The Republican Party Has Become the Party of Hate

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The Republican Party Has Become the Party of Hate

Bruce Bartlett

Bruce Bartlett, an economic historian, was a domestic policy adviser to President Ronald Reagan and a Treasury official under President George H.W. Bush.

Updated July 21, 2016, 2:36 PM


The Republican Party today is basically a coalition of grievances united by one thing: hatred. Hatred of immigrants, hatred of minorities, hatred of intellectuals, hatred of gays, feminists and many other groups too numerous to mention. What binds them together is hatred of Democrats because they are welcoming to every group that Republicans reject.


A new Republican coalition must be assembled, purged of the haters and know-nothings, but I expect that process to take decades.

I do not know exactly when hatred became the binding force in the Republican Party, but its takeover of the once “Solid South” of the Democratic Party was the key turning point.

When the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts broke the Democratic Party’s hold on that region, the G.O.P. moved in to replace it. But in the process, Republicans absorbed the traditions of racism, bigotry, populism and rule by plutocrats called “Bourbons” that defined the politics of the South after the Civil War.

They also inherited an obsession with self-defense, allegiance to evangelical Christianity, chauvinism, xenophobia and other cultural characteristics long cultivated in the South.

The Bourbons maintained their power by dividing the poor and working classes along racial lines so that they would not unify for their mutual betterment by raising taxes on the wealthy, improving schools and making government responsive to the needs of the masses rather than protecting the wealth and position of the Bourbons.

The Southern states have long followed what are now doctrinaire Republican policies: minuscule taxes, no unions, aggressive pro-business policies, privatized public services and strong police forces that kept minorities in their place.

Yet the South is and always has been our poorest region and shows no sign of converging with the Northeast, which has long followed progressive policies opposite those in the South and been the wealthiest region as well.

The addition of conservative former Democrats to the traditional Republican coalition increased the party’s strength in the short run and allowed it to take over Congress. But as Southern attitudes have now completely taken over the G.O.P., its strength outside the South has begun to wane. It simply cannot win nationally as a whites-only party in a nation where the white share of the vote is inexorably shrinking.

I expect that I may not live to see another Republican president and it’s only a matter of time before the G.O.P. loses control of Congress. A new Republican coalition must be assembled, purged of the haters and know-nothings, but I expect that process to take decades.

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