David French’s reactionary Tennessee neighbors tell him that they are powerless, that their backs are against the wall, and that they are entitled to do just about anything to save themselves and their culture. He finds it difficult to square these ideas with the GOP’s electoral successes over the past 20 years. Can we help him out?
Since the Reagan years, the foundation of the GOP has been a bargain between the PBPs and the Reactionaries in which the former get tax cuts for the wealthy and the latter get rhetoric about traditional values, along with some conservative judges. Due to a variety of circumstances and events I have outline many times previously, including the creation of Fox News, the failures of the George W. Bush administration, and the election of a black Democrat as president, the Reactionaries lost their deference for the tax-cutting establishment wing of the party after 2008. As far as they are concerned, victories in elections gave the PBPs their tax cuts, but they only got gay marriage and trans athletes in return. Since they represent a large portion of the GOP electorate, is it any wonder they want to renegotiate the deal and put culture war issues ahead of tax cuts? Given that Fox News tells them every day that their culture is on the edge of extinction, is it surprising that they believe it?
This is why, in case you weren’t watching carefully, the Reactionaries despise the GOP establishment almost as much as the left.