White Panthers...or perhaps Old Lords

Two items in recent days, one concerning each of the two front-runners for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, have prompted me to pose an intriguing and provocative question about the modern GOP. That question: is the Republican Party a mau-mauing, post-1968, New Left identity politics movement for old suburban white people?

We’ve all heard Moneybags Mitt say: “I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs a repair, I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich; they’re doing just fine.” This is interesting in light of the cultural populism that the GOP has perfected over the years. Conservatives like to pose as the champions of the ordinary American against the ‘elites’, yet denounce ‘elite’ liberals as perpetrating ‘class warfare’ when they dare talk about raising taxes. Moneybags Mitt appears to be trying to thread both needles here; but is there something more sinister about this quote? What is the conservative audience supposed to think when they hear ‘very poor’ and ‘very rich’?

In the case of the ‘very poor’, that one is simple: blacks, Hispanics, et cetera. It has been noted before that Tea Party supporters tend to stick to their free-market principles when government programs which tend to benefit minorities are discussed, but when programs which benefit older, white people are supposedly under threat, the response is ‘get your filthy government hands off my Medicare’. As for the ‘very rich’, it is rather curious that Moneybags Mitt refers to them as ‘they’, as his own status a member of the overclass is surely uncontested. To understand what he means, we must first examine a few quotes from his challenger.

This blog post by Ben Adler on the website of The Nation has noted that Newt Gingrich has attacked, in recent times, “elites” who “ride the subway” as well as people “who live in high-rise apartment buildings” and “ride the metro.” The context for the latter quote was a ‘Rally for Homeownership’ prior to the South Carolina Primary. That Gingrich would attend such an event made me laugh – lobbying for Fannie and Freddie, anyone? Seriously, though, what Gingrich seems to be doing is pandering to suburban white folks by telling them that they’re somehow better than the elites in the big cities. But not just any big city – the references to subways and newspaper headquarters indicate that Newt is probably thinking of New York or Washington when he peddles this sort of nonsense. In addition to the anti-urban angle, the denunciation of public transport users fits in with the Republicans’ attitudes to the environment and to the large outlays of public spending required to build such things as subways and metros. There is also a parallel with a quote often attributed to Margaret Thatcher, about any man who rides a bus to work after the age of thirty being a failure.

Matthew Yglesias nails it on Slate. “It’s telling” he writes, “how swiftly any kind of commitment to free market economics melts away in the face of the identity politics concerns of prosperous older white suburbanites.” Policy-free denunciations of the Other in order to make members of the in-group feel special? Sounds like identity politics to me.

Romney and Gingrich are aiming their messages at a demographic which is responsive to denunciations of the ‘very poor’ (due to their blackness and Hispanicness) and of the ‘very rich’ (because they see themselves as downtrodden by ‘liberal elites’ on the East Coast). That same demographic is willing to denounce government spending, while also holding its hand out for assistance with mortgages and cheaper Canadian prescription drugs. The idea of the GOP as an identity politics movement for ‘older white suburbanites’ is a good framework with which to study modern American political discourse, and would help observers to get beyond the Big Government vs. Small Government dichotomy, which is unhelpful as it overlooks conservatives’ heresies on corporate welfare, farm subsidies, mortgages, and social spending for retirees (and conversely, the green-induced reaction against Keynesian public works projects on the left). Instead, we should view conservatism as the vehicle by which old white suburban people assert their dominion over the young, multi-racial, subway-riding populations of the cities.