We must destroy the system to save it! That is what it seems the Republican/conservative pattern has become. I've been thinking about the way the Republican party and its footsoldiers work, and this is the pattern I've come up with for them. It's a bet for system failure so they can gain power, and that's a disgusting bet which I hope backfires on them badly.
Let's review the pattern with a few examples.
Let's start with the conservative position on government. "Government is the problem, not the solution." This is a position I ascribe to Ronald Reagan, though I know this basic libertarian rejection of government goes back further than him. He popularized it. If it is, then why are conservatives involved in government in the first place? To destroy the institution so that they then have power over the governed and (more importantly) their money. People hate paying taxes, although, as diarist itzik shpitzik points out in his study of Vermont local direct government here, people are "people are very willing...to pay taxes when they feel they’re getting they’re money’s worth". That's the crux of the Republican "government is the problem" mantra. They get into power to destroy the institution and cause voters to feel that it has no value, that they aren't getting their money's worth from the taxes they pay.
I have over and over discussed with libertarian friends of mine the unseen value they get for the taxes they pay. There is a basic level of service they have unknowingly come to expect from their government which, if defunded, would affect them in a variety of nasty, surprising ways. My favorite example of these is public health, which investigates, prevents, and treats communicable diseases like HIV, tuberculosis, syphilis, salmonella, and rabies, prevents waterborne contaminants from causing disease, makes sure the restaurants they eat in are reasonably clean and serve properly prepared food, immunizes millions of adults and children, and provides basic health services to masses of people -- all on a shoestring budget. People don't have a clue that this basic level of service is funded by their taxes, and they're even more clueless that if those programs get defunded, things can get ugly, fast, and there's no recourse for them. This is but one example. We all know there are many, many others.
When Republican administrations and legislatures do everything they can to hamper the functions of the basic level of service people have come to count on from government, it's a double-whammy. First, they appoint incompetent administrators like Heckuva-Job-Brownie to run critical functions, and then, when they fail, they come along behind the failure to decry the failure of government to do right by its citizens -- as Bobby Jindal did in his response to Obama's recent address:
There is a lesson in this experience: The strength of America is not found in our government. It is found in the compassionate hearts and the enterprising spirit of our citizens.
It is a strategy to stack the cards for system failure through inept cronyistic appointments and mismanagement, bet on that failure, and then use the failure to grab power from those who believe in the system and want not only for it to work, but to improve it.
This same strategy informed the Bush administration's treatment of civil liberties. In order to "save freedom", the administration gutted civil liberties by pushing the likes of the USA Patriot Act and FISA authorizations (with pathetic, shameful complicity by both Democrats and Republicans in Congress). It shat on our civil liberties through internal Department of Justice memoranda which disregarded broadly the protections our Constitution guaranteed private citizens against unlawful government intrusion into our lives, up to and including anything the (vice) president felt like they might need to do to anyone. The United States, unbeknownst to a large number of citizens, started looking an awful lot like the United Police State. And in the process, civil liberties, and TRUE freedom, were devalued. "We have to abrogate some rights! We're at war! We have to be able to do ANYthing to save the Union!" crowed the Bush administration, and a fearful public, cowed by an attack on U.S. soil and a campaign of misinformation from the administration, by and large cheered the move.
Now, they're doing it to the financial system and the economy as a whole. Republicans and their cronies have let the bonfires of greed and mismanagement burn unfettered, appointing industry hacks as regulators and exempting exotic financial instruments whose real value may never be known from any regulation whatsoever. The incompetent and even complicit regulators turned blind eyes to an industry pushing mortgages to people who would never rightfully be able to afford them as part of Bush's "ownership society" bamboozle. Investigators yawned and repeatedly ignored reports of massive fraud. All of these things and many more have cost Americans and foreign citizens homes, life savings, dreams, jobs, and trillions of dollars in wealth around the globe. THIS is the legacy of a Republican "logic" that views regulation as the enemy: again, government is the problem, not the solution. For virtually my entire life, this has been the mantra. It has been pounded into the popular psyche, and the media so inured to it, that now this very same party can use THEIR OWN HACKS' RUTHLESS INCOMPETENCE to blame an entirely new administration for their own legacy. Their bet? The system will fail, and it will fail under the new administration. They will market the failure as the fault of the Obama administration and the Congressional Democratic Caucus, and hope to G_d that the system breaks and the populace is so busy suffering that they forget who destroyed the system in the first place, and hand power back to the Republican Party to complete their heist of the nation's prosperity.
And, lest you think this type of behavior is only governmental in nature, consider my final example: marriage. LGBT Americans meet, fall in love, and form homes and families, just like everyone else does. And, like everyone else, they'd like to someday be able to marry one another and have the same rights, privileges, and responsibilities couples who marry enjoy and carry out. But in order to SAVE MARRIAGE and SAVE THE AMERICAN FAMILY, the christian right employs this very same philosophy. Never you mind that the idea that thousands of couples who WANT to marry, in a day and age when fewer couples are getting married and a larger percentage of them eventually divorce, strengthens the institution of marriage. Never you mind that, marriage or no, gay and lesbian couples are out there living their lives and raising families without the protections that heterosexual families enjoy that make taking care of one another, owning financial responsibilities, and raising children easier and more secure. Never you mind that, by recognizing those loving, committed relationships, we foster stable homes and families, further growing financial and social stability for millions of people and their children, which is what helps a society at the ground level work. None of that matters, because we're going to save marriage and the American family -- by destroying them both! Even if marriages already exist, we'll have to sue to invalidate them, and pass laws to make sure that couples and their children can't have access to benefits that can help them care for each other and support one another in difficult times.
But, hey, it's not like it's personal or anything.
Put simply, the Republican and conservative agenda has been to attack systems in society, finance, and government by marketing their mismanagement, intentional or not, and outright intended destruction of the institution as bold strokes to save the system, the nation, and society. I hope that, in spite of the media snowjob, which amounts to the outright failure of journalists as the (former) Fourth Estate of government, people have finally answered the cluephone, which has been ringing off the hook for decades. I hope they've finally figured out which party, and which people, are really working for them. I won't hang my hat on it, because I know better, but I'm gonna go with a little hope.