KRUGMAN: Class War Politics

From the New York Times courtesy of the Progressive American:

Before the 1940's, the Republican Party relied financially on the support of a wealthy elite, and most Republican politicians firmly defended that elite's privileges. But the rich became a lot poorer during and after World War II, while the middle class prospered. And many Republicans accommodated themselves to the new situation, accepting the legitimacy and desirability of institutions that helped limit economic inequality, such as a strongly progressive tax system. (The top rate during the Eisenhower years was 91 percent.)

When the elite once again pulled away from the middle class, however, Republicans turned their back on the legacy of Dwight Eisenhower and returned to a focus on the interests of the wealthy. Tax cuts at the top — including repeal of the estate tax — became the party's highest priority.

But if the real source of today's bitter partisanship is a Republican move to the right on economic issues, why have the last three elections been dominated by talk of terrorism, with a bit of religion on the side? Because a party whose economic policies favor a narrow elite needs to focus the public's attention elsewhere. And there's no better way to do that than accusing the other party of being unpatriotic and godless.

Click here for the rest.

This approach, trumping up fears of foreign enemies while asserting that only Republicans can protect Americans from the boogyman, was created during the Reagan era. Back in those days, the enemy was a then declining and crumbling Soviet Union, successfully painted by the Gipper as an impossibly powerful and globally pervasive "evil empire." Today it's Islamic terrorists in the closet or under the bed who are out to get us, but the principle is still the same: scare the hell out of just enough people to get them to vote against their own economic interests, and the GOP is in business.

The reality, of course, is that the Democrats, who are far more serious about actually governing the country because, you know, their core principles aren't about abolishing government, are far better positioned philosophically to protect the nation from terrorists. It's just that they seem so touchy-feely...well, let us never forget that the ancient Spartan warriors, the most badass fighters in the Mediterranean back in the day, were bigtime gay-boys.

But I digress. The point is that, while this fear-distraction political ploy is relatively new in US politics, the class war is not. Indeed, it is always extraordinarily ironic whenever a conservative screams "class warfare" as some sort of admonishment toward liberals, when the truth is that the wealthy class has been waging class warfare against pretty much everybody else since the founding of the republic. Indeed, there are some very good arguments out there that the US Constitution is far more about, as Founding Father James Madison said, "protecting the minority of the opulent against the majority," than it is about "liberty and justice for all."

The rich know what they're up to, but most of the rest of the country takes some stock, at least, in the bogus notion taught in public schools of the "classless" America. It is only when the wealthy overplay their hand, and their relentless diversionary propaganda collapses, that their war-waging is noticed, as happened during the Great Depression. It is my belief that we are rapidly approaching once again one of those moments in history of overplay. In other words, I think the conservatives' days are numbered.

And I'm not just talking about the Republicans, either.

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