Candidate Donald Trump had abused almost every fellow Republican candidate running against him. Even the then House majority leader Paul Ryan and the respected conservative leader Senator John McCain weren’t spared. The only senator to side with him was Jeff Sessions. However, ever since he got elected every party member has aided him, even if he crossed boundaries which are otherwise unacceptable to even the low moral standards set by the Republican Party. This could even come at the expense of their house and senate majority. Why do they do this? Here are my thoughts.
Republican Party has been one of the worst institutions in the history. They have been on the wrong side of pretty much every social cause. In spite of all that, they were never at their evil best. They worried about reelection, perception to initiate some of the very blatantly callous policies. All of a sudden, they got Trump. He is unabatedly brash, openly racist, xenophobic, pro-rich, anti science, blatantly homophobic, Islamaphobic, anti woman, anti establishment candidate they ever had. While they initially worried, they have now found the Messiah they have been waiting all along, their alter ego and inner demon in human form. Here are the secret Republican movements under Trump which very few are looking into.
Immigration reforms
Donald Trump and his Camp of the Saints enthusiasts led by Steve Bannon have long wanted to prevent the entry of non-white people into the US. Republicans share the same view. Senator Jeff Sessions is comfortably the most racist senator around. With Trump’s election, the long awaited Republican wants of protecting their borders is going to be achieved. What more, the establishment Republicans will pretend like it wasn’t them who did it.
Conservative legal transformation
While the country is looking at the election of Neil Gorsuch for Supreme Court, Trump has taken the opportunity to fill thousands of legal positions with very young hardline conservatives. Some of these people are going to remain in their position for the next 50+ years. They are going to enact their policies for years to come. The popular misconception is that conservatives don’t look at the long term impact of their policies. That holds good only for values like equality, distribution of wealth. When it comes to ensuring their personal wealth is maintained and the spread conservative values, they look way beyond the traditional left. This particular move will leave the US longing for any progressive legal reformation for decades.
Suppressing voting rights
The very first point Trump made after getting elected was illegal votes registered. The Koch brothers have for some time now initiated multiple movements which will make voter registration extremely difficult. This has forever been a Republican strategy, which started with black people and women getting voting rights. These movements are always camouflaged with legal sounding initiatives like voter Identification system, prevention of illegal voting etc. The implementation is always heavily biased against non-whites or in some cases even white females.
Civil rights
Abraham Lincoln, strangely a Republican abolished slavery and started the civil liberties movement in the US. That also paved way for the modern day Republican Party which doesn’t stand for any of Lincoln’s values. Equal civil rights to minorities are called out as reverse discrimination by many Republicans in the US. I truly believe they do not actually believe in that but have identified that as a great propaganda tool to use against minorities. Trump is the poster child of that propaganda machine. He is always keen on reducing any provision which will prevent minorities from being discriminated under the pretext of terrorism, crime or religious freedom. He will frame it in a way that opponents will be flabbergasted at the deceit. The left will be left with nowhere to go as Trump goes on his unabashed maniac rant to his base.
Pro Corporations
Wall Street as with any other Financial services hub in the world is bereft any social, moral or economic values. Their aim is to drive the profits of corporations for the next quarter. They expect socialism for themselves and capitalism for the rich. This is the same setup which expected to be bailed out at the expense of tax payers. They converted their greedy private debt to public debt. For years without any understanding of cause and effect, the free market activists have been fighting for deregulation, claiming it is a cure for all malice. Trump is at the centre of this propaganda. He not only wants deregulation but also wants to make future regulation extremely hard. He wants to reduce corporate taxes to an all time low. Trump will do it at a scale which will make Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher proud.
Reducing liberties
The America Bill of Rights has 10 amendments. The first one guarantees people freedom of religion, speech, to protest and freedom of the press. Trump and his Republican friends are against all those when it opposes their view. While it is true that both the mainstream left and right have lost tolerance, the key progressive activists are still for free speech. For the right free speech is reserved for them, freedom of religion is reserved only to Christianity, freedom to protest is limited to their T-Party movement and freedom of the press is limited to right-wing conspiracy channels and Fox News. This is Trump in entirety.
Education
If you look at most of the GOP policies, they target two aspects of young people’s life. One is health care and the other one is education. There are two main reasons why funding for public education is always questioned. Unlike their popular claims, they do not want to remove government intervention in education, they actually want to divert funds to religious schools and rich private schools. By defunding public education sector under the pretext of balance, they generate continuous generations of people they can keep under check by their economic stranglehold. Trump as Betsy DeVos to do this for him. There can’t be a better-suited individual to strangle the education system in the US from reaching the poor.
Health care
I have to put most of the Democrats and all the Republicans in one basket as far as health care is concerned. As I write this the Senate has rolled back the Affordable Care Act and replaced it with an unknown policy. The health care policy is a mix of complete privatisation of the health care combined with regulations coming from Christian Fundamental rules. This means private health care would not be able to provide vaccination against some diseases or perform abortion or birth control. Trump lives and breathes these rules. He has never been to a public hospital in his life and probably thinks quite poorly about it. He is against abortion or any form of birth control. What is worse, he will say that in public in a way that will make it sound absolutely moral.
Pro Rich
The Republicans have been pro-rich for years. They have somehow connected the overall social development with the rich accumulating wealth which never trickles down. I can’t believe that a society which doesn’t want to pay taxes as that will reduce their wealth will be willing to pay living wages to their employees the fundamental point behind the trickle down Reaganomics. Trickle down economics is not economics but a political propaganda. Trump drives that propaganda with aplomb. No one since Reagan has been able to drive this message to the working class like Trump. It is a foolish message only if you understand the principles of economics.
Anti scientific
Scientific principles are built around evidence and consistency. It is hard for a scientist to convey a message without using facts. Also, it sticks to the boundaries of logic as a human brain can process. These have posed problems to the conservatives. From their economic theories to the understanding of the climate science, the conservatives have used myths and conspiracies to derail people from fact checking their views. The Republicans have largely been successful with this strategy. They have got enough conservative conspiracy theorists who help them. It is not possible to be a leftist conspiracy theorist. It is an oxymoron. Trump simply excels at this. He has a great ability to mix conspiracies with nationalistic populism at a rapid rate which makes fact checking impossible. He uses the same technique to negate any scientific views, especially on climate change.
Pro arms
Nothing excites Republicans than seeing the bodies of dead soldiers. The second amendment is their favourite part of the American Constitution. There are two main reasons why the like arms race. One, it satisfies the imperialistic desire to conquer sovereign nations. The second and the most important one is that the politicians are heavily funded by arms manufacturers like Lockheed Martin and BAE systems. The congressmen work for their donors. Trump epitomises the deep rooted fears in people which drive them to an arms race. He sells both fear and hope with such an efficiency that the Republicans cannot find an equivalent person to do it in their Party.
Trump is a bombastic, shameless, egocentric showman who can sell the Republican ideas like no one else can. He is aggressive, unfiltered and above all has the knack of connecting with his audience. He can create an alternate reality and make everyone believe in it. So, the popular belief that Trump will destroy the conservative values is not true. Trump truly represents those values and has just removed the facade. The naked Republicanism is just hard to watch and impossible to digest. The thing about the US politics is that most of the Democrats also fall under the same category. They are at best centrist Republicans rather than true progressives and Trump is truly their manifestation.
Demystifying a skeptic's world 