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Republicans are girly men

A Prig's Point of View

by Dan Prignitz '06

After three years of being a Republican at Grinnell, one truth has become distressingly apparent to me: my Grand Old Party is populated by an alliance of whiners and “girly men,” the likes of which have not been seen since the radical movements of the sixties.

Republican groups and movements on college campuses are the most heinous users of the “it’s not fair” childlike politics that has nearly destroyed issue politics in this country.

As a case in point, this summer the Pennsylvania House of Representatives passed HR 177, intended to “promote intellectual diversity and academic freedom” in public universities and colleges in the state. The resolution was a result of lobbying efforts by Students for Academic Freedom (SAF), a group chaired by none other than the illustrious David Horowitz.

The resolution, based on Horowitz’s Academic Bill of Rights, creates a Select Committee to report to the legislature on the state of academic freedom and find cases in which students report having assignments graded unfairly due to the ideological position they take (i.e., conservative). Similar bills are being considered in state legislatures across the country largely as a result of the discrimination complaints made by Republicans in schools with more liberal populations.

Campus Republicans’ pre-occupation with their status as a minority that is supposedly discriminated against is indicative of several disturbing trends current in the GOP.

The first is our seeming inability to compete in the intellectual realm with our more liberal counterparts—when we can’t win, we claim discrimination rather than forming a logically valid argument.

The second is that we now rely on the government to fix the slightest of societal or cultural problems we perceive exist. Republicans have continually turned to state governments to enforce academic “equality” and prevent gay marriage and the federal government to stop flag desecration.

The third, and perhaps most disturbing trend, is the critical lack of real issue discourse within the party and between the party and outsiders. So-called “academic freedom,” in the way it is conceptualized by Republicans, is an issue that affects few people materially.

The real effect of the Pennsylvania House Select Committee’s work, of course, will be to exploit public animosity against the academic community for political gain, not to rectify discrimination in the academic establishment.

This is the same reason David Horowitz, who came to Grinnell a year and a half ago, speaks on college campuses: to incite protests that make students and professors look intolerant and create an us (conservative mainstream) vs. them (liberal academia) sentiment among non-academics, which can be easily exploited for political gain by Republicans. In this way political leaders do not have to discuss political issues, but rather can exploit the politics of association.

Unfortunately, this reality gets to the heart of the current political role of campus Republican groups. I don’t mean to be too harsh to Republicans in Grinnell, because I am ideologically very similar to them on most issues.

However, their function in the greater Republican Party apparatus has not been to convince others of the soundness of traditionally core GOP positions—that is, promoting fiscal restraint, limited government and individual rights.

All too rarely do Republicans here actually debate issues of substance with their Democratic counterparts within an intellectual framework. Rather, Republicans’ role on all campuses has been to highlight the supposed persecution they have endured by a liberal majority to the non-academic community, thus reinforcing the notion of academic liberals as “bad guys.”

This was also the point of State Representative Danny Carroll’s campaign flier in last year’s election that suggested that “East Coast,” “liberal” students had no place voting for Iowa representatives. These types of “associational” and “victim” politics only enhance the image of a broader “culture war” dividing Americans.

Paradoxically, though, the success of culture war (i.e. non-issue) politics in elections has also prevented the GOP from implementing its core policy objectives while it is in power.

The recently passed Transportation Equity Act—which will cost $286 billion and fund in particular construction of a $223 million bridge in Alaska that will service fifty people—demonstrates that Republicans can no longer style themselves the party of fiscal responsibility.

Rather, the non-issue-focused campaign style of Republicans limits the ability of elected officials to build support for politically difficult policy decisions, such as budget austerity. This is unfortunate for those of us who value policy change more than electoral victory.

If College Republicans want a real voice on campus, they should work through established forums like SCIPE and the Rosenfield Program to discuss and debate substantive issues and get their message across. This would not include inviting counterproductive agitators like David Horowitz, but rather enlightened policy advocates. Otherwise, they will never escape their role as pseudo-martyrs.

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