Thomas Klikauer and Nadine Campbell for BuzzFlash: How Democracy Turned Into Nuclear Weaponized Partisanship by the Republicans
March 10, 2021
Sarah Palin epitomized the rise of GOP cultural wars and racist partisanship when she ran with John McCain in 2008 (Jeff Wasson)
By Thomas Klikauer and Nadine Campbell
It is no longer conservatism, moral values, or ideological conviction that gets you to the top in the Republican party. Now it is showmanship.
When living in the USA in the 1990s, people used to tell me voting is like a choice between Pepsi and Coke and that Democrats and Republicans are much the same. Increasingly, this is no longer the case, if it ever was. More and more, US politics is defined by polarization.
During the last decades, the USA has seen a slow but steady movement towards polarization. This can be summed up as: over time, Americans became more consistent with the party they vote for. Voters and their party became alike. In a trend towards a hardening of polarization, many voters vote for their party because they dislike the opposing party.
Evidence from 1994 and 2017 support this. More than two decades ago, 39% of Democrats and 26% of Republicans said discrimination was the main reason why many black people couldn't get ahead. Four years ago, the number of Democrats who agreed with that statement had jumped to 64%, while only 14% of Republicans agreed with the statement. Polarization is on its way.
In 1994, Democrats and Republicans agreed to a roughly similar degree that immigrants are good for the USA (32% and 30%). A few years ago, the virtually non-existing gab of 1994 had opened up considerably between Democrats (84%) and Republicans (42%). The overwhelming majority of Democrats believe migration is good, while less than ½ of Republicans think that.
How far polarization has travelled can also be seen in two statements that many would find it hard to believe today. At one point, Ronald Reagan said, I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and who have lived here even though some time back they may have entered illegally. Today, many Republicans will find this hard to believe. Trump-Republicans will simply ignore the truth of what their icon – Ronald Reagan – said. On the other side of the coin, Bill Clinton once declared, the era of big government is over. Today, many Democrats will find this hard to swallow.
A trend towards polarization can also be found not just in recent US history but also in geography. Today, there is virtually no American city that routinely votes Republican. Simultaneously, there are very few rural areas that vote for Democrats. Bill Clinton, for example, carried ½ of all 3,100 counties. Hilary Clinton carried just 500. Over time polarization had hold sway. In addition, she won in places that represented 2/3 of the USA's GDP, signifying 64% of the USA's entire economic activity. If Trump-voting localities would have exited the USA, their new nation – Trumpland – would have been Trump's very own Shithole Country.
Yet, Democrats and Republicans have become more polarized not just in geographical terms but also in their ethnicity, religion, ideology and geography. A few years ago, two-thirds of Republicans said they preferred to live in a community where houses are large and farther apart, and schools and shopping aren't too close either. Meanwhile, roughly the same number of Democrats favored smaller houses within walking distance of schools and shopping. In other words, in a Tesla vs Ram 2500 contest, Audi, BMW, and Volvo owners vote for Democrats and Cadillac, Land Rover, Lexus, and Lincoln owners vote for Republicans.
Geographically, culturally and in terms of consumption, Democrats and Republicans have become more polarized. It is no longer just ideology that divides Democrats and Republicans but also their identities and even fashion. Republicans wear Wrangler jeans. Democrats wear Levi's.
Worse, polarization may even shape family life. When people were asked five decades ago whether they were pleased or displeased if their son or daughter was to marry a member of the other political party, very few Democrats (4%) and Republicans (5%) said they were upset by cross-party marriage.
By 2008, it rose to Democrats (20%) and Republicans (27%). Two years later, it was already at Democrats (33%) and roughly half of all Republicans. Increasingly, they are worried about an inter-party marriage. Polarization is on the way, even inside families. In other words, just make sure that your daughter's new boyfriend drives an Audi and wears Levi's jeans or drives a Ram 2500 and wears Wrangler.
Apart from such family advice, in politics, polarization has dire consequences. It creates silos of group-based ideologies and social media echo-chambers that confirm one's political attitudes and loyalties. Once such ideological loyalties are engaged, it becomes hard to change people's minds even when you can categorically refute their arguments.
Not betraying one's loyalty overrides logic and even science. Thinking becomes irrational, and it defies evidence. One's confirmation bias overrides arguments. Cognitive dissonance rules as motivated reasoning take over. Similar to an underling defending her boss (e.g., Donald Trump) by inventing alternative facts, our mind is highly motivated to defend our group's ideological position despite contradictory reasons. In other words, some become increasingly likely to believe the earth is flat and pigs can fly.
Beyond that, pure demographics might put the Republican party into the pickles, as the English say. The year 2013 marked the first year in which the majority of newborns under the age of one were non-white. Since the Republican party's voters tend to be mostly older white men, the fact that the only shrinking group is the non-Hispanic white population might cause concern for a future voting pool that is in decline. And the party's pool is ageing rapidly as well. In 2018, the most common ages among racial groups were:
· Whites: 58
· Asians: 29
· African Americans: 27
· Hispanics: 11
With an ageing pool, the Republican party also faces the fact that by the time President Obama came to office, 54% of the US population was Christian and white. By the 2016 Donald Trump election, it was 11% lower, sitting at 43%. Evangelical Christians are one of the key groups that supported Trump. In 2016, 81% voted for Trump, and in 2020 still, 75% did so. There was a 6% less decline. Worse, the group, on the whole, is in decline.
As a consequence, Democrats and Republicans follow two different strategies. Democrats seek to continue to expand their non-white base without alienating white voters. Simultaneously, Republicans seek to win over white voters without appearing to be too obviously racist. Each camp seems to be divided not just ideologically but also in their political strategies. On the ideological side of the equation, to be a Democrat increasingly means to be a liberal progressive. Being a Republican increasingly means to be conservative.
Polarization is further shown by misconceptions held about the other side. Overall, Democrats are inclined to think that 44% of Republicans earned more than $250,000 a year. The actual number of Republicans earning that is just about 2%. On the other side, Republicans think that 38% of all Democrats are gay, lesbian or bisexual. The real number is around 6%.
Perhaps such misconceptions have grown in recent years because the two groups increasingly consume different media sources. On the one hand, Republicans entertain themselves with Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. Democrats prefer CNN and MSNBC. In addition, the US radical right seeks out ideological echo-chambers where they obtain information they want to receive. News and information remain important. It is just as important as where to get the news from. News and information sources are not neutral. They might well be the most powerful actor in politics.
In 2015, Donald Trump received 78% of all coverage on the supposedly liberal and democrat-oriented CNN. Perhaps it is just as CBS boss Les Moonves once said, it may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS … It's a terrible thing to say, but bring it on, Donald. As a TV clown with years of experience, Donald Trump understood what is newsworthy. Trump focused on the new, the outrageous, conflict, secrets, obscenities, indignation, anger, etc. While Obama and Biden inspire people through passion and wisdom, Trump does it through battle.
Donald Trump was extremely influential in mobilizing his base. Increasingly, Democrats and Republicans focused not so much on winning swing voters but on mobilizing their base to vote. In short, an acute awareness of polarization has led to a change in political strategy. Indeed, Donald Trump's mobilizing strategy let to success in 2016, and so did President Obama's strategy before Trump. On the downswing, such a polarization strategy will lead to further polarization.
Trump's strategy and success would have been impossible fifty years ago. At that time, the elites of the Republican party would have ended his candidacy early. Fifty years on, Ted Cruz called Trump a pathological liar, utterly amoral, and a narcissist at a level I don't think this country's ever seen. Cruz was right. Yet, Rick Perry said Trump's candidacy was a cancer on conservatism, and it must be clearly diagnosed, excised, and discarded. Rand Paul said Trump was a delusional narcissist and an orange-faced windbag. Finally, Marco Rubio called Donald Trump dangerous and warned that we should not hand the United States' nuclear codes to an erratic individual. They were all correct. Yet, every single one of them backed Trump.
It is no longer conservatism, moral values, or ideological conviction that gets you to the top in the Republican party. Now it is showmanship. It is no longer the party machine that decides who will be the candidate; instead, it is popularity. Alexis de Tocqueville's warning in his 1839 classic book, Democracy in America, has become a reality. He said that in democracy, not the wise man would come to the top but those with the biggest mouth, the loudest voice.
As for the Republican party, polarization, the decline of the party machine's relevance and power, and demographics leave the party increasingly with fewer options. It is getting worse for US Republicans. US Democrats have won the popular vote in six of the last seven presidential elections. Joe Biden is no exception to that. And they will continue to do so. Set against the Democrats, rising electoral success are the Republican party's seven pathologies:
1. The party has become an insurgent outlier and is ideologically extreme;
2. It is scornful of compromise;
3. It is unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, or science;
4. It is dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition;
5. It has declared war on the government;
6. It has adopted a take-no-prisoners approach; and
7. It constitutes a huge obstacle to the effective governance of the USA.
As polarization is steadily increasing, this will only harden the Republican party in its tribalism and its focus on its own base. By September 2019, 75% of self-identified conservatives and 91% of self-identified conservative Republicans said that Trump was doing a good job. Such numbers might indicate that conservatism was no longer just an ideology. It had mutated to be a group identity.
Group identity and polarization are not the only problems. The problems of an antiquated democratic system also began to show in recent years. By the beginning of 2020, the Republican party controlled the White House, the Senate and the Supreme Court. The only branch of government, the Democrats, controlled was the House.
Yet, Democrats didn't just win more votes in the House elections, they also won more votes in Senate elections, and they won more votes in both the 2016 and 2000 presidential elections. If America were a real democracy, Democrats would have controlled the House, the Senate, the White House. Through those victories, it would also shape the Supreme Court. Republicans know this, and hence we find voter suppression as a key strategy.
Not just because of the structural deficiencies of US democracy, the Economist Intelligence Unit sees the USA as a flawed democracy. This is a bitter and embarrassing assessment for a country that likes to pride itself on bringing democracy to other countries. Based on the evidence presented by Ezra Klein in Why We're Polarized, polarization is set to intensify in coming years and worse; this will not aid any process in which the USA can fix its deficient, faulty and defective democracy.
Thomas Klikauer teaches at the Sydney Graduate School of Management at Western Sydney University, Australia. He has over 600 publications, including a book on the AfD.
Nadine Campbell teaches in the School of Business at Western Sydney University and is the managing director for Abydos Academy.
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