[Article copies available for fee from The Transformative Studies Institute. E-mail address: journal@transformativestudies.org Website: http://www.transformativestudies.org ©2012 by The Transformative Studies Institute. All rights reserved.]Moments of clarity in American politics are rare. The current season of Republican debates and primaries offers few exceptions. While the gaffs and hijinks provided by Newt, Mitt, Rick and Ron are already legion, the humor that paves the GOP campaign trail obfuscates more often than it illuminates. When Romney does his best Thurston Howell ?? impression, highlighting how different the daily lives of the very rich are from the rest of us, it shows more about his idiosyncratic aristocratic aloofness than it demonstrates how structural inequality shapes the way in which wealth and money dominate democratic processes and economic policies. And regardless of the way in which liberal pundits lament Clinton era policies or the 1960's War on Poverty, or even FDR's Economic Bill of Rights (now that was Socialism), it is important to remember that elite power and wealth have ALWAYS dominated electoral politics and economic and social policies in the United States. Inequality, discrimination, and fascism are not simply manifestations of Regan or either Bush, but have existed throughout Democratic and Republican regimes alike.More interesting to me though, are the pearls dropped from the constipated lips of Rick Santorum. Recently, he attempted to paint Obama as an elitist because the President advocates policy initiatives to fund higher education for all. Santorum suggested that such focus made Obama a snob:There are lot of people in this country that have no desire or no aspiration to go to college, because they have different set of skills and desires and dreams that don't include college.... And to sort of lay out there that somehow this is should be everybody's goal, I think, devalues the tremendous work that people who, frankly, don't go to college and don't want to go to college because they have lot of other talents and skills that, frankly, college, you know, four-year colleges may not be able to assist them.The Left and liberal media - Huffington Post, MSNBC, etc. - have rightfully skewered Santorum for his hypocrisy (after all he has an B.A. from Penn State, an MBA from University of Pittsburgh, and law degree from Dickinson School of Law, his wife has dual college degrees, and his daughter attends major college). Their primary critique is that Santorum is pandering to working class, anti-intellectual, hard-core right-wing base. But I think this rhetoric reflects more heinous dynamics at work, ones that betray the REAL conservative agenda and how the rich and powerful maintain and manage hegemonic bloc.On the one hand, instead of pandering to stereotyped, redneck, blue collar conservative working class, I suggest Santorum's claims pander more to the elite conservative corps responsible for funding Tea Party organizing, Gingrich and Romney PACs, etc. Santorum's rhetoric reassures this group that inequality and hyper social stratification is not only moral good, but one welcomed by the poor and working class themselves. The Wall Street, Washington, and wealthy cowboy republicans can rest easy in knowing that the non-rich, white conservative base will satisfy themselves with religion, guns, racial supremacy, family values and variety of myths about traditional ways of life. I hesitate to sound the vulgar Marxist, musing about the masses opiates. And I don't actually believe such strategies work effectively for very long. But I do think the conservative elite need to keep repackaging their grand narrative in order to rationalize, reaffirm and redeem their ascendency.On the other hand, though, I do think there is discursive battle being waged. The non-rich conservative base DOES need to be held in check and the dumbing down of huge swaths of the American population has been vital strategy in recent class struggles. …
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Dec 1, 2018
Ivy Schweitzer 
Open Access