Republican platform

Finally getting back to how we got where we are today.

What Republicans want to do to America is not popular. Why have they had so much success implementing their platform?

First, what is their platform? I divide it into two parts, what the party elders really want and what issues they use to win votes. Naturally, there are issues that cross the line and play in both parts. There is even a small amount of heterodoxy in the Republican Party since it is a coalition between economic and social conservatives.

Still, the economic conservatives dominate the party's power. They toss the religious conservatives a bone now and then (and sometimes the fundie foot soldiers do notice that they are being taken for a ride), but the wealthy interests always come first.

So, the real platform:

• Low taxes for the wealthy
• Power concentrated in the hands of a few
• The end of unions
• Return to economic organization closer to feudalism than to laissez-faire
  
• The end of science-based and meritocratic regulation
• Foreign policy based on the economic interests of their real constituency
  
• Oh, and even lower taxes for the wealthy

Of course, these are all fundamentally elite economic issues with concentrated power and wealth as the end goals.

This sort of platform is, needless to say, difficult to sell to well-informed voters in a democracy. The Republicans have responded over the past 40 years with a mixture of:

• Disinformation
• Distraction
• Wedge issues

Coming when I get around to it: Details on the Republican tactical mixture.