These Are Not Your Father's Political Parties

Oldsmobile use to have a commercial slogan that emphasized the changes made over time in their cars. The slogan: 'Not Your Father's Oldsmobile.' 

That slogan could be readapted to fit both of our major political parties because both parties have undergone significant changes over the past 160 years.

For example, the Democratic Party, as some conservatives are fond of pointing out, use to be the political party of slavery and then segregation. But, as those same conservatives are fond of overlooking, today's Democrats are far stronger promoters of equality than today's Republicans. In fact, the change started to occur around 1964 and 1965 with the passing of the Civil and Voting Rights Acts. In fact, out of the 42 Republican House of Representative congressmen who either voted against, voted present, or did not vote at all during the passage of the the 1964 Civil Rights Act, 29 were from states that could not be associated with the Confederacy. Out of the 100 Democrats who did not vote to pass the Civil Rights Act, only 7 were from non Confederate states. And, in fact, the 1964 Republican Presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater, voted against the Civil Rights Act in the Senate. Thus a Congressperson's region, rather than political party, served as the best predictor for those who voted on the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Both of our major political parties have changed significantly in my lifetime--I still remember the Kennedy-Nixon Presidential campaign. That was burnt into my memory because the mom, along with her twin sister, were very strong and loyal GOP supporters.

But we don't have to go that far back to see how both of our major political parties have changed. And over the past 20 to 30 years, while the Democrats became more business friendly under President Clinton, the Republicans have changed the most especially since the 2016 election. The Republican Party that existed when Mitt Romney ran as the Republican nominee for President is all but extinct now that Trump has become the leader of the party. And nothing could point out the dramatic changes in the Republican over the years than to compare how the Republicans reacted to the legal problems of Richard Nixon with how the are reacting now to the legal problems of Donald Trump.

For example, the most remembered question that occurred during the Senate Watergate hearings came from a Republican, Howard Baker, from Tennessee. His question: 'What did the president know and when did he know it?' During Watergate, there was a true bipartisan effort to get at the truth. Political tribalism did not rear its ugly, partisan head during those hearings. And because of that, there was good evidence that our government was functional, if not working, despite the failures of President Nixon.

It cannot be said that the same objectivity and lack of partisanship exists today. And that could be said both of those elected Republican officials in the House of Representatives nor of the voters who put them in office. And this is despite the fact that the crimes of President Nixon were much more obscured and took significantly more effort to find and reveal than the crimes of Trump. 

And so what has a been the response of the majority of Republicans elected to the House of Representatives to the criminal indictments of former President Trump by grand juries, not elected officials or political or judicial appointees? It has been to gaslight the public. Those Republicans who are remaining loyal to Trump are claiming that Trump is a vicim of political persecution and are also claiming that President Biden is the real guilty culprit  in this saga. And that is despite the fact that thus far, the Republicans have failed to produce any court worthy evidence that implicated Biden in any crimes while Trump has been indicted by a few grand juries.

So what we have in the House of Representatives, we are not speaking here to the situation in the Senate, is a highly contentious and partisan set of Republicans who are looking more to win elections and conquer their political rivals than to search for the truth over the allegations made about President Trump. And who do we have to blame for this mess? We need to look no farther than our closest non-magic mirror for the answer. At least that is what George Carlin has stated in some of his comedy routines. That because those officials were raised in American homes, received American educations, and were voted in by real Americans; it is the public's fault for this political dilemma.

And one of the driving factors in why the American voting public has voted in these Republicans in the House of Representatives is the widespread embracing of conspiracy theories that shed a negative light on the Dems or a positive light on the Repubs. And here, we should note that one of the factors that significantly contributes to the acceptance of conspiracy theories is the desire to show that one's own group, the Republican Party in this case, is superior to all of the other political parties (click here for the reference). Of course there are other factors involved such as the anxiety level of people and how confusing the times are. But I do want to focus  on how the desire to show that one's own group is superior to others makes us more vulnerable to accepting conspiracy theories. 

This desire to show that one's own group is superior to others shows that many of us are struggling to have or maintain an adequate personal sense of significance in today's world. In other words, one of  the real battles in encountering a person who has eagerly believed in conspiracy theories is in a person's battle for feeling significant. And so challenging  a person about a given conspiracy theory with the facts can be counterproductive. That is because we are using facts to tell a person who has serious doubts about themselves that not only are they wrong, but they have been fooled.

And so the Republican Party is messed up because many of its constituents are battling their own personal issues of feeling insignificant. And many of the leaders and influencers for the current Republican Party are not only well aware of that weakness, they are exploiting it. Also, we need to remember that the Democratic Party is not so hot either because it has its own sins. And all that points to is how we the public are vulnerable to being manipulated and thus exploited by those who perhaps understand things about us that we are unwilling to admit to ourselves.