The central tenet of the GOP–the one that holds the CL, PBP, and Reactionary factions together–is the cult of the rugged individual. It offers economic gain in the form of tax cuts and deregulation for the predominantly wealthy CLs and PBPs, and provides a cudgel with which the Reactionaries can beat historically disadvantaged groups. It is an indispensable part of Republican politics.
But, you ask, why do the Reactionaries buy into this? Many of them are downwardly mobile, and rely on government assistance for their survival. Why don’t they own up to it, and acknowledge that big government is sometimes a good thing, instead of opposing a larger welfare state and denying that modern problems like climate change and the pandemic only have collective solutions?
Because they are constantly told by the CLs and the PBPs for opportunistic reasons that they truly are rugged individuals who have been screwed out of their rights by a government which prefers the claims of women, minorities, and a self-interested intellectual elite to those of hard-working white Christian men. If you can just obliterate the establishment, all those high-paying coal and steel jobs will come back, and life will return to normal.
It’s a lie, of course. But it works.