The late conservative columnist, Sam Francis, once quipped that the Democrat Party is the Evil Party and the Republican Party is the Stupid Party. This cannot be repeated often enough. The Republican Party has repeatedly demonstrated that it has no idea what is best for its continued viability and the people who actually vote for it. The persistent problem with the Republican Party is that every election cycle it pitches to the besieged middle class in Middle America and then goes to Washington and does the bidding of donor class fat cats. The flyover country middle class has continued to go along with this game because in our alleged “two party” system at least the Republican Party pretends to like them. The Democrat Party on the other hand, which is historically supposed to be the party of the working man, long ago gave up the pretense of actually caring about the economic interests of or even liking flyover country yokels. Instead Democrats by and large see such yokels as a major part of the problem due to their Bible-clinging and gun-toting ways and status as bearers of some mystical privilege. But the masses can only be expected to put up with this dynamic for so long before they’ve had enough and demand change. This appears to be happening, yet the Republican Establishment scratches its collective head in befuddlement. “Why are the plebs so angry?”
What the success of the Donald Trump campaign should clearly demonstrate to the GOP leadership and its elected representatives if they are paying attention or care is that average Republican voters are not really motivated by the prospect of cuts in the marginal income tax rates of the rich. They believe the middle class is under siege from well-connected corporatists above and a permanent underclass below, and that the federal government works for the interests of both of these and against their own, and about this they are manifestly correct.
So how does the Republican Party respond to this disconnect? It elevates to the House Speakership a man, Paul Ryan, who is a virtual caricature of all that is wrong with the GOP, and I might add, it does so with the acquiescence of a lot of the “Freedom Caucus.” What? Was the Monopoly Man not available?
Donald Trump is resonating with the flyover base, much to the chagrin of the Establishment and their lackeys in the “conservative” punditocracy, on two issues in particular, immigration and trade. Both are near and dear to the heart of the base because both address two of the main things that have caused middle class fortunes to stagnate, economic globalization and the mass importation of cheap labor, both illegal and legal.
In the midst of this rebellion in the heartland, the Republican Party keepers of the flame insisted on anointing Paul Ryan as Speaker, after their original choice crashed and burned, but Ryan could not be more wrong on these two issues at the heart of the base’s uprising.
Ryan is a hard core amnesty supporter. By Republican standards he is an “extremist” on the issue. He also supports virtual open borders with regard to legal immigration, a policy that not only would perpetuate the problems of unemployment, underemployment and stagnant wages that already plague us, but would guarantee that the Republican Party will become a permanent minority party, virtually irrelevant on the national stage, within a few election cycles. Talk about the Stupid Party. Many of them appear to not be able to do basic math.
On globalist managed trade deals (To call them free trade deals is a scandalous misuse of language.), Ryan is again the worst of the worst. Ryan is not just a casual supporter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the legislative gimmickry of fast track that enabled it. He co-authored (along with faux populist Sen. Ted Cruz, I might add) a blatant piece of apologia for fast track and the TPP in the Power Elite … err I mean … Wall Street Journal before said power elite ramrodded the fast track abomination through Congress. Way to represent the peeps there, GOP.
What this shameful Ryan spectacle once again demonstrates is that the Republican Party is worse than worthless when it comes to representing the interests of the majority of people who actually vote for it. It’s recent history (since the ’60s +/-) has been to serve as a sort of safety valve to diffuse periodic fits of anger from the masses when they wake up and realize they are getting screwed. People of good will may differ on whether this means the Republican Party needs to be reformed or scrapped and replaced, but what should be obvious to all who are not beholden to the donor class is that the current situation is intolerable. I suspect that for now the one most helped by the Ryan debacle is Donald Trump.