I forget, did republicans tell @GoyaFoods to stay out of politics??
— Irishrygirl (@irishrygirl) April 7, 2021
Background: "Why Republicans want corporations to end all criticism of their war on voting rights," Robert Schlesinger, NBC News, 4/7/21.
More: Here's what's really going on, I think. Republicans see their voting base shrinking as whites become an ever smaller percentage of the US population, and they're terrified of extinction. They see voter suppression as a key strategy in maintaining power, so they have to tell corporations to shut up about it (while still expecting corps to donate to them). But corps don't want to alienate their customers -- as the NBC News article above quotes, counties that voted for Biden account for 70% of US GDP. Republicans have to become more and more extreme, even fascist, to retain any kind of power, because they can't appeal to the wealthy (their traditional base) and the working class at the same time. They have to maintain the illusion of the Big Lie, that massive voter fraud took place in the November 2020 election, to justify all their voter suppression laws and efforts they're now putting in place in states around the country, and to keep their white, rural, gun-toting angry conservative base riled up. It's so convoluted and messed up and they're tightening a knot around their own neck all the time. Hopefully not around the country's neck at the same time, but I'm not sure about that.
The US is already an oligarchy. It costs so much to run a campaign that only the wealthy can afford to become politicians.
ReplyDeleteThe US is also almost entirely Right Authoritarian.I smiled when I read of Mitch McConnell describing the Democrats as far-Left.
The Democrats are Right Authoritarian on the Political Compass scale and the Republicans are even further Right.
"It costs so much to run a campaign that only the wealthy can afford to become politicians."
ReplyDeleteActually it's worse than that -- politicians spend something like 1/3-1/2 their time fundraising. Except for a few of the wealthy, most don't want to spend their own money when others will spend for them. And for in the House, they're nice and affluent, but maybe not even millionaires.