The GOP

Modern G.O.P. Republican economic policy is relentlessly plutocratic: tax cuts for the rich, benefit cuts for everyone else. The party has, however, sought to win over voters who aren’t rich by taking advantage of intolerance — racial hostility, of course, but also opposition to social change in general.  Red-state Republicans have fought tooth and nail to hold power — not by moderating their policies, but through gerrymandering and vote suppression.  Now that the election is over and the results in Republicans shy from telling Trump that he lost and it’s time to concede. The dynamic helps explain why, days after President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. was declared the winner of the election, even Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, was unwilling to recognize the result. Only a few Republican senators known for their distaste for Mr. Trump — Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — had acknowledged Mr. Biden’s victory. Donald Trump, on the other hand, always seemed like a facsimile of a president, just as he had been mostly a facsimile of a builder, a casino magnate, an airline owner, a university founder. Even when he was playing a business tycoon on TV, his lines and his persona were largely provided by the show’s producer. He was a virtual man in a virtual era, and for a time that served him well. He came to power repeating the grievances of the man on a bar stool — or in his case, on a golf course. He could be funny and audacious and irreverent, and his followers adored that, mistaking it for honesty and openness. The president also had no coherent plan, no worldview to address the concerns of the tens of millions who voted for him, because in the end he possessed no ability to truly put himself in their place and discern what they might want beyond the superficial grumblings of another working day.  He failed utterly to do what any effective leader must do, which is to convert vague feeling into specific policies. Worse even than the ineffectuality of these erratic approaches was the lack of any humanity underlying them, the disdain that kept slipping out: the separation of immigrant children from their parents at the border; the characterization of other countries and the people who live in them as beneath contempt; the description of veterans as “suckers” and “losers.”  What he did succeed in accomplishing over his years in office is winning votes of 71 million people and intimidating virtually all Republican Senators to refrain from any form of rejection of his policies or lack of policies. He managed to successfully divide the country, make is thousands of lies believable by many, and was an effective campaigner.  Sadly, for many of his voters as well as for many who voted against him, his campaign skills did not follow him into the job of President.  However, his campaign skills did act to prevent any intelligent Republican Senator or Representative from any effective opposition or public criticism of his incompetence when it came to governing.  These same, con man skills also enabled him to enrich himself and his family at taxpayer expense, again without any Republican condemnation or criticism.  Today’s GOP is no longer the GOP of Eisenhower or even Reagan.  Today’s GOP is the party of White Supremacists and white Power adherents.