A waste of time, yes, but a valuable lesson for the American voter because of what it tells us about the modern Republican Party. The greatest threat to marriage is not Adam and Steve or Heather having two mommies. It’s economic stress. Not having health insurance, getting laid off from your job, falling behind on your rent or mortgage, that’s what shakes marriage and leads to divorce, not gay marriage.
The GOP’s unwillingness or inability to address the economic concerns of ordinary Americans is why it falls back on divisive social issues. The dividing line between the conservative red states and the more liberal blue states is all about cultural concerns. Americans cast their votes for the candidate who “shares my values,” which is why blue-collar workers in economically depressed regions who should be Democrats vote Republican.
A new book, “What’s the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America,” shows how conservative politicians court blue-collar workers by attacking the values of the so-called liberal elite. Author Thomas Frank wanted to understand how a poor region of struggling ranchers and dying farm towns on the Great Plains of Kansas became a Republican stronghold when the Democratic Party is more in tune with the economic interests of these left-behind workers. Frank discovered that economic issues matter less than the visceral appeal of a party that vows “to fight back against artists who dip crosses in urine, Hollywood stars who wear outrageous clothes, Ivy League journalists who slant the news, and snob judges who remove Ten Commandments monuments from the parks, and so on.”
Frank’s thesis is that two major groups rule the modern GOP, moneyed interests and the religious right. For all the heated rhetoric about a culture war, the conservatives haven’t gained much ground. They haven’t gotten school prayer, abortion remains legal, Hollywood keeps churning out sexually charged movies. Americans oppose gay marriages, but there is no groundswell of support for a constitutional amendment to ban them. The country is becoming more tolerant and adopting a live-and-let-live attitude. It would be unimaginable for President Bush to re-enact anything remotely similar to the 1992 convention in Houston that nominated his father and that featured attacks on gays and working women. Yet when Republicans are in trouble politically, they instinctively go to the right and play the culture card.
Where conservatives have made real headway is in the transformation of the economy. The true beneficiaries of Bush’s policies are the corporate interests that underwrite the party. A Republican Senate aide jokes that they should rename Madison Square Garden–site of next month’s GOP convention–as the “The Pharma Center” in honor of the huge donations the pharmaceutical industry has provided to the Bush-Cheney campaign. One key reason the industry supports Bush and the GOP-controlled Congress is their approval last year of a prescription drug plan for seniors that shortchanges older Americans while guaranteeing windfall profits for the pharmaceutical industry. Pharmaceutical lobbyists were closely involved in drafting the bill that became law.
Among the provisions that the industry lobbied for is a ban on the re-importation of drugs on the grounds that their safety could not be assured. Thousands of Americans cross the border into Canada every day to purchase drugs at a cheaper price with no apparent ill effects on their health. Re-importation is a huge issue on Capitol Hill, dividing Republicans in their allegiance to their constituents and to their benefactors in the pharmaceutical industry. On Thursday of this week, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani briefed several Republican senators and a number of staffers on the potential dangers of drug re-importation. According to those who attended, Giuliani did not disclose that his firm has had a business relationship with the industry. In early 2002, Purdue Pharma retained Giuliani Partners to serve as consultants to help the company deal with its legal, financial and public-relations problems over the manufacture of the painkiller OxyContin.
Republicans are so blind to any conflict with Corporate America that Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl, who ran the meeting, reportedly praised Giuliani, saying, “So few people believe what the government has to say, it’s good to have someone with an independent perspective.” Along with Giuliani, former New York police commissioner Bernard Kerick is also lobbying lawmakers on the industry’s behalf. “They’re literally cashing in on 9/11 to oppose drug importation,” says a Senate staffer.
During the primaries, Howard Dean challenged Southern voters to move beyond the cultural symbols of a Confederate flag on the back of their pickup truck to identify their economic self-interest, which is better represented by the Democratic Party.
The Dean appeal backfired in part because he’s a Yankee without an ear for Southern sensibilities, but mostly because he implied economic self-interest is more important than cultural concerns. Voters animated by school prayer, opposition to abortion and what they call the gay lifestyle, think these are the bedrock issues. Dean’s mistake was telling voters they had to choose.
