In Search of the American Right

Last week, in reference to the multiple external and internal challenges of the U.S., I cited a brief essay by George Packer in which he addresses the rising inequality and social polarization that exists today that transformed the American dream into a nightmare.

The erosion of purchasing power and the quality of life of the American middle and lower classes has been a constant since the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s, but it accelerated dramatically following the crisis that still overwhelms the country. The mortgage debacle didn’t just leave many bankrupt and without the power to even save their homes, but also represented a shock in the confidence of a society that is accustomed to thinking that tomorrow will always be better than yesterday.

Gradually, the socioeconomic composition of the U.S. is tending to the extremes: 1 percent of the population accumulates wealth and privilege while their tax burden diminishes; meanwhile, a sector of the population is increasingly excluded not only from opportunities and progress, but also in its capacity to influence decision-making in a political system focused on pleasing the elite.

Interestingly, for a country that has seen a disproportionate increase of wealth and the simultaneous impoverishment of the middle class, the U.S. has not seen a surge of sympathy for the Democrats, nor for a leftist or pseudo-leftist populist party. On the contrary, with the exception of the Barack Obama victory in 2008, attributable to the enthusiasm that he succeeded in generating and the debacle of the George W. Bush administration, in general, we can see how all the American political figures are consistently stacked on the right.

The recent protests by Occupy Wall Street attracted great media attention but did not even come close to matching the quantity nor the quality of the outraged Europeans, whose movement, which questions the macro political system and the representativeness of political parties, has had a much deeper impact than the American movement that has the attention of the media but has not made an impact.

The phenomenon of populism that usually accompanies economic and/or social crises often has a conservative overtone in the U.S. Nevertheless, the beneficiary this time has not been, as would logically be the case, the Republican Party, but instead a somewhat disjointed movement whose lack of clear leadership and cohesion is directly proportional to the passion of its members. Those in the tea party want a return to the libertarian origins of the independence movement of the 18th century and what they believe to be the “original values” of the U.S.

What does it matter that many of its claims are based on precepts that are old or contrary to the spirit if not the letter of the American constitution, which they have sought to own not only for the symbolism it represents but also for the simplicity that it grants them?

The tea party combines middle-class resentment with the nostalgia for the simple times when Ronald Reagan saw the solution to any problem in shrinking government. This mantra-less government illuminates the faces of the tea party militants almost as much as empty rhetoric, simplistic yet used cleverly by personalities like Sarah Palin, who have made this empty and visceral discourse the center of their ideology.

From the beginning of this movement, the Republican Party looked to attract and co-opt it, without realizing that tying itself to many of the tea party’s roughest ideas will only succeed in converting the Republican Party into the tea party’s hostage. Today, a Republican victory at the ballot boxes is unimaginable without the support or at least the consent of this group; its influence is so powerful that it already almost entirely dominates the Republican agenda in the United States Congress.

Proof of this is the fiasco provoked by the authorization to raise the debt ceiling, which scared Wall Street and the international markets to death, lowered the credit rating of the U.S. and as a result, further limited the recovery. This is the representation of the Republican Party today.

It is enough to make one shudder.