime account for $14 billion in losses each year. Wage theft accounts for $50 billion. Meanwhile, the agencies in charge of enforcing wage theft, protecting consumers, and policing corporations are gutted.

It's never been about freedom. It's always been about power. Power to tell women what to do with their bodies. Power for Christians to tell others how to worship. Power for wealthy businesses to pollute, cheat, and steal with impunity. Power to do whatever you want to black people--structural racism allows for poor whites to still have absolute power over others, so that they can buy into a system that has no constraints on power for those with money. The modern GOP is a fucking sham. It's about giving the powerful more power, and it spends literally billions of dollars a year to try and convince people otherwise, because it's a fundamentally untenable moral position. It's cancer.