Mr. Moderate

Anybody who is learning to be a political wonk these days had best read the Thomas Frank book: What’s the Matter with Kansas? This book provides a liberal education about why the right wing is so politically powerful these days and just what drives the people who have been sucked into their propaganda arena to continually vote against the interests of the common people and for the interests of the wealthiest Americans. From an economic standpoint, if you want to understand why the disparity in wealth between the upper regions of the American economy and the rest of us is so great, you start with this book. The more that Americans vote for Republicans, the more wealth is sucked out of the lower classes and into the pockets of the super-rich, and the State of Kansas is merely a microcosm for how the Republicans gained power through deliberate manipulation of public opinion using advertising which is pure propaganda.

You see, Kansas didn’t used to be the reddest of red states. As Frank points out, over a century ago, Kansas was a hotbed of socialism and populism, as was most of the Midwest. In those days, the small farmers had power, and it was the power of the voting booth which eventually led to the sacrosanct agriculture subsidies provided by our modern federal government. Ever since the “free soil” Republicans wrested control of Kansas from the pro-slavery Democrats before the Civil War, the identity of Kansas was closely tied to Republicanism in politics. But even into the middle of the 20th century, the Kansas politicians who made a splash in national politics were almost universally from the moderate or progressive wing of the Republican Party. President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Senators Bob Dole and Nancy Kassebaum would have much more in common with the policies of progressive Republican President Theodore Roosevelt than with any part of the leaders of the modern Republican Party. The turning point for Republicans was the Civil Rights Act of 1964. When President Lyndon B. Johnson signed that law, he knew he was signing away political control of the south for at least the next several decades. And as people re-thought their political affiliations in the wake of that single act, the face of American politics was being changed for decades to come.

Senator Barry Goldwater, known as “Mr. Conservative” when he was in his heyday, voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 not because he was in any way bigoted, but because he believed that the law went over the boundaries of what was allowed by the Constitution of the United States. But the political theatre that came out of that 1964 debate, with the party of Lincoln arguing against a new civil rights law while the party of slavery argued for it, effected a dramatic reversal in American politics. Blacks were once a reliable voting block for Republicans. And the white people who lived in the south voted only for Democrats. This partisan divide was the legacy of the Civil War and the political divisions which led up to that war. But the New Deal of President Franklin D. Roosevelt started a rift with the conservative old south. President Johnson himself first went to Washington as an aide to one of the Congressmen elected during Roosevelt’s landslide win in 1932. By 1948, the south was so at odds with the mainstream Democrat Party that it formed its own Dixiecrat Party and ran Strom Thurmond as its candidate for President. In 1964, as a direct consequence of the debate over the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Strom Thurmond switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. He was the first of the old segregationists to switch, but he wasn’t the last. In fact, large parts of the old south remain solidly Democrat in terms of party registration, but they vote solidly Republican for the same reasons that Strom Thurmond switched parties in 1964.

But the party alliances based upon economic interests have not changed. The Republicans are still the party of big business while the Democrats are still the party of organized labor. But while organized labor was very strong from the 1930s into the 1960s, it weakened dramatically as big business was able to take advantage of cheap overseas labor, initially in Japan, but now including many other low wage and pro-business countries around the world, most surprisingly including China. Organized labor remains strong now only in those industries where the jobs cannot be exported, primarily in construction (building trades, etc.). Still, even in those industries, in most areas of the United States, there is strong pressure from big business to use smaller “independent” contractors instead of larger unionized firms in order to force costs down and increase profits for the wealthy. These efforts are supported by the modern Republican Party and the laws it has been able to enact over the years.

The first Republican who was able to get large numbers of traditional Democrat voters to strongly support him was President Ronald Reagan. Reagan was also the model for the modern media-driven propaganda campaign that was largely perfected by Karl Rove for George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign. The key driving force in any such campaign is propaganda. You get the people to vote against their own best interests by convincing them to cast their vote based upon some single point of distinction which sounds appealing to the particular block of voters you are targeting. If you can target enough blocks of these “single issue” voters, along with traditional party loyalists, you will win the election, even though the program you actually intend to implement will do damage to the vast majority of people who vote for your side. Frank’s book, What’s the Matter with Kansas?, clearly documents how this process has worked its way to conclusion in Kansas. The State of Kansas has one of the best climates for business, and one of the worst climates for workers, in the entire United States. It has this due to the success of the “single issue” political process and the constant propaganda being fed to them by business interests tied to the Republican Party. I first wrote about that unfairness in the radio medium over a year ago.

But the key take-away from Frank’s book is just how easy this has all been for the wealthy who now own most of America. Or at least, most of middle-America (which was always cheaper to buy than the coastal areas). And if you wish to assess just how difficult it is to oppose those wealthy companies and individuals, just take a look at the mess our political system has made of illegal immigration. I can’t believe that more than a small minority of Americans want to see our nation flooded with illegal immigrants. But big business uses illegal immigrant workers to drive down (or hold down) labor costs, so guess what: our nation is flooded with illegal immigrant workers and there isn’t anything that regular Americans can do to stem the tide of illegal immigrants. And yet, Americans keep voting for those same politicians who keep letting in illegal immigrants who take over our jobs. Isn’t that insanity on the part of the voting public? Well, that insanity is institutionalized in Kansas. The Republicans have succeeded in getting the voters to focus on all the wrong issues and to vote themselves continuing degradation in the work force and in all spheres of their personal economic lives, all to the benefit of the wealthiest Americans. It might be fair to ask if Kansas will ever come to its senses in time. I must certainly hope so, because if the answer to that question is “no,” then there is no hope for whatever is left of the United States of America.