WHAT IS THE REPUBLICAN COALITION ALL ABOUT? PART I

What is the social basis of the Republican Party, USA, the so called GOP? It is the big bourgeoisie and finance capital in particular. In that sense it is not unlike the Democrats who are also a party of big capital. Both parties need to drag the general public into supporting them and by proxy their masters, big capital.

Of course there is a wee bit of a problem. The extraordinarily wealthy constitute a percent or less of the population and their interests are often in direct opposition to those of the other 99% so they hardly can expect the Republicans or the Democrats to appeal to anyone without at least pretending to discuss issues of interest to the broader public.

If we think briefly about the gun control issue we can see a little better about how the Republicans co-opt their constituency into to supporting their class oppressors.

The Republican Coalition seems rather diverse although it can be thought of a white and Protestant to a large degree of accuracy. This provides a certain amount of cultural cohesion but in terms of issues the coalition is quite diverse.

So I imagine the ruling class would like to see all guns in the hands of their thugs, their armed forces and their police forces and they have done a pretty god job of arranging that
situation. Still, millions of Americans want to keep their guns so the Republicans appeal to that popular desire. So there is a great deal of discussion of supporting this right but clearly, the Republicans are just playing a game in this
regard, to deceive the public into thinking that they represent the interests of run of the mill citizens.

Those who support the citizens' right to bear arms are not necessarily crackpots, far from it. Of course they may have a lot of crazy ideas about other things but the concern about an armed people remains legitimate and perhaps is even foundational in at least revolutionary times such as the War of Independence, the War of 1812 and the Civil War. Those citizens, who are stereotypically on the "right"
are certainly in touch with the reality that a more repressive government is more likely if the people are completely unarmed.

So I write this not to demonize a citizen who is concerned about the tyranny of the state or perhaps that the tyranny of the state can go to far.

This is not to completely flush the concerns of those who want to ban guns because these guns are not really helping the poor and oppressed when they are used in petty crime and personal disputes. Both sides have some merit and I hope that both sides can at least understand the concerns of the other side.

Of course it is the white supremacists and fascists, the far right, the open oppressors who have taken up the gun both officially and unofficially in the United States. The recent murder of Dr. Tiller reminds us of that low intensity war, a form of right-wing terrorism directed at progressives, in that case against abortion providers. And that is only one form of rightist violence in the United States today.

Somehow that particular war against abortion providers has not been labeled as such by the Republicans or Democrats. It is a low intensity war with the goal of stopping abortions by killing abortion providers. It is a strategy that ultimately paid off in Wichita for the terrorists, terrorists never labeled as such by the media that otherwise uses the term terrorist with virtually no discretion.

The Democratic party likes to appeal to the other side of the issue, to oppose guns because they kill thousands of folks in street crime, crimes of passion and accidents every year. Yet, at the end of the day the big bourgeoisie wants all the weapons in its hands and no weapons in the hands of the people.

In this regard it can also be said that the Republicans seem to be intimately related to the many militias, generally white militias that have sprung up across the nation. It has to be said that at the core of the Republican's cracker constituency is a morass of right wing organizations that seem to be almost under the protection of the Republican Party.

Crucially we must remember that while the Democrats were once the party of Jim Crow that the white racists left en masse for the Republican party after historic civil rights legislation was passed by the likes of LBJ and other Democrats. White supremacists incubate and flourish under the wings of the Republican coalition and those Republicans that are not conscious racists ignore it or think it is a good thing.

The Republicans have appealed to so-called social conservatism including being against abortion, against birth control, and for a fundamentalist anti-scientific view of the world. The fundamentalist campaigns against the theory of evolution, biological reasearch and modern cosmology have distracted the nation from improving our educational institutions which have been in decline for several decades. Home schooling and religious schools further contribute to the skewing of the population towards
schismatic and bizarre views of the world. At one end of diversity is frank insanity and the Republicans have something close to a monopoly upon the voting insane.

So the white protestants and the white supremacists, we have touched on those constituencies. Then there are the folks who support the right to bear arms. We discussed that and some of the issues that have grown up around it.
We also touched on the armed terrorist groups that seem to fester and live under the protection of the Republican movement as a whole. Some discussion of the role of religious fanatacism has also been introduced. Later on we can say something more about all of this and the Ron Paulists, economic conservatives, and even one of the rarests animals in the United States today the progressive Republican!