The Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade is a milestone in the Republican Party’s long march from democracy to minority rule. They’re following the political logic that flows from economic policies that can’t draw majority support.
From the 1930s to the ’60s, Republicans were in the political wilderness, trying somehow to win the votes of working people with policies that serve wealthy people — whatever the intentions of those backing the policies. Some were motivated by simple greed, others by sincere but mistaken good intentions (results have been stubbornly better under the Democrats’ Keynesian policies than the Republicans’ Hayekian ones).
But in the ’60s the GOP was able to win over the cultural conservatives and racists who abandoned the Democrats.*
The GOP stopped campaigning on its losing economic policies and switched to riding the tiger of cultural/racial fear and anger. Hence the focus ever since on God, guns, gays, abortion, drugs, crime, welfare, and thinly veiled racism (starting with Nixon’s notorious Southern Strategy).
That change, with big assists from right-wing media, corporation- and billionaire-funded interest groups and think tanks, and an often hapless Democratic Party, was enough to win majorities in many states and districts, though still not a national majority.
But it provided enough leverage for gerrymandering, voter suppression, intimidation, and corruption to make minority rule a realistic alternative. So that’s where the logic of it all has led the GOP — and GOP leaders seem to be fine with it. They were willing to follow Donald Trump all the way to fascism, and now show every sign of following whoever his successor might be.
We’ve assumed they were still riding the tiger because, as the saying goes, they were afraid to dismount — the tiger will eat you. But it turns out they don’t mind the ride at all, as long as it gets them where they want to go.
If riding the tiger doesn’t win elections, that’s OK, if elections don’t matter much any more. No more need to talk about policies; those were officially abandoned in 2020 and haven’t been missed.
Now, there is only the pursuit of power.
* The states of the former Confederacy and some others flipped from blue to red between the 1964 and ’68 presidential elections, won by Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon respectively. Democratic control of Congress extended to 1994, when Newt Gingrich’s scorched-earth campaign against Democrats and the institution itself launched the current era of Republican dominance there.
