The Elephant in the Room

from “Living Life Well”

An abbreviated version of this article appeared in The Kenwood Press August 1st, 2024.

There is a certain irony in how the Republican Party hangs onto the time-honored acronym GOP, the “Grand Old Party”. The affectionate term originated when the party was first established in 1854, when thousands of abolitionists gathered to form a party based upon the fundamental belief that all men are created equal. Over the following years, tension increased between the industrial states of the north and the agricultural states of the south over the issue of slavery, upon which the economy of the southern states depended. When Abraham Lincoln was elected as the first Republican president in 1860, the southern states seceded from the Union to form the Confederacy— and our Civil War began when Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter in 1861.

Over the years since then, our forefathers’ idea of a stable government— with its checks and balances and rule of law— gradually felt the influence of the industrial revolution, and there were those who began wanting a more efficient system that allowed for an increasing profit from the investments of capitalism. Business leaders began to advocate for reduced governmental oversight, in order to facilitate quicker decision making and lower operational costs.

While this can lead to economic benefits, it also risks undermining mechanisms that ensure accountability, preventing the abuses of power that were already taking place. Will Rogers, a popular social commentator in the Thirties, wrote “The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover didn’t know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night, anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands.”

During the Great Depression, Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt introduced the New Deal, a series of programs and policies aimed at economic and social reforms. It was resisted by industrialists who believed the policies interfered with the free market and private enterprise; such programs were considered socialist and, for that reason, un-American. However, resistance to the New Deal was interrupted by the attack on Pearl Harbor December 7th, 1941, and a sense of national unity quickly rallied behind the president during World War II. The isolationist movement, which had opposed many of Roosevelt's pre-war policies, effectively disbanded, while the war effort required massive government spending and economic coordination.

However, elements of isolationism in the United States persisted during World War II and resurfaced in the 1950s, notably through Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy's nationalist and anti-communist policies that focused upon internal threats and fostered a climate of fear and suspicion that discouraged international participation. McCarthy popularized the pejorative epithet “Democrat Party”, stripping the Democratic Party of the positive connotations associated with the word "democratic”.

A cynical tone began creeping into political discourse at this time, setting the stage for “Tricky Dick” Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign. Richard Nixon's “Southern Strategy” convinced Democrats from the southern states— who were resisting the spread of the Civil Rights Movement— to realign themselves with the Republican party, ensuring his election. During his re-election campaign four years later Republican henchmen broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Office Building, and Nixon’s attempts to cover up his involvement resulted in forcing his resignation as president on August 9th, 1974.

Since that time groups like the John Birch Society and the Tea Party movement— and more recently the ad hoc paleoconservative WhatsApp group known as Off Leash— have influenced significant changes within the party, moving it farther and farther right. In 1981 a conservative think tank in Washington DC known as the Heritage Foundation began publishing a series of papers titled Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, making policy recommendations that proved influential over the following decades during the administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush. Under their influence the Republican Party shifted attention from fiscal responsibility with balanced budgets to supply side economics, cutting taxes and removing federal regulations where they could.

Four years ago, during Donald Trump’s campaign for re-election in 2020, the Republican Party took an unprecedented step by not adopting a platform for their national convention. Instead, they simply announced a resolution to “continue to enthusiastically support the President's America-First agenda”, announcing they would “adjourn without adopting a new platform until the 2024 Republican National Convention”. That convention was held this past month, at which the nomination of Donald Trump was formally announced, along with J. D. Vance as his somewhat problemmatic choice as vice president, and the new platform was made public— much of it echoing ideology contained in Project 2025.

Project 2025 is the current edition of the Heritage Foundation’s Mandate for Leadership, and was written mostly by cabinet members and high-ranking appointees of the previous Trump administration. It appeared last year as a 900 page document covering all aspects of the federal government, detailing extensive plans for major policy changes and radically restructuring governmental institutions that were viewed as the entrenched bureaucratic “deep state”. Many long established agencies such as the Federal Reserve and the Department of Education are to be dismantled, while executive power is to be consolidated and made preeminent under a Republican administration. With the recent ruling by the Supreme Court giving the president immunity from legal prosecution, this would appear to spell the end of democracy as we know it. This would in turn make way for the “Red Caesar” called for by such conservatives as Kevin Slack, professor of politics at Hillsdale College in Michigan. “Red Caesar” is a thinly veiled reference to the radical and historic change in 27 BCE from the democratic Roman Republic to the authoritarian Roman Empire.

In producing Project 2025 the Heritage Foundation has come under public scrutiny for possibly violating IRS regulations regarding political activities for nonprofit 501(c)(3) organizations, for which there could be serious consequences regarding its tax exempt status. The controversy centers around whether or not the project constitutes partisan political activity, while the Heritage Foundation maintains that they do not advocate or endorse any particular candidate or campaign, and only offer policy and personnel suggestions for a hypothetical future conservative administration.

Meanwhile, although Project 2025 is heavily influenced by Trump's previous policies, he has begun publically distancing himself from it, loudly disavowing its more controversial positions on abortion, LGBTQ issues, climate change, and economic deficits caused by tax cuts for the wealthy. Still, it is quite obvious that the new Republican platform is based upon Project 2025, with its twenty “promises that we will accomplish very quickly when we win the White House and Republican Majorities in the House and Senate.” These twenty promises are written as declarative pronouncements, in all caps and incomplete sentences, like a series of slogans without substance easily shared as online memes. While the Republican platform does not indicate how they intend to achieve each goal, Project 2025 tells us precisely how they do intend this— in very graphic detail. In order to know exactly what you are actually voting for or against I would consider it essential to read this, along with the Republican platform.

During the Civil War, when talking about their first experience of battle, soldiers spoke of “seeing the elephant”— at first with bold anticipation, but ultimately with the traumatizing horror of deadly combat. Over time the pachyderm was established by political cartoonists as a mascot for the Republican party, at first in reference to its enduring strength and dependable stability in the middle of chaotic uncertainty. But now, today, the elephant has come into the room in a larger way and, as parts of it are becoming increasingly more visible, the full immensity of its presence can no longer be ignored. What the Republican elephant has brought needs to be recognized and dealt with, openly, despite those who seem reluctant to do so. The elephant is getting nervous, and beneath its weight the tectonic plates that support the political landscape are beginning to shift.