User:Woozle/Why Republicans Suck/political philosophy

Republican Political Philosophy

Plenty has been written about the correlation between Republicanism and authoritarianism; I'm going to take a different (though compatible) tack, and put it in less technical terms based on my own observations:

In short, Republicans don't see politics the way rational people do.

Rational people living in a free society see politics as the process of arriving at policies that work as well as possible for the most people. We may have disagreements about the best policies, but they're based on honest beliefs about what the known evidence suggests. Any discussion should be about sharing evidence to minimize disagreement, and working out compromises until we arrive at a position that most participants agree is at least acceptable.

Yes, we recognize that in reality things often don't work this way -- but it bothers us when they don't. We see mudslinging as a failure in our representatives, and we'll tend to vote against someone who uses personal attacks to overcome an opponent's position.

Republicans, however, see politics as being more like an Olympic gladiatorial mud-slinging contest where the key criterion for a good leader is that they defeat the other candidates, by any means necessary -- not that they have the first clue about running a government.

Republicans will cheer when one of their representatives manages to change a civilized discussion of relevant issues into a brawl, if that's what it takes to get people to overlook the fact that their position has no merit. The guy won, didn't he? So what's the problem?

In Republican politics there's absolutely nothing wrong with lying to the public, even if it causes harm to your constituents (present or future). All that matters is whether it will help advance your (and by extension the Party's) position and whether you can get away with it. Having won, the winner will naturally be the candidate best qualified for the job -- never mind that the contest filters for qualities almost completely unrelated to job performance.

Likewise, the only bad thing about accepting a bribe is the risk of your enemies finding out and using it against you; there's not actually anything wrong with it, in the Republican worldview. It helps fund the Party -- and the Party's ideology thus becomes, over time, the ideology of those with extra money and a shortage of scruples.

To a Republican, positions of power are rewards to be given out for loyalty -- not important work to be done by those best capable of using it, and certainly not implying any kind of responsibility or duty to those underneath or to those supposedly being served.