Frank's Musings

If Gngrich made the current Republican Party, did he model it on a football team?  Democrats use a college faculty model for their party. The GOP insists on ideological discipline; the Dems tolerate conflicting views. With luck, its narrower range of membership will penalize the Republicans when their opponents are energized by controversy and increase their voting turnout. The abortion issue may actually accomplish a winning women’s vote in 2024. Like tenure for college professors, over so fundamental a common concern, even an argumentative membership will coalesce.

Gingrich and Trump are false originators of fundamental political change. Instead, they simply recognized the underlying desertion of constitutional loyalty among Party members owing to their impatience with and resentment of their apparent exclusion from the exploitation of government benefits and programs by more advantaged individuals (or as Eugene Robinson has characterized it, they seek revenge).

Are resentment and ignorance in combination sufficient to hold a voting bloc together?  If so, that is what is known as the Republican Party today.  Its raison d’etre is nothing more than use of the democratic election process to produce careers for cynical professional politicians. You can call them right-wing; I call them unprincipled demagogues.

When democratic government operates well  i.e. is not “rigged,”   it offers perfect tools for manipulation by careerist political operatives.  A “liberal democracy” is one managed by elected representatives of a critical-thinking public.  Unfortunately, we are close to the disappearance of a critical- thinking public.  Owing to the growing predominance of electronic media on the thought patterns of nearly a majority of people in advanced societies, mastery of that technology is becoming more determinative of public opinion than convincing argument.  It is, therefore, not enough for assuring the common welfare to guard against autocratic rule; it is, more than ever necessary to motivate citizens to use their democratic tools (their votes) to attain the common good.

It has become dangerous to delegate responsibility for achieving that goal to elected surrogates.  The fading away of “civics” lessons from our primary education curricula is symbolic of the carelessness with which we have let decay our democratic form of government.  The citizens of a liberal democracy must be vigilant in order to prevent that their voting power from only inviting corruption of the government structure in service of special interests and personal ambition.  Political parties should not act like disciplined teams under a commanding manager; these different associations should each bring together equally orderly people with contrasting attitudes towards change.