Reconciling With Republicans
We keep hearing the hopeful center telling us that Democrats and “left liberals” must tread gently… that, “once Trump is gone,” every left of the GOP American must eventually work to “reconcile with Republicans.”
Who do we keep hearing from? From people telling us: progressivism is too left; universal healthcare isn’t possible; progressives are “socialists” and “too far left;” we must compromise what we know to be right just for the sake of getting along; incrementalists and conciliators of the past fifty years.
The inspiration to write this essay, specifically, came from someone on my Facebook feed commenting precisely that “we must reconcile with the right.” It was one of a litany of similar comments I’ve had and seen to progressive posts. This one was in a progressive Christian group feed.
After the Emancipation Proclamation of 1862, post Civil War era Republicans “reconciled” with former secessionist Democrats. Secessionist Democrats gave us the era of Jim Crowe. It took the Civil Rights Amendment of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 before Americans of African ancestry finally saw their rights and humanity codified in US law and policy — with that same old cadre of Democrats, heirs of the secessionists, traitors who fought a war to destroy the United States of America — dissenting, then abandoning the Democrat Party.
In the pre-Civil War era, “not all” Democrats were secessionists; not all Democrats — not even all Southern Democrats — believed the Bible taught that people of African descent were subhumans, created to “serve the white man.” Not all Democrats thought segregation from Americans of African ancestry was necessary or right. However, until the Civil Rights Movement, the Democrat Party did not disavow those fellow Democrats who DID hold such poisonous philosophies. They clung to those secessionists, then to those segregationists because they were “the base.” When the Party finally did turn away from “the base,” those segregationists and racists fled the Democrat Party, abandoned it entirely. That base did not just evaporate.
I’m sorry. The GOP is never going to accept a reconciliation. While Democrats have spent the last fifty years compromising and conciliating “to get things done,” the GOP doesn’t compromise. Every compromise the Democrats make, spurs the GOP to dig in harder, demand more, and go lower. That’s been their path for the past half century and more. There can be no “going back” to a time when Democrats were conciliating towards Republicans for the very reason that the uncompormising non-conciliatory base of the old Democrats who duped the old Lincoln Republicans are the very same base who have since been duping conciliatory Democrats. The are the base who corrupted the modern GOP from any semblence of the old “Party of Lincoln” GOP.
The “deep divide” between Democrats and Republicans has been ever widening from at least the implementation of the Southern Strategy, which Nixon turned to particular calculated effectiveness by giving the “upstanding” white evangelicals a faux moral issue to rally around — an issue even the Southern Baptist Convention supported when it was passed — the issue of abortion rights It is an issue that has always been drowning in backhanded dogwhistles because it has always impacted the people of color more than white people because this country’s structural racism has assured that POC more often are also too poor to access benefits money can buy. And, if poor white people are impacted… well, the Prosperity Gospel of American Evangelicalism has assured that rich white Americans view that poverty as a moral failingg; therefore, the impacts for poor whites becomes part of a perceived deserving punishment for those moral failings.
In truth, around one third of this country’s makeup has always been arch-conservatives. They used to be the Democrat Party from before the Civil War era, up to at least the post WWII era with the growth of the Civil Rights Movement. When the Democrat Party became the party of Civil Rights, that demographic of America didn’t change with the party. The Southern Strategy specifically targeted that demographic and drew them into the GOP, Nixon handed them the evangelicals with a new faux-moral outrage to cover their racism. The party has been skewing further right ever since, up to the Tea Party arch-conservative movement which culminated in the Trump regime utterly subsuming the GOP.
Until the GOP walks away from “the base,” there cannot — nay… there MUST NOT be any reconciliation. Should Germany or the world have “reconciled” with post WWII Nazis? Should the world “reconcile” with ISIS or al Qaeda? No. We cannot make room to reconcile with extremism and hate and bigotry.
That demographic in America has never changed, will never change, refuses to change. Instead, they drag whatever party they inhabit into the pit with them, burrowing hell-bent-for-leather, head down for Hades.
