Privileged Victims

Mark Graber

Persons interested in the future direction of American constitutional politics might take a long look at a recent Pew Foundation survey on public opinion. Researchers found that core Republican voters can be divided into three groups, Enterprisers, Social Conservatives and Pro-Government Conservatives. Voters in two other groups, Upbeats and Disaffecteds, also vote overwhelming for Republican candidates. Enterprisers differ from every other group of voter in two respects. They are much better educated and far more affluent on average. Their high socio-economic status makes Enterprisers far more likely than Social Conservatives, Pro-Government Conservatives, or any other group of voter to secure federal judiciary appointments. Second, Enterprisers are far more committed to limited government and Bush administration policies during the war against terror than any other group of voters. Substantially higher percentages of Enterprises than Conservatives or Pro-Government Conservatives favor privatizing social security, drilling for oil in the Alaska Wilderness, reducing domestic spending, increasing military spending, torturing suspected terrorists, retaining the Patriot Act, maintaining recent tax cuts, eliminating minimum wages, banning affirmative action, and foregoing national health insurance. Enterprisers, however, are no more inclined that other core Republicans to support such socially conservative policies as banning abortion. Upbeats, the other group of affluent, highly educated, Republican voters, are far more likely than other Republicans to favor legal abortion and gay marriage. A judiciary composed of affluent, highly educated Republican elites, these findings indicate, will be far more conservative economically than the average Republican, more supportive of Bush administration foreign policies than the average Republican, but no more and perhaps even less supportive of social conservatism than the average Republican. Such a judiciary can be expected to take a narrower view than the national legislature of federal power under the commerce and spending clauses, but be no more tempted than any other governing institution to overrule Roe v. Wade or Lawrence v. Texas.

What this study suggests is that American politics, always dominated by elites, is increasingly being dominated by elites with no sense of social obligation. Unlike previous Republican country-club elites (see Kennedy, O'Connor, even Souter), core Republicans feel little or no empathy with persons of color, with the poor, with the environment, or with anyone or anything else. Figuring out what is motivating them is difficult, but may I suggest that what holds the new class together is a sense of victimization. Despite being better off than most Americans, they are personally victimized by terrorists, by crime, by affirmative action (virtually all enterprisers are white), by high taxes, by environmental regulations, by the poor, etc. Thus, rather than developing a sense that one's privileges should be shared with the less fortunate, the new elite regards themselves as the primary victims of American policy and seeks to restructure policy to end their victimhood. Not an optimistic future if these political trends continue.
Posted 10:56 PM by Mark Graber [link]