Political-philosophical analysis of the Republican Party

Based upon my basic understanding of the Republican Party, I know that it stands for small government, meaning that government should generally not interfere with freely-existing social and economic forces.

Listening to the radio this morning, it dawned on me that the Republican Party -- particularly President Bush and the Secretary of the Treasury -- is playing a major role in the initiative to intervene in our downwardly-spiralling economy. Personally I have no problem with this government intervention. But the question arose: based on the political philosophy of the Republican Party, why would they be getting involved or even supporting this government intervention in the economy?

Being a political question, the question is ultimately one that concerns the issue of power, which in practical terms, is money. Redefining the question, then: why would the Republican Party actively intervene in the country's economic decline? The answer: because Republicans represent -- and are themselves -- the class that is facing a real loss of power due to their ownership and interest in the U.S. economy.

Now this makes perfect sense. And really, one cannot criticize this policy as anything other than rational decisionmaking: the policymakers are simply protecting their own interests and the interests of those that they represent.

But where this analysis gets interesting, I believe, is when one considers the dialectical opposite: when -- and more importantly, why -- does the Republican Party not support government intervention in the economy (or other social matters)? The answer: when their interests as representatives of the upper-class, corporations, and the economic elite are not at risk; for example, in matters of economic justice and social welfare (read, when the poor lower-class and politically-irrelevant sectors of the middle class are not involved). And this reality -- and its concomitant revelation of the hypocrisy of the Republican Party's political philosophy -- exposes the Republican Party as class-biased.

Now, I'm aware that the idea that the Republican Party is class-biased is not necessarily a novel concept. Interpolating and applying this political philosophy at the individual level, however, is what really concerns me; think about this: the Republican true to her/his party's political philosophy makes a choice to refuse to help an economically-unfortunate lower- or middle-class neighbor, and will only choose to get involved if an upper-class neighbor or corporation's economic health is in jeopardy.

When we then humanize the faces of the lower-class, we see the reality that a majority of this class has some hue of brown skin and lives largely in urban areas. It is at this point that the class bias, perhaps arguably justifiable under a rational analysis or social-Darwin approach, moves dangerously in the direction of racial or ethnic bias, something which is no longer justifiable under any analysis or approach other than an explicitly racist one.

My conclusion here is not that the policy of the Republican Party is a proxy for any particular racial agenda. My ultimate point is that the underlying structure of the Republican Party -- in its philosophy of small government -- is morally indefensible. And even more so because, in real life, this political philosophy is ignored when convenient to those in power, thus exposing the hypocrisy of the Republican politicians themselves.