In the past two months (minus a week), President Obama has taken palpable steps toward negotiating with Iran and softening US policy toward Cuba. He has ended the practice of torture by US troops and is taking steps to close the prison at Guantanamo. He has announced a plan to end the Iraq War, a plan to put more troops into Afghanistan, among others. Yet hardly any of this is being attacked by Republicans at this time, despite most of this being opposed by their most recent presidential candidate, and despite the GOP having been primarily oriented toward foreign policy/national security since Eisenhower.
In the past two months, we've also seen the president lift the Global Gag Rule on overseas family planning, has overturned federal restrictions on stem cell research funding, has begun laying the groundwork for an end to Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and has appointed a HHS Secretary whose record came under some fire from pro-life activists. And yet the establishment GOP has hardly made a peep about any of these things, and about the closest it came was decrying a half billion dollars to reimburse state governments for contraception, something that seemed more motivated by a desire to object to "pork" than the notion of contraception, an assertion seemingly borne out of later--and equally spirited--objections to phony mag-lev trains and Mormon crickets, and unless you think John McCain's obsession with beaver management in North Carolina has some sort of innuendo to it I think it's safe to say that social policy, at least at the elite level, has not been on the Republican radar screen.
In the meanwhile, virtually every step that Barack Obama has taken on domestic policy has been the subject of virulent GOP criticism, which I don't object to in principle (there are certainly valid things to criticize) except for the fact that it is incredibly misguided and stupid, and done in a way that doesn't hide that they don't care too much for anyone outside the CEO set. Since the beginning of the year the Republicans have tried to get auto workers to be paid less (not under Obama's watch, but close enough), argued against a stimulus package, stuck firmly to the core principles of Hoovernomics, and told a national audience through one of its rising stars that government is structurally unable to even do things like respond to disasters, and that you're pretty much on your own. Republicans staged unanimous votes in the House against the stimulus package in the House and did near that in the Senate, a decision whose fallout is uncertain but that appears to be unpopular in real America, where a Democrat is surging in the NY-20 special election by banging the Republican candidate over the head with the stimulus. Republicans then engaged in grandstanding over a normal bill to fund the functions of government, decrying earmarks while greedily inserting their own. Since then, they have taken up the tired canard of talking about Obama's largely incremental health care proposals as the road to Francification, the Employee Free Choice Act as a sort of demonic job-killer, mild and inevitable tax hikes as "socialism" (as opposed to socialism, a largely defunct philosophy centering on abolishing capital and public ownership) and have continually asserted that Obama shouldn't tackle so many things domestically at once, which is their way of saying that he shouldn't tackle them ever. This isn't to mention things like the "Tea Party" phenomenon as started by Rick Santelli, a man whose rant against "losers" who bought homes they couldn't afford (it couldn't have anything to do with banks doing a bad job of evaluating risk and credit, or with regulations allowing banks to give more marginal loans, could it?) was a virtual declaration of class warfare that was sponsored by wealthy conservative interests. This is not to mention Congressional Republicans' recently found affection for "Going Galt", which evidently means that creative class types will go on strike if we masses place too many restraints on them (nobody tell Republicans about Ayn Rand's vicious hatred of religion!). Some of these points are debatable, but one cannot say the right has been silent on domestic policy.
So, to recap: we've heard literally nothing from Republicans on foreign policy and national security, though it's been the party's bread and butter for fifty years. We've heard next to nothing from Republicans on social policy which, by the way, is the reason why most Republicans are Republicans, according to every poll of Republicans ever. But we've heard volumes from Republicans on economic policy, almost all of it from a libertarian perspective when it wasn't from an overt overclass protection rationale. This despite the fact that John McCain campaigned unsuccessfully for president on similar rhetoric last year.
Is there, at this point, any space left to argue that the Republican Party isn't the party of the wealthy and special interests? At this pivotal moment it's all they're talking about, despite palpable steps taken against the conservative agenda (such as it is and has been for the past decade) in the other areas of policy, and despite the fact that actual Republicans are far more populist than one might think?* So while we can dispense with the notion that the GOP isn't bought at great price by the Mellon Scaifes of the world, it is surprising that Republicans are more interested in keeping rich peoples' money safe than, you know, trying to appeal to folks, doing what's right and winning an election here and there, you know?
*Granted, the post is old and the poll Ross cites is an old one before the 2008 presidental election, and many of the more moderate Republicans might now be Democrats. But a majority of Republicans against free trade? Almost a third in favor of tax hikes? And most Americans voted for a president promising tax hikes for the wealthy, which was an issue in the past election.
