In her column in the Washington Post, Kathleen Parker comments one conservative multimillionaire philanthropist Howard Ahmanson’s switch from the Republican to the Democratic party. Parker notes that at a time when party fundraising is significantly down, the departure of a man who was one of the three main contributors to the Proposition 8 campaign in California is a significant blow to the GOP. The problem of course is not only financial, but also political, and his departure is shocking in two ways. First, it seems ironic that the some republican politicians have focused so much on lowering taxes that even a multimillionaire like Ahmanson got angry with the GOP. In a rare interview, the philanthropist reckoned that the party had to “downscale”, that is taking a more populist position. Ahmanson reckons that the tension between “the upscales and the downscales” as he calls it (that is between the upper and lower middle classes) results in a possible contradiction in the GOP’s policies.
As Thomas Franck argues in What’s he Matter with Kansas, that conservatives republicans in effect used moral and faith issues to lure the religious lower middle classes into voting republican, and while making little headway in those very issues that lower class conservatives find important, they succeeded only in promoting policies such as tax cuts for the wealthy that benefit not the lower but the upper classes. We have argued on this subject in class and some have pointed out that the rationale for lower taxation was that people could instead give more to charity. And indeed it seems that conservatives do in fact give on average three times more to charity. But is it possible that the GOP has, as Ahmanson argues, been focusing too much on the issue of taxation? Indeed the attitude of the California Republicans that argued there should be no tax increases “for any reason, no matter what” does seem not only “silly” but also stubborn, especially in the current economic climate.
More generally though, this shift of a major republican benefactor, though surprising in itself, does point to a broader trend that we have observed in our class and through some of the entries of this blog, wherein some evangelicals have started switching to the democrat side as the party appeals more and more to faith and slowly works “to take God back from the GOP” as Parker puts it.
As Thomas Franck argues in What’s he Matter with Kansas, that conservatives republicans in effect used moral and faith issues to lure the religious lower middle classes into voting republican, and while making little headway in those very issues that lower class conservatives find important, they succeeded only in promoting policies such as tax cuts for the wealthy that benefit not the lower but the upper classes. We have argued on this subject in class and some have pointed out that the rationale for lower taxation was that people could instead give more to charity. And indeed it seems that conservatives do in fact give on average three times more to charity. But is it possible that the GOP has, as Ahmanson argues, been focusing too much on the issue of taxation? Indeed the attitude of the California Republicans that argued there should be no tax increases “for any reason, no matter what” does seem not only “silly” but also stubborn, especially in the current economic climate.
More generally though, this shift of a major republican benefactor, though surprising in itself, does point to a broader trend that we have observed in our class and through some of the entries of this blog, wherein some evangelicals have started switching to the democrat side as the party appeals more and more to faith and slowly works “to take God back from the GOP” as Parker puts it.
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1 comment:
I find it interesting that even though Howard Ahmanson was a huge supporter of the proposition 8 campaign, he switched party allegiance anyway. I think that testifies to the big tent party that the democratic party is becoming-- a party in which even an vocal anti-gay marriage activist finds enough in common with liberals on other political issues that he feels comfortable in that party. I would wander how traditional democrats would respond to having an active anti-gay activist in their party however. Do they really want their party tent to be that big?
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