In the wake of their 2012 election losses many Republicans through their actions are making it clear that their real goal is to return America to the Gilded Age - a time when unions did not exist, working conditions were dangerous and employee benefits like health insurance were unknown. Indeed, it seems that they would embrace working conditions that resulted in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory inferno a hundred years ago. Why else would the GOP be pushing for so-called "right to work" laws that guarantee that corporations can pay workers less, strip away benefits, and send more workers on a road to serfdom? While some in the GOP are figuring out that the GOP war on workers, women, gays, immigrants and minorities isn't going to lead to improved electoral results in the future, most seem only too happy continuing to trying to drag America back to the often brutal 19th Century. An op-ed in the Washington Post looks at the phenomenon. Here are excerpts:
There is, unfortunately, another school of thought on the right that rejects adjusting to a new electorate and to circumstances very different from the ones that Ronald Reagan inherited in 1980. Strategies for future victories are based on a naked use of government power to alter the political playing field in a way that diminishes the political influence of groups likely to be hostile to the conservative agenda.
The tea party movement cast itself as an authentic grass-roots expression of democracy, and in some ways it was. But the conservative legislatures it swept into office in so many states in 2010 took decidedly anti-democratic actions aimed at reducing the size of the electorate through a variety of voter-suppression measures — hard-to-obtain voter IDs, shorter early-voting periods, new barriers to voter registration drives and long ballots that slowed the lines on Election Day.
Now comes Michigan’s new right-to-work law, passed Tuesday in a travesty of normal democratic deliberation. This effort to weaken unions would be problematic in any event. The moral case for unions is that they give bargaining strength to workers who would have far less capacity to improve their wages and benefits negotiating as individuals. Further gutting unions is the last thing we need to do at a time when the income gap is growing.
But beyond that, the way Gov. Rick Snyder (R) and the Republican Michigan Legislature rushed right-to-work through a lame-duck session was insidious. The anti-union crowd waited until after the election to pass it.
The political motivation here is obvious. Union families are the premier cross-racial Democratic constituency. Nationwide, President Obama carried union households by 18 points but non-union households by only one point — a “union gap” of 17 points. In Michigan, the union gap was an astonishing 32 points: Obama won union households 66 percent to 33 percent, the rest of the electorate by 50 percent to 49 percent.
But the most disturbing aspect of the Michigan power grab is what it says about where the conservative argument may go. Those willing to expand the appeal of conservatism by refreshing it will face opposition from those who would try to make new thinking unnecessary. They’d simply rig the rules to chip away at the political capacity of groups that don’t buy into conservative orthodoxy.
Increasingly, I do not see how a truly moral person can be a part of today's GOP. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, however, since no one is more lacking in true morality than the Christofascists in the GOP base who talk about moral values but are best defined by their contempt for and hatred of others.
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