Not Your Father's GOP

Kathleen Parker is a conservative columnist who went off the reservation during the recent campaign with an article praising Christopher Buckley for endorsing then-candidate Obama.

Then she got some hate mail.

Now she’s got an article in the Washington Post that urges Republicans to get G-O-D out of the party.

The fact is that a number of elite Republicans don’t really like the idea of the Republican Party as the party of the aspirational white working class.

You’ll find, if you investigate, that a common denominator in aspirational groups is a belief in God. It goes back at least to the Protestant Reformation. And so, if the party of Lincoln becomes the party of Palin and Joe the Plumber you can expect a lot of God stuff. And that’s a problem to people like Parker.

To be more specific, the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn’t soon cometh.

I’ve heard this from a number of conservative friends, professional types with money in the bank. And I understand. Enthusiastic Christians like the Christian conservatives of today’s conservative movement have always been an embarrassment to established conservatives. Their naivete, their faith, their certainty—well they just aren’t out of the top drawer.

Sorry. Count me out of the exodus. If the Republican Party ceases to be the party of the moneyed professional class and becomes the party of the aspirational working class, then I’d rather stay than quit.

In my view the aspirational working class has taken it in the chin these last decades. The political elite has made it more and more difficult to be independent and aspirational and we know why. Ordinary people are only interesting to a political elite if they are useful to its program of power. In the present western world, ordinary people are useful to the elite if they are victims. They are useful if they are frightened. They are useful if they are dependent.

The aspirational working class is composed of people that used to be victims. They used to be frightened. They used to be dependent. But now they are climbing. Now they are succeeding. They’d like the nation’s politics and culture to recognize their achievement and honor their culture.

It seemed like it was only yesterday that the political elite loved the white working class to pieces. That was when they were the principal victim group that the elite wanted to sponsor. But the elite has gone on from class warfare to race politics and gender politics—that’s where they mine for new victims today. Today the white working class is an embarrassment, with its bitter embrace of God and guns.

Anyway, so what if the Republican Party becomes the party of working-class and middle-class aspiration? There might be more people interested in that kind of party than you might think, God or no God.