The right’s paranoid tribalism: New poll reveals how the left should attack extremists

[applegrove]

The right’s paranoid tribalism: New poll reveals how the left should attack extremists

by Tim Donovan at Salon

http://www.salon.com/2014/04/30/the_rights_paranoid_tribalism_new_poll_reveals_how_the_left_should_attack_extremists/

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First of all, let’s consider the sample group. As the poll notes, “Question was asked of those who said there has been an increase between the rich and everyone else in the U.S. in the last 10 years.” We shouldn’t draw too many broad conclusions from these results, as Pew only polled individuals who agreed with the basic question. What’s so interesting here is what that self-sampling reveals about the mind of the tribal Republican: while many are willing to concede to inequality is a real and growing problem, they see the reasons for its existence entirely differently (as other recent poll results have borne out). The main responses that the American people provided for our growing inequality are actually fairly accurate, as long as one considers each of them as part of a larger tapestry [editor's note: This post initially stated that Pew provided potential answers, when in fact the question was open-ended]. But the final response, popular among Republicans, attributes our growing inequality to “work ethic of poor/gov’t assistance programs.” If this poll aims to help us parse the opinions of the American public, it is suspect at best — but as a piece of blatant political theater, created for the express purpose of painting Republicans as insane and unreasonable, it’s quite brilliant.

Consider the strategy: You take a topic like income inequality, which is already a part of our tribal political debate, and then provide a predictable subset of extreme Republicans with an easy, pre-coded answer (“work ethic,” “government assistance”). Letting people blame income inequality on the poor for not pulling themselves up by their bootstraps well enough is just too easy; it gives these mouth-breathers a venue to express their tribal rage.

This is not to excuse Republican leadership, who are largely to blame for putting their party in this trap. For decades, they’ve encouraged and supported the worst voices in their movement. The Southern strategy, which aimed to exploit white Southerners’ disdain for the Civil Rights Act and all it seemed to represent, quickly became the original sin of modern conservatism.

The Southern strategy essentially codified a tribal paranoia into right-wing politics; for decades, Republican politicians cynically exploited this advantage against Democrats, starting with the Civil Rights Act, up to Willie Horton, and on to gay rights in our own era. But times (and demographics) are a’changin’, and the bigotry and implicit racism that is still so prevalent among the right’s base is quickly becoming a political liability, an ugly feature of their politics that they can neither contain nor destroy.





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