Crack in the Alliance and a Rift in the Nation: On the Current Crisis in the Republican Party by Robert Reich How good is today’s Republican Party? You might expect the answer to be very good, given the last eight years. But a funny thing happened on the way to the present Republican Party, a party that’s now more like the one created by Senator Joe McCarthy than any actual party. In an unprecedented action, some Republicans refused to join in the effort to ram the Affordable Care Act through Congress in a secret process that even its sponsors knew was, in the words of Representative David Obey, one of its chief authors, a “fraud” and a “sham” intended to avoid the normal procedures that allow for public debate and public input. One Republican in three House of Representatives refused to go along. This was no one-year aberration, but a trend that continued even after President Obama signed the act into law in March 2010. In 2012, when the Supreme Court upheld the law, every Republican Senator except Olympia Snowe of Maine voted against it. How much longer will Republicans take being called anti-women’s rights, anti-gay, anti-worker, anti-immigrant, anti-middle-class? How much longer will they be happy to be called anti-science, anti-history, anti-public education, anti-wilderness, anti-civil rights, anti-environmental protection, anti-equal-rights, anti-gun control, anti-government? The fact is that a substantial portion of today’s Republican Party is not actually for small government. It’s just against government whose primary beneficiaries are minorities, immigrants, the poor, the young, and the less fortunate. In this election cycle we’re now seeing these Republicans go over the top. For example, a new Republican candidate in Texas said: “The bottom line is, no more food stamps.” Another in Arizona compared undocumented immigrants to a “rabid dog that’s foaming at the mouth.” A third said the solution to traffic jams is “get a gun.” If you thought this was an unfortunate development, you’re right. But what’s even more worrisome is the fact that the Republican Party has also become the party of Wall Street, as exemplified by Mitt Romney, the current front-runner, whose top campaign contributor, Goldman Sachs, had access to inside information regarding his campaign before the primary races were even over. In fact, with a cash contribution limit of $2,500 per individual, it’s mathematically impossible for one person to directly bankroll Mitt Romney’s entire campaign. That’s because more than $60 million has already come from just the top 2,400 contributors. To put this into perspective, that’s equivalent to more than 40 percent of all Americans who make up the top 2,400 contributors. Some on Wall Street may be Democrats in disguise. But make no mistake, most Republicans are on Wall Street. They’re just using Wall Street for different ends. So here’s the problem for those who are concerned about the middle class and the nation as a whole: Mitt Romney is not John McCain. And Barack Obama is not George Bush. The Republican candidate running for president is not just a member of the “one percent,” as many Democrats used to dismiss Romney as. In fact, Romney was a man whose economic policies were designed to support his own wealth, not that of the “middle class.” He supported free trade that resulted in job loss for millions of American workers, including, most recently, thousands of workers in Ohio and Michigan. He supported deregulation that left thousands of people without power and caused billions of dollars in damage when the Gulf of Mexico was fouled by BP’s disastrous oil spill. He wants us to continue war in the Middle East that will only increase the deficit and add to the debt, not to mention taking the lives of young Americans. He supports tax breaks that favor the wealthiest Americans over working and middle-class families and he wants us to extend them to the year 2023. He also wants to reduce the tax burden on the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans to 19 percent, including himself, while keeping taxes the same or increasing them for those with less. Obama has opposed Bush’s free-trade agreements, saying that they didn’t include enough rules of the road and enforcement measures. Instead of reducing our deficit and spending through tax cuts alone, he wants to do it by increasing revenues, closing tax loopholes, and ending corporate subsidies. And he wants to eliminate the Bush tax cuts, except for those making less than $250,000 a year. In his first term in office, Obama has supported a $787 billion stimulus bill designed to prevent another Great Depression. He has implemented the largest expansion of Pell Grants since their creation. He has also raised the minimum wage, made it easier for workers to join unions, and expanded college aid. He has signed into law extensions of the moratorium on the student loan interest rates. That means two and a half million people will pay no more on their college tuition this year than last. He also signed into law the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), designed to help with insurance coverage for sick Americans. As Governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney supported charter schools that have siphoned millions of dollars from public education. He didn’t even bother to support gay marriage when he was governor. While governor of Massachusetts he pushed for the elimination of a requirement that students be proficient in math and science before they graduated from high school. He supported tuition vouchers that would benefit students of affluent families. And, as governor, he cut funding for school lunches. Romney opposes an increase in the minimum wage and favors further tax cuts for the wealthy. He says that Wall Street needs even more deregulation and that government must refrain from taking any action that would help stabilize the housing and financial markets. He has opposed the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to make sure that the reckless actions of some don’t hurt the American people. These are the sorts of policies that have caused so many Americans to wonder why they should pay a second time to protect the reckless and irresponsible. Is it any wonder that Romney has a higher negative rating in polls from the American people than Obama? So the election in November may be decided by the middle class, not the elite of either party, as was the case in 2004, when George W. Bush won with the support of 36 percent of voters making less than $100,000. Bush’s running mate was Dick Cheney, who famously said of the American working class, “They go to work, and they pay the taxes that pay for us to do what we do.” So, yes, there will be a big election in November. But that’s not all that’s at stake. If this election is like the elections of 2004 and 2008, the result could be disastrous for the middle class. The real issues of class and nation are on the ballot. If the middle class is to have any voice in the future of this country, now is the time to demand that it be heard loud and clear. It’s a message that even Mitt Romney recognizes. That’s why he continues to tell us the American people are “bitter.” What he doesn’t seem to understand is that it’s our anger, our disappointment, and our disappointment in him that might have enabled him to win New Hampshire. But it’s also our disillusionment with the direction this country is going that made it possible for him to gain an insurmountable lead in the polls over a time period that can only be measured in months. So much time and energy has been spent on attacking Barack Obama that I’m almost surprised to see how much time and energy people have been willing to devote to attacking each other. This isn’t the America I know. This is no way for people to be treated, a people with so much in common. As Americans, we’ve always been able to resolve our differences peacefully. And in doing so, we come together as a people to make common cause. But something is going very wrong in this country, because people of good will are no longer coming together in this common cause. Instead of coming together as a united people, we’re coming apart, more and more each day. The election that’s coming up will probably not change our economic circumstances substantially. It won’t make life much better or much worse. But it could change our nation forever. The question is, which way is our country going to go? Robert Reich This article first appeared on RobertReich.org.