Feehery: The elites vs. the extremists

Climate change is a preoccupation for the elites in our society. Inflation is the preoccupation for everybody else.  

The Jan. 6 investigation is aimed at exposing the extremists who tried to overthrow the election and reimpose Donald Trump. That’s what the Democrats hope the voters care about this November. 

Modern campaigns are all about tearing down the other candidate. 2022 is all about the extremists versus the elitists. 

For the Democrats, the extremists are not just MAGA, they are ultra-MAGA. They are the Donald Trump-supporting, abortion-opposing, election-denying, gay-hating, immigrant-bashing right-wingers who can’t be trusted with power. Because, you know, when Trump was in power and successfully created an economy with low inflation, high employment and strong economic growth, it must have been bad for the environment.  

For the Republicans, the mask-mandating elites are driving up gas prices because they want you to buy an electric car, are in favor of schools (public and private) teaching critical race theory to your children because they just read a splendid book at their book club, are in favor of open borders because it means cheaper labor, think that those poor victims should be let out of prison for rape, murder and other random crime because the system is fundamentally racist (just as they hire private security firms to patrol their ritzy neighborhoods) and want to take away your guns because you shouldn’t be able to protect yourself from the criminals or an overly aggressive police state.  

In a democracy, when the elite gains too much power and uses it too promiscuously to feather its own nests, voters usually have the last word.  

Republicans used to be patricians who practiced a form of noblesse oblige, serving at their local soup kitchens, giving freely to their local Planned Parenthood chapter, making their money on Wall Street and worrying about the unwashed masses that flowed in from Europe. Those days are long gone, but it took Trump to put the final nail in the coffin of the white, wealthy GOP establishment.  

It was Barry Goldwater who is said “extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue.” It is the extremism that the Democrats hope to hang around the heads of the new Republican Party.  

Elites always call working-class populists extremists, because they see them as a fundamental threat to their power, and ultimately their money.  

The question remains: Can the Democrats successfully label the Republicans as Trump extremists who want to subvert democracy and install some kind of extra-constitutional fascist republic? 

Or are the voters more concerned about the mundane issues that don’t seem to bother the 1 percent as much, things like crushing energy prices, food that is too expensive and getting more expensive every day, middle schools that don’t teach the basics when they are actually open, colleges that are too expensive and teach exotic gender theories, out-of-control crime and an open border that overwhelms local neighborhoods with dangerous drugs like fentanyl. 

Democrats are cheering their misnamed Inflation Reduction Act as if this will be their salvation for the upcoming elections, mostly because it invested heavily in obscure tax credits that theoretically will help fight climate change. But most voters, outside of the narrow band of environmental activists who have a vested interest in profiting from those tax breaks, don’t put climate change anywhere near the top of their legislative agenda. What they want is open schools, safe streets, affordable food and energy and a break from crushing inflation. That doesn’t sound so extreme to me. 

In the battle of the elites versus the extremists, I still give the edge to the Republicans, although the Democrats have some momentum, born mostly from unlikely bipartisan successes. If the Republicans truly want to be the outsider party, they should probably stop playing the insider game.  

Feehery is a partner at EFB Advocacy and blogs at thefeeherytheory.com. He served as spokesman to former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), as communications director to former House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) and as a speechwriter to former House Minority Leader Bob Michel (R-Ill.).