Historical Note: the Republican Right and Its Ideas

September 19, 2012

Historical Note: the Republican Right and Its Ideas


In the NY Times of September 19, 2012, Maureen Dowd wrote:


"[Mitt Romney] seemed to have bought into the warped canard that some conservatives inside and outside of Congress have pushed: that the president and Nancy Pelosi were nefariously hooking people on unemployment benefits so they’d get addicted and vote Democratic to keep the unemployment bucks flowing like crack."


Whew! It's hard to know where to begin. But the notions above give the well-off in our society a victimhood, a narrative that can justify their meanness, their enforcement of public virtue, their sense of "us (=good)-them (=bad)", their continuance of tax privilege, their fear of dealing with equals. This attitude is but another iteration of right-wing fears. In 1935 a Republican slogan insulted President Roosevelt, his wife, black people and Jews, i.e. "You kiss the niggers, and I'll kiss the Jews, and we'll be in the White House as long as we choose." What is the above but another tired repetition of these ideas?