The author (Robert Weiner) is correct in
identifying in his January 28, 2012 piece " inaccurately perceived self interest" as the
reason conservatives consistently vote against their own interests. However, giving
this as the sole answer, in my mind only deepens the mystery by begging an even
larger question of: Why it is that (mostly working class white) conservatives "consistently,"
and "inaccurately," misperceive what is in their own self-interest? I believe the
answer to the first question lies in answering this slightly larger and deeper
one, one that lies firmly in the racial subtext of American politics and
society.
The
following bit of history may in part help get to the bottom of this issue:
Since the Civil War, there have been two predicates that define the kind of
white tribalism that now best defines the conservative movement: the ability to
objectively separate whiteness from other races by economics and social means;
and the ability to continue maintaining in a "steady state," the distance that
measures this racial separation.
Arguably,
since slavery in general and the Bacon Rebellion in particular, one of the most successful economic
"sleights of hand" and "political wedges" ever invented in the American
political arena takes advantage of these two predicates. It has been to
convince working class whites that their economic interests lie, not in
solidarity with members of other (non-white) working class peoples, but with
members of the producer (or ruling) classes. It is this two-century old
race-based wedge, still mediating across classes, that is the proper answer to
Mr. Weiner's question. In fact it is this anomaly of race that even befuddled
Marx in his economic analysis of America's capitalist economy.
At
least since Strom Thurmond and the Dixicrats took over the Republican Party in
1948, and their leadership was reaffirmed again in Nixon's 1968 Southern
Strategy, this political wedge, this economic and tribal sleight of hand, has
been codified as a central part of Republican and conservative ideological
orthodoxy.
As
a result of it, effectively there is no narrative for the working class in
either conservative ideology or the Republican Party? To preserve their racial
identity, working class conservatives, line up like ten soldiers behind the interests of those whose best
interests are exactly the opposite of working class interests. They do so like
lemmings because to even suggest that there might be mutual worker's interests
(whether economic or social) that would straddle the racial divide, is to
commit tribal heresy by fundamentally betraying and trampling upon the last
vestige of sacred white tribal ground.
Put
simply, it is the issue of race that is the primary underlying reason
conservatives purposefully misperceive their own interests. It is because of
race that Republicans have no platform to address working class economic
issues. And it is because of race that "faux blue collar populists" like the "Tea
Party," or Pat Buchanan and now Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, are forced to
dip into the racial undercurrents to mine old stale coded emotional issues of racial
hatred, reframing them as "cultural" and "values" issues.
No
one is fooled by their repeated "tribal winks" "coded language," and "dog whistle signals, because we know
the source: deep structure, sublimated racism. Thus, in the end the conservative
misperception is a strategic misperception, one that continues to preserve the
integrity of what remains a dying form of white racial tribal solidarity.
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