The silence is deafening
The scandal of Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz doesn’t appear to be withering on the vine. It is almost guaranteed we will hear a great deal more. One of the most asked questions is why the Republicans won’t comment.
It isn’t hard to dissect the answer when one considers their odious behavior. It also appears that more and more, the GOP has become the party of group-think.
The politics of group-think go back a long time. Conformity has been around forever. It was captured perfectly in the classic film “Lord of the Flies.” But it is not just pervasive among children. Adults can get caught up in conformity.
This was demonstrated by social psychologist Solomon Asch, who conducted experiments that came to be called “The Asch conformity experiments” and “The Asch paradigm.”
This took place in the 1950s at Swarthmore college. Groups of students participated in a “vision test” where they were shown cards with lines on them and then asked questions about said lines. They were asked about line abnormalities, which lines matched in length etc.
The students didn’t know many of the participants were actors who deliberately gave inaccurate answers. The way the study was conducted, the actual participants were always last. The experiment wanted to see whether the participants would change their answers, even knowing they might be wrong, to go along with the group.
The results did show that only about 24% did not conform.
This experiment is vital in analyzing the behavior of the GOP. They are terrified of not being in lockstep with the crowd. Each GOP member is likely waiting for the permission of “the big cheese,” in this case, most likely Donald Trump. The Republicans will probably not speak out until given consent. Like the participants in the Asch experiment, their desire to conform has overridden their common sense.
