Larger Editorial: Why Republicans are the Pyramid Scheme Party

In an item I ran on Sunday I said social conservatives (the majority of the Republican Party by far) need to wake up to being used by fiscal conservatives (the small minority of the party that actually runs it). And I’d like to continue on that thread now. After all, when social conservatives have been tricked, shammed, and bamboozled for so long, proper paragraph space must be paid.

By now, it’s no secret that the social conservative wing (what the big money fiscal conservatives mockingly call the “outdoor wing” of the party) has a different agenda than the fiscal conservative wing of the party. That is, it’s no secret to anyone BUT social conservatives. The relationship between the two wings of the party is mutual (fiscal conservatives need social conservative’s votes so they pretend to care about abortion, gay marriage, and illegal immigration) but not mutually beneficially (they take social conservative’s votes and use them to put in politicians that only care about ending all entitlements, keeping corporate subsidies, and tax cuts for the rich).

A Republican politician can’t advertise his campaign without fiscal conservative money but they can’t win at all without social conservatives showing up to block vote them in there…whether it’s in the voter’s own interest or not. The problem is, money seems to speak much louder than votes. The number of votes a certain sect of the GOP provides seems to be in complete contradiction to how much influence that sect has over the party. For example, let’s just say only 5 percent of the people who vote Republican nationwide are fiscal conservatives (it’s probably even lower than that), and then 35 percent of the people who vote Republican are military conservatives (it’s probably even lower than that and there’s already a big overlap between that group and social conservatives), and then 60 percent of the people who vote Republican are social conservatives, BUT the percentage of voters that’s the largest gets the least benefit for their votes.

Fiscal conservatives get everything they want: deregulation, the Bush tax cuts, a system that rewards outsourcing by letting CEOs pocket a percentage of “lower costs,” tax havens and loopholes, corporate welfare for thriving companies like big oil, no bid contracts, talk of privatizing Medicaid/Medicaid/Social Security, bailouts, a Wall Street that regulates the SEC more than the SEC regulates Wall Street, a credit industry that makes no sense, a banking industry that makes no sense, a healthcare industry that makes no sense, etc.

Military conservatives get most things they want: torture, the Patriot Act, wiretapping, the Iraq War, no gun control, the Afghanistan War, no bid contracts for defense contractors (hey, no bid contracts again), a huge annual budget, etc. But, unlike fiscal conservatives, there’s many things they don’t get like increased soldier pay and veteran benefits including healthcare (the homeless and suicide rates for returning veterans broke a record last year).

And social conservatives get almost nothing they want: a ban on gay marriage (an issue Bush ran on in 2004 but abandoned post-election to focus on privatized Social Security and tort reform making it harder to sue a corporation), an end to abortion, prayer in school, and the death of radical militants like Bin Laden…wait, actually they did get that…under a Democrat named Barack Hussein Obama, delivering them more than Bush ever did. You’ll also notice that after that their list is left with THREE bloody things (and not a damn one of them includes no bid contracts). Now I don’t happen to agree with those things, but the point is they’re not asking for much and they’re getting nothing no matter how many GOP politicians they elect. And in fact, they’re getting many, many things they did not ask for: the end of unions, the end of collective bargaining, the end of medicaid/medicare, the end of social security, the end of pensions, the end of manufacturing as outsourcing takes it away, tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans while any entitlement they get is cut and government workers lose their jobs.

It’s shameful what a pyramid scheme voting Republican is, but it’s even more shameful that social conservatives still allow themselves to be tricked in this way. I’m not the first to talk about how social conservatives have been tricked–the great Thomas Frank’s “What’s the Matter with Kansas” came out in 2004–but they’re STILL being tricked. And unfortunately, since they show no signs of waking up to getting tricked, I probably won’t be the last.