I have spent the past two weeks lambasting the GOP and calling out Republicans for their extremism, regressivity, and violent rhetoric. Anyone who pays attention to politics and cares about solving America’s major problems (which should include everyone) should be aghast at the turn the Republican Party has taken.
Republicans across the country, from local city councils all the way to the Congress, are promoting extremely damaging policies, ranging from widespread attacks on abortion rights to attacks on science and history curriculum in textbooks, to massive cuts in basic social services for the poor and middle class.
But perhaps even more damaging to the body politic, is the Republican assault on reason. Over the past two years the Republican Party, urged on by its most incoherent and extremist fringe―the Tea Party―and amplified by the rightwing media noise machine has constructed an alternative reality for conservative activists in which up is down and black is white. In this universe once popular conservative ideas are now considered heresy. Essentially, the ruling philosophy of the modern Republican Party is to oppose virtually everything Obama and the Democrats support, regardless of its merit, even if the policy is based on bedrock conservative principles.
This is no way to run a country. America is a two-party democracy, and we need both political parties to be firmly rooted in reality, and share at least the same basic goals for society; e.g. equal opportunity, a robust social safety net, high environmental quality, and strong national security.
And while the debt problems of the U.S. in the short-term are not a serious concern (in fact increasing government debt to stimulate the economy in a severe recession is the exact right policy), our long-term deficit problems are serious. Solving them will require some major changes to Medicare, military spending, and the tax structure, and both parties will have to make tough choices and come to the bargaining table in good faith. That faith doesn’t exist right now, largely because of the intransigence in the GOP, and its insistence on promoting misinformation and lies about the budget realities, as well as opposing common sense cost-control that are already in the new healthcare legislation (which they just voted to repeal).
The country desperately needs the serious and reasonable wing of the Republican Party to make a resurgence and take the Party back from the Tea Party extremists, and the likes of Palin, Beck, Limbaugh, and Hannity. Many of the policies needed to address climate change come straight from conservative economics, and their best advocates would be Congressional Republicans. The same goes for healthcare; the individual mandate was originally a Republican idea (promoted as an alternative to government-run healthcare), and we need Republicans who recognize why it is crucial for a well-functioning private insurance system; instead we get massive lawsuits peddling the nonsense that the mandate is unconstitutional. On taxes, we are going to need serious Republicans who are willing to support higher taxes for the rich, along with reductions in corporate giveaways, and even some of the “sacred cows” such as the home mortgage interest rate deduction and agricultural and fossil fuel subsidies.
While I am disgusted at the behavior of the modern Republican Party over the past two years, honest conservatives should be the most upset, since their Party and its ideals have been sacrificed in the most cynical way for political power at the expense of principle and the public good. It is ultimately up to them to wrestle back their Party from the extremists and return the Republican Party to its honorable conservative roots.
P.S. Here are links to a talk I gave a few months ago that relates this theme to environmental policy:
http://go.miis.edu/scorse-environment-economics-short
http://go.miis.edu/scorse-environment-economics-long
Jason Scorse