The Sage Forge

The Democratic Party is designed around two very distinct constituencies.  Their upper class is a well educated, prosperous elite that thrives on large organizations with inherent institutional inertia and deep, incestuous, governmental connections.  This, in the popular misconception, implies governmental entities and unions.  In fact it also encompasses large corporations and international institutions both large and small.  These lumbering organizations use their govenmental connections to gain protection from the inherently more nimble and aggressive small companies with which they could not compete on a level playing field.

The Democrats' lower class is a vast cadre of undereducated and compromised peasantry who are maintained in perpetual economic and electoral servitude by assurances that, once they have been politically empowered, their lot will be made right.  Without this vast body of serfs the party would disappear politically.  Actually doing what the party promises would, of course, devastate their upper class.  The lesson of history, though, is that one may keep a people who are assured they have not the means to lift themselves from poverty enslaved by the mere HOPE that someone will do that lifting for them.  Since the inception of the Democratic Party this has been their method- promise a backward people they will be made whole, lifted up from above, while keeping them poor and backward so that hope is always meaningful to them.

When Democrats run for office, then, they expect to offer promises they have no intention of fulfilling.  They know their voters expect them to do their thinking for them and they promise no different.  When they can't do what they promise they stand on nearly two centuries of political precedent.  There was no fraud in what they did.  This is, at least in Democratic politics, an honest bargain.

Modern Republican politics is altogether different.  There are, of course, rich Republicans.  But there is not a distinct break in the class structure of the party as there is in the Democratic Party.  Poor members of the Republican Party, for example, are distinctly better educated, on average, than poor Democrats.  They read more and are more politically aware than their Democratic counterparts.  Rich members of the party are far more likely to have achieved their wealth through small businesses or entrepreneurial enterprises than would be the case with Democrats. 

These are people who see government sapping opportunity away from them, who equate taxes with punishments, and who see every paper-pushing bureaucrat and the paper-pushers in private practice (tax accountants, tort lawyers, and clerical support staff) bureaucrats force on them as freeloaders, people who produce nothing but live handsomely for what they have not accomplished.

These hard working folk are people who DO NOT expect their representatives to do their thinking for them.  They are also people who listen carefully to what their would-be representatives promise them before they choose to vote for them.  For these voters when their office holders make them promises and then run away from those promises in an effort to broaden their electoral appeal what has happened is not a wink and a nod to history.  It is a lie.

Republican office holders of late grew up in a world in which a subject called "Political Science" was the supposed key to understanding the electorate and the acquisition of power.  What they didn't understand was that political science was the product of decades of Democratic dominance of politics.  Look at it with a jaundiced eye and what you will see is a form of political guerilla warfare the goal of which is not empowering the people, but CONQUERING the people.  It is no accident that "The Art of War" is a book title one will see on the desk of Karl Rove.  Nor is it to be wondered at that his revolution is faltering. 

Many of the current crop of Republican office holders gained their offices under false pretenses, believing we needed to be led in feudal chains as Democrats have long led their unwitting constituencies.  Republican's recent reverses are the result of the fact we are aware of the world in which we live, unlike the vast Democrat underclass we know what we want that world to look like tomorrow and, we are paying attention.

Here's some advice for the next set of Republican office holders, then.  You're not smart enough to lift us up.  We can handle that ourselves.  Don't even quietly make war on us.  We hold the spears.  When we are talking to you, SHUT UP AND LISTEN.  We pay you to keep the shop, watch the money, and keep the place safe and clean.

And at every opportunity get government, and yourselves, out of our way.