Class Warfare as a Republican Tactic

Sunday July 25, 2004

One of the most common tactics used by Republican politicians and candidates is to accuse Democrats of relying on "class warfare." Whenever Democrats raise the issue of the inequity of income distribution, for example, that's just "class warfare" and presumably inappropriate. Why, then, do Republicans use their own class warfare tactics?

Billmon writes:

These pseudo-populist attacks on Kerry and his wife (widow of the late Sen. John Heinz, R-Ketchup) have been relentless, and at times ridiculous - as absurd, really, as Shrub's famous sneer at all those "wine-swilling" liberals out on Martha's Vineyard. As opposed to all those real Americans knocking back bourbon and pork rinds just up the coast at the Bush family compound in Kennibunkport. ... Kerry can't hold a candle to the Bush family's silver spoon credentials, which fetch back at least four generations and connect, via marriage, with the Walkers, dynastic allies of the House of Morgan (and the source of one of the elder Bush's two middle names.)

[T]he Rovians are falling back on the time-tested GOP tactic of muddying the populist waters. They're trying hard to switch the focus from the economic uncertainty and raging inequality that swing voters see all around them, to the allegedly "elitist" personal characteristics of Kerry and Edwards. Team Bush hopes the cultural contrast they're trying to create between Boston Brahmin John Kerry and brush-cuttin', cowboy boot-wearin,' Jesus-lovin' George W. Bush will outweigh the generations of dynastic power and privilege that have made their candidate the closest thing yet to an American dauphin. ... We've seen this picture before - in 1988, when Lee Atwater created the completely fictional image of George H. W. Bush - Texan, country-and-western buff, consumer of pork rinds - and then got the media to buy the companion image of Mike Dukakis, Harvard liberal, card-carrying ACLU member, flag burner.

It is unfortunate that the Republicans would lambast others for a tactic they are so willing to engage in themselves. Of course, the problem is that the “class warfare” strategy isn’t illegitimate and is quite effective. In America, the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer — and that matters a great deal because what a person is able to accomplish in their life correlates far more highly with their socioeconomic background than with anything else.

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