William Zabka's Legacy is Alive and Well

On Thursday, I was listening to the Sirius/XM POTUS channel as they had live coverage of the CPAC convention.  The host was interviewing some Reagan biographer when he asked him, "how do you sell the Republican party to the masses in the age of Trump?"  First, the biographer said we have to remind the world that we are the political party of intellectuals, but not more than 30 seconds later insisted the Republicans had to stop bowing down to political correctness.  This made me laugh, as when the right screams about political correctness, its only because they want to validate the vocalization of the worst type of racial, sexual, and religious stereotyping.  You can't claim to be the party of smarts when you also want to validate the dumbest behavior in society.  You think of yourself as Downton Abby, but what you really are is an MTV reality show.  This one statement, from a highly educated biographer, epitomizes the Republican party today; you're attempting to be an Ivy League dissertation, but your big presentation is being delivered by a 12 year old who makes fart noises.

The stupid have taken over the Republican party.  That's why the modern GOP voter shouldn't be scandalized by the rise of Donald Trump or Ted Cruz.  They're looking in a mirror.

I think historians will try to figure out how the Republican Party got here.  The demise of their predecessors, the Whigs, is easy to understand, as their pro-slavery purity pledge doomed them, but to understand the story of the 2010's Republican party, you need to understand what the modern Republican Party embodies, and it's not Ronald Reagan.

The title of this post references one of the great, unsung elements of American movies from the 1980's, the villain in an 80's teen movie.  Those characters worshiped money, were full of themselves, and were always looking for a way to advance their causes, while at the same time crushing their enemies.  The greatest actor of those roles was Johnny Lawrence from The Karate Kid himself, William Zabka.  I personally prefer his role as Chas Osborn from Back to School, but he's also great as Greg Tolan from Just One of the Guys.  I have no idea why, but the modern GOP is trying to mimic these fictional clowns, by forcing their candidates and policies on the American people with a rallying cry of 'sweep the leg!'

Even Reagan would be looking dumbfounded at this pile of feces which his party has become.  The racism, sexism, religious intolerance which defines the modern American Right has little to do with the opportunist party he controlled in the 1980's.  Ironically, it was a misguided attempt to emulate Reagan, something that morphed into a simulacrum of a William Zabka role, which has brought the GOP to it's knees.  In an effort to help future Americans understand, here are three things which have led to the demise of the Republican party.

#1 - They brought back wealth worshipping.  Nothing defines the Reagan 80's better than wealth worshipping.  The country fell in love with wanting more; money, cars, houses, toys.  They romanticized the wealthy ages of yore (1880's, 1920's) by glossing over the bad elements of those eras, selling the lifestyles of the upper crust to the common man.  There's nothing wrong with being rich and having money, but when we started convincing ourselves the ONLY way we could be happy is with more money, it started to rot us from the inside.

We began by passing tax cuts for wealthy people, sold with promises the money would eventually trickle down to the rest of us, which it never did.  Over the decades, the GOP's 'wealthy people first' platform changed.  Today, when Republicans have control of a state government, they start their budgeting by giving wealthy people all of their money back, and then some.  THEN, after they've created a massive financial hole, they start addressing their spending bills with cries of "cut, cut, cut!"

They get away with this because we have a generation of people who have been taught wealthy people are somehow better than the rest of us.  It's one of the reasons Trump is popular.  His fans say "He's wealthy.  He's made money.  He's been successful."  For them that's all that matters.  Is Trump really an oddity, or is he just the next step after Romney, a guy who was basically the same thing, only without the bravado and reality show resume?

To fix this, the GOP needs a complete readjustment in their fiscal mentality, pushing away from the motto, "the wealthiest guy always wins!"  It's great for the wealthy guy, but the rest of us are now asking, "when's it our turn?"

#2 - When they started rationalizing bone headed decisions by asserting their gut was smarter than their mind, the Republican's themselves laid the foundation for the dumbest people shouting down the intellectuals.  The right might have had some very intelligent folks in their ranks at one point, but the likes of Milton Friedman and William F. Buckley have been replaced by Sarah Palin, Cliven Bundy and Ted Cruz, some of the dumbest human beings to ever attempt to speak for the masses.

Where did this begin?  I peg the Air Traffic Controllers firing by Reagan, an act based not on sound employment or business principles, or was it based on safety.  It was based on a new Republican core value, "we HATE unions, and want to KILL them all!"  It was Reagan's first major attempt to prove, with gosh darn, humdinger, salt of the earth, gumption filled wholesomeness, he could convince people something amazingly stupid was actually a smart move.  It worked.  Even though the airline industry didn't operate with any real efficiency until Clinton re-hired the controllers, the public believed Reagan over the reality in front of their own eyes.  This gut based decision making was really mastered with Iran Contra, a clear example of Reagan's power out of control, but he effectively shifted blame to a willing officer (Ollie North) who in NO WAY could have ordered the military action.

But that was Reagan.  Reagan's greatest ability was lying.  He not only convinced himself the lie was true, but before he went public with his lie, he internally turned them into iron clad reality. The gut alibi gave him an all encompassing excuse, the administration and the Republicans sold conviction as integrity, and the masses believed it.  Even today, when we know Reagan constantly lied, his supporters choose to believe in the myth.  Imagine Johnny Lawrence at the end of The Karate Kid grabbing the megaphone.  "Hey, first off, I was the only guy with the guts to fight dirty, which makes me a risk taker, willing to do what it takes for what I think is best.  Daniel misunderstood that my sweeping the leg was only making him a better fighter.  He needed me to sweep the leg.  And the crane kick?  Isn't that something only our worst enemies would try.  The scoreboard says I lost, but in my gut, I know I was the true winner!"  The cheering crowd empties the stands, rips away Daniel's trophy, spitting on him as they pass by, hand it over to Johnny and carry him off on their shoulders.

If you times that scenario by twenty, you have the Reagan presidency.

Today, the Republicans are all gut, and no brain.  Climate change, the war on terrorism, political maneuvering, economic policy; the modern GOP is dependent on a voting base willing to ignore reality, believing the gut is always smarter than the mind.  To do this, they've created their own news networks, stifled their detractors, and spent millions of dollars convincing Americans, "we don't need a fancy education or book smarts to tell US what to do!"

But now, they've lost the thin wisps of control they had of this ruse.  We have Republicans insisting pregnancy can't happen with rape, all poor people are just lazy, inoculations make kids retarded and Jesus wants everyone to scream into gay people's faces about how horrible they are.  The loonier the 'gut first' crowd gets, the more discredited the party becomes, and now, Republican candidates just make up everything, to howling cries of support from gut driven idiots.

To fix this, the GOP needs to embrace facts.  If the conservative media in this country only confronted all Republicans with the same fervor and intensity they now wield in their effort to stop Trump, the party would begin the slow journey back to the land of factual basis, potentially legitimizing their arguments.

#3 - They've allowed their love affair wth Reagan's 11th Commandment to eliminate healthy disagreement within the GOP ranks.  Reagan's 11th Commandment (originally from California Republican Gaylord Parkinson) is, "Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican."  It was a great slogan in the 1980's, but it quickly was manipulated into a lack of individual thought within the Republican ranks.  The Contract with American in the mid-90's really cemented a one direction party, as the GOP had managed to get the most moderate and conservative Republicans to always vote in unison on every bill, all while whispering "never violate the 11th Commandment."

There are two problems with limiting debate within the ranks of a political party.  The first; it's good to have a debate, especially when one of the individuals wants to do something bad.  When people who had less then honorable intentions wanted to get something done, they invoked the 11th Commandment and stared down anyone who looked like they were about to open their mouths.  You can hope the best for the party, while still disagreeing, publicly, about decisions which you whole heartedly are against.  With 25 years of stifling individualism, the Republican party's allowed extremism to fester.  That's why Trump, Carson and Cruz look different to the Republican voter.  They're extremists who are off the GOP script, enticingly peculiar and distinctive from what the GOP voter has been offered for the last three decades.

The other problem is it allowed for the controlling elements of the Republicans to drive recruitment.  Starting with Rove and Cheney welcoming in extremists groups in the 2000 election cycle, to Boehner and McConnell embracing the birther insanity, to Ron Paul overtaking the GOP's state primary and caucus process, installing a far right litmus test to become a nominee, the GOP, as a whole, has been saddled with these knuckleheads, and because they still honor the 11th Commandment, they bite their tongue.  Now, you have Trump embracing the racism and anti-minority elements of the country, while Ted Cruz embraces the Forced Christianity Evangelicals/nuevo-Libertarians.  Since one of these two men will be the nominee for president, most Republicans are furiously gnawing their tongues into a bloody stump.

To fix this, the GOP needs to first take back their primary/caucus process.  How?  I have no idea.  They also need to learn the following statement for when a Republican who thinks they're smart tries to talk publicly about anything:  "SHUT UP!!!  You are too stupid to be a spokesperson for this party! Go and have your meetings on compounds in Idaho and leave the adult conversation to people who know what they are doing!"

The likelihood the GOP will change is minuscule. I think they know what they have to do, but they're too far out of control.  These problems are too large and too unwieldy to resolve, and much like a William Zabka character, they're watching as what they desire most of all (power and control) slips through their grasp, resulting in a humiliating and soul crushing defeat.  Can the Republicans convince enough of the other side of the aisle to stay at home on election day, hence winning by default?  Probably not. More likely, the traditional Republicans, and their money people, will watch as their party gets annihilated in 2016, and they finally realize they have to leave the GOP behind, and create a new political party, in greener, less toxic, pastures.