The real power in the Republican Party is the constituency of the so-called Christian-right. And real policy of the Republican Party is conjured up by the so-called Neocons.
Neither the Christian-right crowd nor the Neocons will let anyone else have a say in Republican Party affairs at any of the county, state or national levels.The Christian-right bunch has but two agendas, one public and one more sinister. The more obvious motive is to impose narrow views of morality on all citizens, such as overturning the Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision of 1973 and continuing the battle against providing civil liberties to gays. The Roe v. Wade decision legalized a woman's right to privacy and to choose whether or not to have an abortion.
Their sinister, ulterior motive is to have Christianity declared the official religion of the United States, which would allow the government to persecute members of all other faiths.
Of course, since the second motive is a direct violation of the First and Fourth Amendments to the U. S. Constitution, it is not normally mentioned (although it's hinted at from time to time).
The Neocons, on the other hand, are followers of the late Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize winning economist who championed the bogus concept of a free-market economy. They harken back to the 18th Century writings of Adam Smith, who advocated free markets under the name of laissez faire capitalism.
In a way, the Neocons have their own religion that views greed as good. Another aspect of Neocon thinking is to privatize profits and socialize both losses and risk. Another way of looking at the neoconservative way of thinking is that any profits accumulated by a corporate entity are the property of the corporate owners (especially the hired managers known as C.E.O.s) and any loses belong to American taxpayers.
Therefore, all the risks are taken by unsuspecting taxpayers and all the profits are pocketed by corporate owners.
What no one is saying out loud is that both groups are driving both the Republican Party and the U. S. government over a cliff.
Because the Christian-right has a strangle hold on the Republican Party at all levels--county, state and nationwide--it's likely that many mainstream Republicans will leave the party knowing they will never be allowed to speak, let alone be listened to. They will have to either join with moderate Democrats or form their own party, perhaps both.
Neocons face an even bleaker fate. The recent collapse of the world economy, that will likely recess into a depression, has so disgraced the Neocon agenda of laissez faire (i.e., free-market) capitalism that the movement is all but dead. Neocons just don't know it yet. True laissez faire advocates will simply fade into the shadows of politics and wait for another opportunity in the near or distant future to steer the world to their disgraced ideology. And, since Neocons can't fight the Christian-right stranglehold on the Republican Party, they, too, will have to find other digs on the political spectrum.
That leaves the Republican Party a significantly diminished entity, one that will be a supremely happy, self-satisfied group with little or no influence. In other words, a minor party, identified as a third-, fourth- or fifth-tier also-rans. The G.O.P, as it's constituted today, will stick around for a few years as a minor party and then disband. Somehow a new party of moderates will emerge and there will be a new American order of politics.
That sort of thing has happened in the past--the Whigs dissolved just prior to the Civil War and the Republican Party arose from the ashes. Abraham Lincoln had been a Whig, but became the first Republican president.
America itself will survive, but be significantly diminished on the world stage. A long period of Democratically dominated politics, similar to the decade-long period following the Great Depression, will be the norm.
© Copyright 2008 by P. A. Triot. Reproduce and distribute at will, with proper attribution.
