Back in the Clinton years, a main paleo-conservative argument was that Wall Street had bought both parties. The tradition counters to big business were unable to compete with the vast amounts of money pouring into the parties from global corporations and their bankers. The old conservative aphorism, “the trouble with capitalism is capitalists” had given way to unanimous support for Gramm-Leach.

At the time, I was a little skeptical as it seemed to me that the rich and powerful would always have the whip hand in politics. It has always been thus so why should the future be any different? If America was transitioning from an industrial power to a financial and technological power, then the people in charge would the titans of finance and technology.

I think that the thing that no one saw coming is the class awareness of the global elite. For all of human history, the rich and powerful were tied to their country of origin by blood, language and tradition. The rootless cosmopolitan was a fringe character, never to be trusted. The new elite are different in that they are much more like the rootless cosmopolitan, with infinitely more money and, consequently, power.

The consequences are becoming apparent to many grassroots Republicans. They rallied to give the GOP majorities in both houses only to see the GOP embrace the Obama agenda with an enthusiasm of a fanatic. If you trundled out to vote in 2010 and 2014 and you don’t feel like a fool right now, you’re not paying attention. Just wait until the court rules against ObamaCare and the GOP rushes a fix through both houses. Maybe then you’ll see.

If not, the people with the whip hand are about to make sure you know who is running things now. Business Insider reports that the paymasters have grown tired of appeasing the provincials and their primitive customs.

For years, when it came to presidential candidates, Wall Street made huge compromises in order to support the Republican Party.

The money men in New York City set aside their socially liberal views in order to support fiscally conservative candidates because that was the only way to get on the same page as the GOP base.

The result has been a series of candidates Wall Street’s big donors didn’t really want.

It seems those donors are getting tired of that outcome.

Hedge fund billionaire Leon Cooperman recently vented his frustration with this arrangement on an episode of Wall Street Week.

“I tend to be more Republican in my views, but socially very liberal. I’m going to have trouble with any Republican that does not disavow a fixation with social issues,” he said.

“Republicans have to understand that because young people in our country are not grabbed by those issues.”

“Republicans have to understand that because young people in our country are not grabbed by those issues.”

Republican candidates are not getting the message.

In fact, some social conservatives are actually hardening their stances before a new wave of younger voters has the mass to make a difference at the polls.

A recent Pew Research poll found that Republican Conservatives are the only group in America who have become less accepting of homosexuality over the last two years.

This is not what Wall Street wants to see.

As an aside, the obsession over young people is a strange psychosis that you don’t see in the history books. Up until the birth of mass culture, people just assumed young people did not know enough to be trusted so they had to be taught. Suddenly, that got flipped on its head and everyone claims to be living on a knife’s edge over the choices made by teenagers.

Anyway, the old crime thinkers who were run out of conservative politics decades ago are being proven correct about the culture war. Culture trumps everything. The plutocrats living off the financial system will do business with the either party, but they will favor those who share their worldview. Leon Cooperman will give money to Elizabeth Warren over Ted Cruz because Warren is better for the gays.

If you look at how the people who invented Christianity converted Europe, you’ll see it was not a bottom up approach. They went for the top guys, knowing they would compel their people to convert. That’s exactly how Augustine went about converting the Anglo-Saxons. He baptized Æthelberht, the king of Kent, assuming the people would follow.

That’s a lesson to consider here. The people in charge of the two political parties are wholly owned by the financial class. That financial class is culturally at odds with the people, but they control the means of public expression, as well as the dominant cultural institutions. History says they win, no matter how many times you vote Republican.