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Episode 2: Myths of the GOP
23 Plays1 month ago
Why do we vote for Republicans? It's because of the myths that they tell and we believe.
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Transcript
Intro
Episode Introduction
00:00:17
Darwin Kastle
Welcome to Episode 2 of The Big Swing.
Debunking GOP Myths
00:00:21
Darwin Kastle
Today's episode begins our list of the many myths that prop up the Republican Party.
Is GOP a Religion?
00:00:26
Darwin Kastle
Myth number one, the pious party, the myth of the Christian right.
00:00:33
Darwin Kastle
It's useful to view the conservative political movement as a religion, especially the new MAGA incarnation of it. Just think about it. Number one, you're expected to unconditionally accept the authority and wisdom of a specific single single person and only people that are loyal to him.
00:00:52
Darwin Kastle
Two, you're expected to accept the things they tell you, but without evidence. This is often when the available evidence directly contradicts the things they tell you.
00:01:03
Darwin Kastle
Three, there are rules that they expect you to follow, even if they don't follow the rules themselves. Four, people are considered to have special status if they're part of the movement, but everyone else is considered in the wrong, and in some cases, evil.
Mythology in Politics
00:01:19
Darwin Kastle
And number five, education and knowledge that don't support the beliefs the movement are just rejected. Sure, not every religion is exactly like what I just described, but it's a reasonable description of the current conservative movement.
00:01:34
Darwin Kastle
When creating a religion, especially one designed to take advantage of its followers, you need to create a mythology that gives people reasons to become members and to stay members. Right-wing media is a good tool for influencing people, but why not also use religion itself?
00:01:51
Darwin Kastle
If you blur the lines between religion and party enough, the differences will eventually stop mattering.
Christian Values and GOP
00:01:57
Darwin Kastle
For decades, the GOP have pitched themselves as the party of Christianity.
00:02:02
Darwin Kastle
That really started gaining momentum in the 1970s. As is the pattern with Republican influence efforts, they focused on things that they said made other people evil.
00:02:13
Darwin Kastle
Conservatives reasoned that you should hate those people and that you should join their movement of people who hate those people. You should hate those free love, drug-using hippies. You should hate those unpatriotic war protesters. You should hate those, quote, murderers who support abortion.
00:02:29
Darwin Kastle
You should hate people who didn't want prayer in schools. Hating your neighbor might not sound Christian to you and i but being given the freedom, no, the duty, to hate certain people while being told that doing so made you a good Christian was an intoxicating offer for many Americans.
00:02:47
Darwin Kastle
It helped that by constantly mixing religion and politics, the right could also constantly conflate piety and patriotism. Loving God means loving America.
00:02:58
Darwin Kastle
Loving America means being a good Christian.
Democrats vs. GOP on Inclusion
00:03:02
Darwin Kastle
You just have to ignore that whole pesky separation of church and state thing. Although religion is slowly starting to lose some of its hold on Americans, even as recently as 2024, over 60% of Americans identified as Christian.
00:03:17
Darwin Kastle
Only 29% of Americans identify as non-religious. It makes sense for a bunch of reasons that a political party might want to be considered the party of Christianity. You might even wonder why the Democrats aren't trying to do the same thing.
00:03:31
Darwin Kastle
The main reason is that Democrats and Republicans have opposing goals. To understand why, you need to understand that Republicans are the party of the rich and the Democrats are trying to represent all Americans.
00:03:44
Darwin Kastle
While the Democratic Party leadership certainly don't hate rich people, most of them are rich themselves. They do understand that the wealth gap is a problem, that it's hurting most of their constituents, and they really should try to do something about it.
00:03:59
Darwin Kastle
In an effort to represent all Americans, Democrats taught try not to choose Christians over other people of faith or even over non-believers.
Creating In-Groups and Out-Groups
00:04:07
Darwin Kastle
After all, they want to govern for everyone, not just the people of one religion.
00:04:13
Darwin Kastle
That doesn't work for the conservative game plan. In order to keep enough support for their rich people first party among the working class, they need two things, in-groups and out-groups.
00:04:26
Darwin Kastle
People like to feel special. So creating an in-group can help you gain influence over them. Telling a Christian that being a Christian makes them special makes them more likely to be your fan.
00:04:37
Darwin Kastle
Creating out-groups helps gain you even more influence with the innies. Tell Christians that everyone else is of lesser lesser status, or better yet, people to be hated and feared only draws them closer to you and the rest of the in-group.
00:04:54
Darwin Kastle
Mormon missionaries are an explicit example of this. After high school, members of the Church of Latter-day Saints are encouraged by the Church to go on missions where they go to other parts of the country or of the world to attempt to convert strangers to the Mormon faith.
00:05:11
Darwin Kastle
This is a win-win for the Church. If the missionary succeeds in adding people to the Church, win! But, if as often happens, the young missionaries are turned away time and again by strangers who just find them annoying, that's also a win.
00:05:28
Darwin Kastle
It's a win because when the dejected missionaries come home to the loving embrace of their Mormon family and friends after being rejected over and over by strangers, it just binds them more tightly to the church.
00:05:40
Darwin Kastle
We love you, unlike those unholy people who rejected you. For Republicans, it makes sense to make the Innes be whoever is in the majority. Having more people in your group means more people likely to vote your way.
Trump vs. Christian Values
00:05:54
Darwin Kastle
So, white people, congratulations, you're in Christians, you're Straight people, you're in Of course, that means everyone else is an outie.
00:06:05
Darwin Kastle
The big secret they don't want you to think about is that the only group of innies that they really care about is rich people. And to them, everyone else is an outie.
00:06:15
Darwin Kastle
The best way to understand this is to pay attention to their actual policies and governing actions. not just the nice words they say when they're trying to woo voters. The best way to understand that Republicans being the party of religious piety is a myth is to look at the actions of the people they choose to run for higher office.
00:06:34
Darwin Kastle
There are many eye-opening examples, but the most egregious is Donald Trump himself. President Trump has been divorced multiple times and has a well-documented history of infidelity in each of his three marriages.
00:06:49
Darwin Kastle
He uses foul language regularly, including in the public eye. He's been found in court to have committed sexual assault. He is admitted on tape to what most people would consider sexual assault.
00:07:01
Darwin Kastle
Trump has been indicted on 88 criminal counts. He rarely attends church and when asked about Bible verses, he just avoids the question. He is known for his lack of humility, never asks for forgiveness, and his stated preference is to seek revenge rather than to turn the other cheek.
00:07:19
Darwin Kastle
Aside from the fact that most of these things don't sound like ideal qualifications to be running the most powerful government in the world, I think most people can agree that nothing about these things says, good Christian.
GOP and Fiscal Responsibility: Myth or Fact?
00:07:31
Darwin Kastle
Just like the whole concept of Republicans being the party of Christianity, the idea that Trump cares about Christianity, aside from winning him votes, is a big myth. Myth number two, the party of fiscal responsibility.
00:07:48
Darwin Kastle
One of the reasons you are supposed to vote for Republicans is because they are known as the party of fiscal responsibility. This is one of the load-bearing myths of the GOP. The narrative gained momentum in the related to what is often called supply-side economics, based on the idea of quote, trickle-down economics.
00:08:09
Darwin Kastle
Not only did they want to lower taxes on the rich while cutting policies that helped the poor, they wanted those dreadful policy moves to actually embellish the Republican reputation on the economy.
00:08:22
Darwin Kastle
The Republicans have long been able to gain power just through sheer balls. You know that policy that is screwing over most Americans? It's actually awesome and a reason why you should keep voting for us.
00:08:34
Darwin Kastle
Being ballsy enough to say night is day and black is white is an elite political skill, if you're shameless enough to deploy it in an earnest-sounding fashion. It helps that in the beginning, some conservatives may actually have believed their claims.
00:08:50
Darwin Kastle
The problem is that every year they get more proof that they were wrong, but their claims don't change. The combination of reducing taxes on big corporations while also legalizing stock buybacks has had a predictable result.
00:09:07
Darwin Kastle
Instead of corporations reinvesting profits or even saving the money for a rainy day, they pour those funds into buying back their company stocks to drive up value and increase the wealth of their shareholders.
00:09:18
Darwin Kastle
This inevitably includes the CEOs who are making the decisions of what to do with the money. To make matters worse, when a big corporation runs into trouble, not only do they no longer have the money on hand to get them through hard times, they expect the government to spend money rescuing them instead.
00:09:36
Darwin Kastle
A much saner policy would be to keep taxes on big corporations high and then, if needed, use that money to bail out companies judged, quote, too big to fail. Perhaps the biggest farce of the fiscal responsibility myth is the deficit.
00:09:52
Darwin Kastle
When the country is governed by a Democratic administration, Republican lawmakers become deficit hawks. Sorry, we can't pass any new spending because that would increase the federal deficit and that would just be plain irresponsible.
00:10:06
Darwin Kastle
This is a political win-win for the GOP. First, it shows voters that Republicans are the party that cares about fiscal responsibility, not those stupid Democrats.
00:10:17
Darwin Kastle
Sure, we're preventing them bills to help working we're preventing them from passing bills to help working Americans, but it's only because we're being responsible spenders, not like those foolish Democrats.
00:10:31
Darwin Kastle
The second win comes at the voting booth. If the Republicans block every attempt by a Democratic administration to help people, then what reason is there to vote for Democrats? We elected those Democrats and they did absolutely nothing. Time to vote for the other guys.
00:10:46
Darwin Kastle
Sure, the Republicans may be the actual reason voters didn't get help, but the GOP depend on low-information voters to just be disgusted with the party of the current president and not to look into things in greater detail.
00:10:59
Darwin Kastle
But hold on. It gets worse. When a Republican is president, you might expect them to crack down on the deficit. You'd be wrong. In an effort to make you think they care about the deficit, they try to reduce spending by pursuing reductions on federal assistance programs for those most in need.
00:11:16
Darwin Kastle
Food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Meals on Wheels, cancer research, vaccines, etc. Despite that, deficits have exploded under recent Republican presidents.
00:11:31
Darwin Kastle
They don't care about reducing spending. They just want all the spending used to help rich people. Corporate bailouts, massive defense contracts, foreign wars, etc. You get it.
00:11:44
Darwin Kastle
The biggest deficit driver is the GOP's obsession with reducing taxes on the wealthy and their big corporations. At this point, at this point,
00:11:55
Darwin Kastle
There are more tax deductions available on private jets and mega yachts than are available to teachers buying school supplies. There are huge corporations making huge profits and paying little or no taxes, while there are people living paycheck to paycheck paying much higher effective tax rates.
00:12:13
Darwin Kastle
If you've been following this sub-stack, you might be able to guess that this trend really caught fire with President Reagan, as the deficit shot up 94%. Under George H. Bush, it went up 67%.
00:12:27
Darwin Kastle
Under his son, it went up over 1,000%. G.W. Bush really swung for the fences in driving up the deficit. He lowered on the taxes taxes on the rich even more, and he started wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
00:12:40
Darwin Kastle
During Trump's first term, the deficit increased over 300%. But what about those fiscally irresponsible Democrats? Bill Clinton decreased the deficit by 150%.
00:12:54
Darwin Kastle
How is that possible, you may ask? He left the country with a surplus. Barack Obama reduced the deficit by 53%. Yes, Biden increased the deficit almost as much as first-term Trump.
00:13:07
Darwin Kastle
But that brings me to another important point. Adding to the deficit isn't automatically a bad thing. Sometimes you need to add to the deficit to help the country. The deficit rocketed up under Franklin Roosevelt, and he's considered one of the greatest American presidents.
00:13:22
Darwin Kastle
That deficit spending helped the country through some of its greatest challenges, the Great Depression and World War II. Biden passed bills to help the country recover from COVID, to repair infrastructure, and to support Ukraine.
00:13:35
Darwin Kastle
It's not that... deficit spending is inherently bad, it's more about what you're spending the money on and why. If you're helping working Americans get back on their feet, that's good for voters and it's good for the economy.
00:13:48
Darwin Kastle
If you're just giving handouts to billionaires and big corporations, that is the kind of deficit spending that hurts the economy. the The reason Republicans make it sound like increasing deficit is always bad is because they want to stop Democratic administrations from getting things done.
00:14:04
Darwin Kastle
They also know that if we focus on their specific spending choices, it will look bad for them. It's another example of the GOP taking something bad they've done and successfully spinning it as a virtue.
Does GOP Really Support Small Government?
00:14:18
Darwin Kastle
We're the party of fiscal responsibility. Pay no attention to the things we actually do, just the things we say. Myth number three, small government.
00:14:29
Darwin Kastle
Another big part of the Republican brand is that they are the party of a small government. Ronald Reagan famously said, government is not the solution to our problem.
00:14:40
Darwin Kastle
Government is the problem. This might sound like someone who thinks we need to shrink the size of government. If that were true, you might expect Republicans would erase the deficit and eventually the average American would and eventually the average american would even have lower taxes.
00:14:58
Darwin Kastle
The reason those things don't happen is because the idea that the GOP believe in small government is just another myth. Both major parties believe in big government.
00:15:09
Darwin Kastle
There are two big differences, though. The first one is that only one of the two parties is lying to you and claiming to prefer a small government. The second difference is what each party wants to spend all that big government cash on.
00:15:23
Darwin Kastle
Sure, the government party likes to spend your tax dollars on the defense budget and bailing out banks and corporations. But they also want to spend money on health care for all, social security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, meals on wheels, cancer research, disaster aid, and lots of other things that benefit everyday Americans.
00:15:42
Darwin Kastle
Not so much for Republicans. While they too love shoveling money to the defense industry, big corporations, the banking industry, they hate spending things money on things that help everyday Americans.
00:15:53
Darwin Kastle
Why spend the tax dollars of everyday Americans on helping everyday Americans when you can just use that money to help the 1% instead? Let's be clear. The richest Americans pay a much smaller percentage of their wealth in taxes than other Americans do.
00:16:09
Darwin Kastle
This is the conservative design at work. tax average Americans, and then spend that money helping rich Americans. It's all about the upward transfer of wealth.
00:16:20
Darwin Kastle
according Let me say that again because that's basically the thesis of the whole Big Swing podcast and Big Swing Substack.
00:16:31
Darwin Kastle
It's all about the upward transfer of wealth. According to the U.S. Treasury, From 2015 to the present, federal spending has gone from 20% of the GDP to 23%.
00:16:45
Darwin Kastle
Overall spending has continued to increase no matter which party is in power. If conservatives were truly committed to small government, especially in comparison to those supposedly free-spending Democrats, you would think that federal spending would noticeably drop every time that Republicans take party from the Democrats.
00:17:05
Darwin Kastle
Sure enough, the GOP makes cuts to spending on helping those who need it most by slashing the budget for things like public health, cheap green energy, and public assistance for those most in need.
00:17:17
Darwin Kastle
Yet, not only does overall spending not go down, it goes up. If that isn't bad enough, when america when Republicans have power, they lower taxes on the wealthy, which reduces federal income to pay for all that spending, thus making the federal deficit balloon even more.
00:17:36
Darwin Kastle
Instead of helping normal people with American tax dollars, can conservatives want to spend money on things like private prisons, expanding ICE, giving financial support to Elon Musk companies, the richest man on earth, subsidizing fossil fuel companies, and other priorities of the richest and most influential political donors.
00:17:59
Darwin Kastle
The idea that Republicans care about small government is just another myth. Myth number
Tough on Crime: GOP's Narrative
00:18:06
Darwin Kastle
four, tough on crime.
00:18:10
Darwin Kastle
One of the most reliable mythologies for getting Republican politicians elected is the narrative that the GOP are the party that is tough on crime. doesn't matter what else is going on in the world.
00:18:21
Darwin Kastle
If conservatives produce a political ad with images of tough looking people of color and some burning cars with a voiceover blaming Democrats for creating a crime ridden hellscape and then put some scary music in it, Republicans are sure to squeeze out a few more votes.
00:18:40
Darwin Kastle
Ironically, this myth largely started gaining traction during the 1968 campaign of Mr. I'm not a crook himself, Richard Nixon. With crime rates rising, he made a central message of his campaign, law and order.
00:18:56
Darwin Kastle
The groundwork for the successful messaging campaign began in 1964, when Republican Senator Barry Goldwater unsuccessfully ran for president ailing against, quote, crime in the streets and blaming civil rights protests.
00:19:09
Darwin Kastle
This narrative perfectly fits the two big Republican standbys, rallying behind the rich and blaming things on minorities. As usual with the GOP, they are actually making things worse when it comes to crime, while at the same time touting their tough on crimeness as a strength.
00:19:30
Darwin Kastle
When it comes to blue-collar crime, both major political parties have similar approaches. More cops, more money for cops, more prisons, tougher sentencing, etc.
00:19:41
Darwin Kastle
The GOP may be more obsessed with these policies, but the Democrats support them too, even if one of the reasons is just so they can try to defang the Republican narrative that they are soft on crime.
00:19:53
Darwin Kastle
As usual, the big splits between the two parties on crime comes on issues that affect people based on wealth. The first split is white-collar crime.
00:20:04
Darwin Kastle
While neither party has been incredible at fighting white-collar crime, at least the Democrats agree that it's a problem and that we do need to be fighting it. Not only do Republicans laser focus on blue collar crime as if it's the only thing that actually counts as crime, but they fill their political ranks with white collar criminals.
00:20:24
Darwin Kastle
Probably not a coincidence. A perfect example is Florida Senator Rick Scott. Rick Scott was the CEO of a healthcare company called Columbia HCA.
00:20:36
Darwin Kastle
Under his leadership, the company inflated bills, overcharged Medicare and Medicaid, and gave kickbacks to doctors for referrals. It ended up being the biggest healthcare fraud scheme in US history.
00:20:50
Darwin Kastle
The company pleaded guilty to 14 felonies and paid $1.7 billion with a be dollars in fines. Scott claimed ignorance of the systematic crimes being committed by the company he was running.
00:21:05
Darwin Kastle
He also pleaded the fifth 75 times to avoid incriminating himself and he was forced resign. Totally innocent, right? Yeah, it doesn't really sound like it.
00:21:16
Darwin Kastle
But in case you thought justice was served by him being forced to resign in shame, he's still got a $10 million dollars severance package and $300 million dollars in stock.
00:21:32
Darwin Kastle
White-collar crime pays in America. In case you thought such a notorious fraudster would then at least be shunned from polite society, Rick Scott ran as a Republican and got elected governor of Florida. That's right, he got elected governor after this a few years later.
00:21:52
Darwin Kastle
After two terms as governor, he now serves in the U.S. Senate. Senator Scott's case is not an isolated incident. As of this writing, President Trump has pardoned or commuted the sentences is of over 70 people convicted or charged in health care and financial fraud schemes.
00:22:13
Darwin Kastle
Most have been wealthy political allies and big money donors, many of whom have found ways to directly benefit the Trump family financially right before receiving their pardons.
00:22:23
Darwin Kastle
Totally a coincidence, right? As usual, the wealthy person's gain has been a loss for everyone else. These pardons have resulted in erasing millions of dollars in restitution owed to the victims of these white collar criminals.
00:22:40
Darwin Kastle
The supposed party of law and order has been creating a system where the law doesn't apply as long as you're a rich ally of the Republicans. They try to distract from this by being extra harsh to criminals who aren't wealthy.
00:22:57
Darwin Kastle
This brings me to the other distinction with the Democrats on crime. Most Democrats seem to realize that one of the main ways to lower crime is to fight poverty and improve life for the average American.
00:23:10
Darwin Kastle
But this doesn't suit Republicans. First of all, the GOP doesn't want to spend money helping people who aren't wealthy. Second of all, they don't actually want to solve blue collar crime either.
00:23:23
Darwin Kastle
They just want the optics of being seen appearing to fight against it. If crime went away, it would be one less issue for Republicans to run on. Though the facts hardly seem to matter.
00:23:36
Darwin Kastle
As white collar crime is getting a moment in the sun, blue collar crime has significantly dropped. Aside from a spike in violent crime during and following the COVID pandemic, crime has been going down for decades.
00:23:49
Darwin Kastle
According to the BBC, violent crime in the US is the lowest it's been since the 1960s.
Episode Conclusion and Next Preview
00:23:55
Darwin Kastle
You would never know it based on Republican campaign ads, of course. An all too frequent narrative found in GOP political ads is portraying major American cities as crime-ridden hellscapes.
00:24:06
Darwin Kastle
The images typically focus on minorities and placing the blame on Democrats, while portraying Republicans as ready to swoop in and save the day. They might swoop in, but they won't be saving the day.
00:24:19
Darwin Kastle
That's just another one of their myths.
00:24:22
Darwin Kastle
Thanks for listening. Join us in two weeks for Episode 3 of The Big Swing. We'll continue discussing the conservative myths being sold to voters. In Episode 3, we'll discuss the myths of freedom.
00:24:35
Darwin Kastle
The Big Swing is written and read for you by me, Darwin Castle.