One of the most basic rules of politics is that it's important to define your opponent. The Republicans have already defined themselves both by their actions and by their role models. As if it wasn't obvious enough from their behavior that they hanker back to the Gilded Age of the late 19th century when robber barons ruled, Karl Rove has never been shy about admitting how much he admires William McKinley and McKinley's campaign manager, Mark Hanna. So we shouldn't ever hesitate to call the robber baron Republicans what they are.
But we aren't doing that often enough. I googled
robber baron Republicans and came up with 880 results, versus 10,400 for
tax and spend Democrats and 21,600 for
tax and spend liberals. The noise machine on the right has been shouting those labels for years. We need to make references to robber baron Republicans just as common. I don't think there are any other labels that will work as well to define what the GOP stands for...or to remind the American people just how much harm those robber baron values have done to our country in the past. And though I found relatively few Google mentions of
robber baron Republicans when I compared them to those Republican labels for liberals and Democrats, there are already a lot more web pages referring to
robber baron Republicans than to
tax and steal Republicans or
corporate welfare Republicans. If there's a better label for the GOP, a more accurate and descriptive label, I haven't found one.
We'll be accused of "class warfare" for labeling them as what they are, but there's one obvious and perfectly true answer to that: It's the robber baron Republicans who are waging class warfare, championing the rich against the middle class and the poor. We'll be told that Republicans also stand for "traditional values," but it's easy enough to show the greed and fraud hiding behind the pretense of morality and godliness, and preying on the most foolish believers who can't see that there's more worship of money than worship of God behind all the superficial platitudes.
And while we're reminding Americans that our opponents are robber baron Republicans, we should also be reminding them of what Bill Moyers spoke of so eloquently at the Take Back America conference two years ago (
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0610-11.htm ) when he reminded his audience that the oldest struggle in America has been the struggle to detemine whether "we, the people" is a spiritual idea embedded in political reality, or a charade masquerading as piety and used by the powerful to exploit the people. That's a struggle continuing today, with modern conservatives aiming "to strip from government all its functions except those that reward their rich and privileged benefactors." As Moyers said:
It is the most radical assault on the notion of one nation, indivisible, that has occurred in our lifetime. I'll be frank with you: I simply don't understand it – or the malice in which it is steeped. Many people are nostalgic for a golden age. These people seem to long for the Gilded Age. That I can grasp. They measure America only by their place on the material spectrum and they bask in the company of the new corporate aristocracy, as privileged a class as we have seen since the plantation owners of antebellum America and the court of Louis IV. What I can't explain is the rage of the counter-revolutionaries to dismantle every last brick of the social contract. At this advanced age I simply have to accept the fact that the tension between haves and have-nots is built into human psychology and society itself – it's ever with us. However, I'm just as puzzled as to why, with right wing wrecking crews blasting away at social benefits once considered invulnerable, Democrats are fearful of being branded "class warriors" in a war the other side started and is determined to win. I don't get why conceding your opponent's premises and fighting on his turf isn't the sure-fire prescription for irrelevance and ultimately obsolescence. But I confess as well that I don't know how to resolve the social issues that have driven wedges into your ranks. And I don't know how to reconfigure democratic politics to fit into an age of soundbites and polling dominated by a media oligarchy whose corporate journalists are neutered and whose right-wing publicists have no shame. ...
What will it take to get back in the fight? Understanding the real interests and deep opinions of the American people is the first thing. And what are those? That a Social Security card is not a private portfolio statement but a membership ticket in a society where we all contribute to a common treasury so that none need face the indignities of poverty in old age without that help. That tax evasion is not a form of conserving investment capital but a brazen abandonment of responsibility to the country. That income inequality is not a sign of freedom-of-opportunity at work, because if it persists and grows, then unless you believe that some people are naturally born to ride and some to wear saddles, it's a sign that opportunity is less than equal. That self-interest is a great motivator for production and progress, but is amoral unless contained within the framework of community. That the rich have the right to buy more cars than anyone else, more homes, vacations, gadgets and gizmos, but they do not have the right to buy more democracy than anyone else. That public services, when privatized, serve only those who can afford them and weaken the sense that we all rise and fall together as "one nation, indivisible." That concentration in the production of goods may sometimes be useful and efficient, but monopoly over the dissemination of ideas is evil. That prosperity requires good wages and benefits for workers. And that our nation can no more survive as half democracy and half oligarchy than it could survive "half slave and half free" – and that keeping it from becoming all oligarchy is steady work – our work. ...
So go for it. Never mind the odds. Remember what the progressives faced. Karl Rove isn't tougher than Mark Hanna was in his time and a hundred years from now some historian will be wondering how it was that Norquist and Company got away with it as long as they did – how they waged war almost unopposed on the infrastructure of social justice, on the arrangements that make life fair, on the mutual rights and responsibilities that offer opportunity, civil liberties, and a decent standard of living to the least among us.And while we're fighting the oligarchy and the party that represents it, let's keep calling them robber baron Republicans. We must never forget what the fight is about, and giving them their true name is the most cogent reminder.
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