The political alphabet of Republican governance

By Ernie Yanarella

The prospect of large Republican gains in the Congress during the mid-term elections in a couple months and the uncertain possibility of the GOP unseating a sitting Democratic president in about two years hence should give American citizens pause for remembrance and reflection. Kentuckians too should pay close attention to what is really behind Republican rhetoric on the campaign trail, as well as what is archived from past events.

Before we forget the preceding eight years of Republican presidential governance and its failed policies that led us to a financial meltdown, global economic crisis, and mounting worries over runaway climate change, before we buy a “pig in the poke” who extols individual liberty, an end to big government, and the sanctity of private property over civil rights, I’d like to offer this vocabulary of political terms that are likely to be descriptive of practices in a new Senator, a new Congress and even a new presidential administration under future Republican rule.

A is for austerity, an economic policy that will be instituted by Republicans to shrink the Big Government boogie man in every area of policy making except defense and give license to Big Business--see Z for zero hour

B is for bald-faced lies, which characterizes the penchant of Republicans’ strategy of validating big lies by incessant repetition (see Fox “News”)—see also O for obfuscation

C is for class warfare by any other name, but class warfare nonetheless, that is used against an increasing shrinking and confused middle class and a swelling working class in America—see also excluded middle and I for intolerance

D is for divisiveness, evidenced in Republican legislative, judicial, and electoral campaigns to divide and conquer, and risen to a political art by Republican hatchet-men and –women—see also K for know-nothingism and R for racism

E is for the excluded middle, as Republican greed and avarice in economic policy continues to destroy the foundations of the middle class to promote immiseration—see social insecurity

F is for fiscal irresponsibility, epitomized in Bush II’s administrative policy of spend and don’t tax and practiced on Wall Street and big banks, the perpetrators of the 2008 financial meltdown

G is for gridlock, a condition of our politics based upon our divided electorate and fashioned into a tool of legislative politics by leading Republican legislators, political consultants, and talking heads

H is for American hegemony in the international and defense arenas pursued by the secular wing of the Republican party in foolhardy attempt to make the 21st century into the New American Century—see also W for war

I is for intolerance for targeted minorities (gays and lesbians, illegal aliens, etc.) to promote new and more intense cultural wars—see also K for know-nothingism

J is for justice, both social and personal, a value that has become increasingly foreign to Republican political ideology and policy practice

K is for know-nothingism, a Republican inheritance from the mid-1800s that promoted nativism and severe limits to immigration, now simply updated and refocused from Catholic immigrants to Mexicans and Muslim Americans—see also X for xenophobia

L is for libertarianism, a comforting and reactionary ideology built upon a fictitious dreamworld championing atomistic capitalism, possessive individualism, and limited government that conceals enormous social inequalities of income and wealth among Americans, is blind to the corporate dinosaurs that are stalking the world, destroys the foundations of our civic and ecological commons, and promotes governmental policy favoring the rich and privileged—see also O for obfuscation

M is for mendacity, the Republican vice that operates where compassion should reside in the hearts of genuine politicians—see also V for venality

N is for nature, the foundation of human sustenance and the object of use and domination by Republican economic and environmental policies that seem hell-bent on destroying its life-giving systems—see also Q for questioning spirit of science

O is for obfuscation, a favorite tool used by Republican leaders to promote their self-aggrandizing goals and ambitions

P is for presumption of privilege that animates wealthy and influential Republicans and fuels social injustice as a supposed natural condition of humankind

Q is for the questioning spirit of science, an attitude and orientation toward public policy that Republicans have replaced with religious fundamentalism and ideological nonsense

R is for racism, an antiquated belief become political tool that finds its way into Republican party campaign strategies and stump speeches to exaggerate real or imagined surface differences and to polarize voting groups—see also I for intolerance

S is for social insecurity, a condition that will befall all except the wealthy and well-connected

T is for transnational corporate interests guiding the Republican agenda and insinuating themselves into the lives of all Americans

U is for ungovernability, a strategic ploy of Republicans to immobilize Democratic presidents and Congresses and to erode faith in the positive role of government and public goods in American life

V is for venality, a vice practiced by Republicans who see public service as either a vehicle for accumulating political power or a way station to private wealth in the so-called private sector

W is for war, endless war, a false pathway by which Republicans assuage their fear of loss of personal wealth and privilege by those they believe want what they have—see also H for hegemony

X is for xenophobia, a malady of many Republicans who uncritically exalt Us and stereotype the Other as foreign, unknowable, and therefore dangerous

Y is for yellow journalism featured in corporate media outlets owned, controlled, and dedicated to fomenting divisiveness, intolerance, and warmongering—see H for hegemony, W for war

Z is for zero hour, the time denoting the logical end point of an ideologically unified Republican party that has banished all pluralism within its ranks and has brought the nation to economic ruin, the global ecosystem to runaway climate change and economic chaos, and the American credo of liberty, community, and the commons into their opposites—see all of the above

The above of course does not apply to those Republicans who are the genuine inheritors the deeper core values of the party of Lincoln, who recognize America’s waning military ability to shape the world alone and according to its own image, who value science without necessarily abandoning mature religious faith, and who fear the unsettling consequences of global ecological catastrophe for us and the world.

But their numbers are few and their job no less mammoth: winning back their party and bringing reason and moderation to their party ranks and practices and re-establishing a basis for bi-partisanship in our state and national politics. Our task is to work to overcome social amnesia in the American electorate and remind citizens of the costs incurred by Republican governance.

Ernie Yanarella is professor of political science at the University of Kentucky.