The Republican Party Today

Another Comment on Mark Schmitt, who wrote:

Divide and Concur - Mark Schmitt: After the institutional reforms of the 1970s, the conservative coalition slowly moved into the Republican Party.... [W]e now have parties that offer a choice. [Ron] Brownstein sees them pulling further and further away from the center, but I think that's based on seeing the recent Republican Party and extrapolating a larger trend in both parties. A real political party, to capture a working majority, and with limited ability to work through cross-party negotiation, must capture the center.

For a brief and idiosyncratic period, the Republican Party was able to exercise Karl Rove's strategy of eschewing the center, but history will reveal that approach as one of failure, not of success. Right now, it is the Democratic Party that claims the center, which is why it is the only party that embraces the solutions that Brownstein describes in his first page as centrist solutions. I think this will change over time, and after some soul searching and crisis within the Republican Party, eventually we will have a true center-left and center-right party—both of which meet the 1950 definition of "responsible parties"—and a vibrant contest between them. It's taken me a while to give up my attachment to the age of bargaining, but there are many advantages to this new age.

I find myself much less optimistic about the future of the Republican Party than Mark Schmitt is. There are, in general, three ways to compete for the majority of the votes:

1. To demonstrate that you will implement policies that will make the majority of potential voters freer, more prosperous, and happier.
2. To convince a majority of voters that they are under an obligation to vote for your party because that is, fundamentally, who the are.
3. To convince a majority that they are threatened by vicious and deadly enemies--and that the other party is, at some level, in league with those enemies.

The northern Democratic Party has by and large pursued the first. The northern Republican Party used to pursue the second--with Civil War memorials and Lincoln Day speaches and how the sainted martyr Abraham had saved in the Union and it was our duty to his memory to carry forward his banner.

Starting early in the twentieth century, however the Republican Party has been increasingly pursuing the third: excoriating immigrants, Catholics," that communist Roosevelt," Russian spies in the State Department, appeasers and other advocates of "better red than dead," rootless cosmopolitans, advocates of "peaceful coexistence" and other graduates of Dean Acheson's Cowardly College of Containment, uppity Negroes, Hollywood, liberal socialists who want to control your life, the nattering nabobs of negativism in the press, Mexicans, muslims, homosexuals, China, atheists. You get the drill: rally the people against an enemy, hopefully both an external and an internal enemy, and be sure to pick an enemy weak enough that it is not a real existential threat that requires any form of sacrifice that would disrupt the comfort of those you truly work for.

Four generations of Republican political activists have now been trained in the art of busying giddy minds with foreign (and domestic) enemies. They can't engage in the kind of rational-win-the-center politics Mark Schmitt hopes to see.

It's time to do to the Republican Party what the Republicans did to the whigs: raze the structure and start over.

Comments

[Emma Anne]

This would make a good political ad, I think - list all of the groups Republicans want you to be afraid of. The juxtaposition makes it seem so ridiculous.

[save_the_rustbelt]

I suppose it would be equally easy to summarize 100 years of the Democrats in 1 paragraph, say Wilson's war and FDR internment of the Japanese, FDR's segregated army, LBJ's Viet Nam fiasco, blah, blah, blah...

Easy, but intellectually sloppy.

[Slocum]

"To convince a majority that they are threatened by vicious and deadly enemies--and that the other party is, at some level, in league with those enemies."

Boy, I have to say that I have the impression that there might be more than just a smidgen of this coming from the Democrats as well -- but with different bogeymen.

The 'vicious and deadly enemies' are corporations, for example (Walmart particularly) and, of course, the Republicans are in league with them. But also -- Bush is Hitler, Cheney is Darth Vader, and America is teetering on the brink of fascism.

Granted, this mostly comes from the netroots, the 'Democratic Wing' of the Democratic Party, Naomi Wolf, etc rather than actual grownups like Hilary Clinton, but still.

[walons]

Slocum,

But Bush is Hitler, Cheney is Darth Vader, America is teetering on the brink of fascism, Walmart really is deadly vicious, so that doesn't count.

[kharris]

This analysis may ignore certain legal and structural elements. House districts have been shaped to make them safe, and that means the winner is chosen during primaries. Everybody here knows that, I'm sure. But if the contest is won in the primary, when the relevant "center" is well away from the political center of the district, not to mention the nation as a whole, how are we going to get the sort of shift back to the middle Schmitt anticipates?

Senators are mostly graduates of the House. The inability to gerrymander across state lines means the relevant political center is more likely to be the political center of an entire state, but the starting point is a person who has committed to dreadful extremism before running in the Senate. Primaries are still going to kick out winners who represent the center of respective parties' primary voters, who tend to be more extreme than voters in the general election.

Given these inhibitions to selecting centrists, can we expect that the lessons we are learning about the bad result of extreme partisanship will outweigh the structural bias toward electing crap-heads?

[steve]

They have two strong niches. First, the hard right Bible-thumpers, who comprise nearly 30% of the electorate. Second, big business and many of the more wealthy. Given that the Bible-thumpers turn out much more heavily than most people, they may not need a durable majority, especially if they have a candidate that's not a total flamer.

[MobiusKlein]

... "The inability to gerrymander across state lines" ...

This ignores that the Senate is already gerrymandered by the Constitution.

At least the House allows conservative areas of California to have representation. (Unlike liberal areas of Wyoming, for example.)

[rea]

"America is teetering on the brink of fascism."

Starting wars unsupported by an imminent threat, locking citizens up without charges or trial, torturing prisoners, domestic surveillance . . .

Oh, of course, you're right--that bears no resemblance to fascism. The fact that we hung Germans at Nuremburg for doing these things is irrelevant.

[marcel]

"It's time to do to the Republican Party what the Republicans did to the whigs: raze the structure and start over."

Strange. As someone who has been a mildly activist Dem since shortly before 9/11, I increasingly feel that way about the Democrats.

[piotr]

Republicans are the reactionary party, which means that their main reason to be is to react, to oppose action. The foreign adventures are basically a tool to focus the nation of something more important than some silly actions at home, say, universal healthcare.

From that point of view, the soul and the heart of GOP is in opposing progressive social change, and, with luck, undoing it. The rest is marketing.

Reactionaries may depend on the various phobias of the "base" to get a majority, but they have some other generic tricks of the trade too:

a. any well-meaning change will doom our economy, be it energy conservation, revenue increase, modest increase in social spending

b. some economic wisdoms that "all serious people agree with", like that efficiency can come only from competion (see healthcare debate), revenue cuts spur economic activity (to the point of paying for themselves) etc.

Big media and many "centrist Democrats" support those claims, the the blocking ability of GOP can linger quite a while after it moves to minority.

GOP soul and heart comes, or it used to come, with a nice bundle of money that it can collect for championing the cause of the insecure minority of people with more money than most. In this election cycle it seems that they screw so badly that they lost their true base, the money. To wit, large donors give more to Democrats. But this is probably a temporary situation.

Around 1992 one could (and some did) write a eulogy for GOP, and their "end" lasted the grand total of two years. The fink seems to be deeper this time, but can we be sure that come 2010, GOP will be as vigorous as in 1994?

And who will win the center? What is the center? Is the society partitioned into the well-meaning, the vicious and the clueless? I may have very partisan characterisation of the "sides", but the center is heavily populated by types that do not pay attention, who do not think overly logically about public matters etc. In short, the clueless. So shortages of morality and intelect do not necessarily translate into lasting political handicap.

The debacle of 1994 followed the disaster of healthcare reform. Democrats promised, did not deliver and disappointed. The reactionary script is ready, the pro-active script has yet to be written.

[bob mcmanus]

Considering the history of ther Dixiecrats, I think it is far too soon to write off the Republican Party as presently constituted. Our liberalism presumes that factions will seek majorities directly, but a 20-30% minority, intransigent and determined with an implied threat of violence or secession, can exercise negative or veto power. Rarely will the majority achieve the 60%+ to overcome the resistance. I believe this is the Republican goal, and I think they are close to success. They have the history of slavery and 100 years of Jim Crow as models. Once taxes were lowered, it is very difficult to raise them again.

They don't need power, just need to keep us from exercising any.

[Cranky Observer]

> Oh, of course, you're right--that bears no
> resemblance to fascism. The fact that we
> hung Germans at Nuremburg for doing these
> things is irrelevant.

If I had three wishes from the pony-fairy I think I would actually use one to separate the concept of Mussolini-ism from the concept of Nazi-ism once and for all. I have a hard time seeing how any reality-based person between 2 and 8 on the political scale can argue that there are not some parallels between our current political situation and Mussolini-ism that should be considered without getting into poo-flinging over who called who a Nazi.

Cranky

[Lee A. Arnold]

Brad, I think the smarter Republicans already realize this and are hoping that their party can pull it out of the fire, if they nominate Giuliani and he immediately tacks left towward the center, for his general campaign. Because if Hillary Clinton is to be the Democratic nominee, it sounds from local talk around here (Santa Monica, Ca.) that there are a lot of independents and even Democratic men who will vote for Rudy. He may scarcely need the fundamentalists, although with a little lip service they will vote for him anyway. Then: as President he can do what Bush should have done, which is to take the Republican Party to the center, for once and for all.

In other words, the Republicans have a problem which they can solve by getting a Bill Clinton-style "triangulating" President who is ready to throw overboard some of the more vicious clowns in his own party.

Of course, that's a lot of "if's."

And of course, the Republicans also have a long-term intellectual problem -- their ideology doesn't comport with distributional or environmental reality -- but on these issues, the Democrats' own wavering makes makes them look no less shoddy.

Part of this is due to another difference between the parties: the Republicans use a 24-7-365 ideological message-machine that has been well-funded and running since the Reagan years, whereas the Democrats still wait for their candidates to put together and fund the campaign message.

On a slightly different matter, any discussion about the partisan gridlock in Congress must pay attention to the central fact that good governance has become financially impossible. These people are fundraising four or five nights out of the week. They no longer have time to read books, study the issues, make friends with each other, and talk -- which is how the country used to be run. It is not happening anymore. Indeed the money-go-round forces them daily into harder policy positions, and so their parties follow. Bill Clinton described this problem in a recent video interview. In fact he said that "sleep deprivation" is becoming an issue, and he said he wasn't joking. So people who want the government to work correctly had better start looking at true campaign finance reform and get the money out of politics. It is going to destroy our country, not because of the sway of vested interests, which will always be there, but because the process of good governance envisaged by the Founders is becoming humanly impossible.

[christofay]

Busholini.

The New Yorker a few years back published recollections of Mussolini by Italo Calvino that read like a fantastic parity of the contemporary United States.

Even with a Democratic Congress the government is still entirely controlled by Republicans, a very nationalistic group just as long as you don't call for conscription and very socialistic as long as you contribute to the right charities, basket cases all.

In Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, 1972, he wrote his problem with the Democrats is they now act like Republicans; no wonder he removed himself from the scene.

[wcw]

Hey, I miss conservatives who have brains. That's why I read Brad's site, since he approximates same these days. Brad (and the US Ds) are Eisenhower Republicans writ small, absent Ike's verve, domestic spit and (here likely for the best) international intrusiveness.

Those of you who are attacking him from the right have real problems, though. Are you jockeying for the Rightmost Of The Khan prize or something?

Grow up, kids.

[Monte Davis]

"...and be sure to pick an enemy weak enough that it is not a real existential threat..."

That's the one that boggles me. If you set out to identify that segment of the world's population most tied into knots for centuries by self-defeating constraints (on autonomous thought, on women, on civil society, on economic growth), the Islamic world would be a pretty good fit.

It's genuinely beyond me how the wingnuts make the leap from "they came up with $500K so 19 people could seize four cockpits"... or "their unassimilated teenagers burned cars in the _banlieues_"... to the New Caliphate at the gates of Vienna.

[albatross]

Brad:

Wouldn't the religious conservatives fall more into #2? I think it's a moral obligation/identity sort of argument that's happening there.

I think the current kind of making up of enemies by Republicans is done because they're having a hard time keeping their coalition together. Religious conservatives and free-marketeers and bomb-them-into-democracy neocons and big business interests don't actually share that much in the way of ideas or values. So it's very important to find ways to unite them, and uniting them against an enemy is fairly easy.

[andres]

What contrarians like STR and Slocum don't seem to understand is that since the Civil War the Democrats have never been a party with a cohesive ideology nor a party with a cohesive class/racial agenda. That is why it is possible to have Democratic presidents whose good domestic policies clash with horrible foreign policies (eg LBJ) or vice-versa (Clinton, and yes, I consider NAFTA, the 1996 welfare bill and _unqualified_ focus on budget balancing as bad domestic policy).

So the Democratic party is still very much a policy battlefield. And please let's not bring up the Dixiecrats again. The Democrats have never had a literal Dixiecrat president (LBJ, Carter and Clinton obviously don't count), and the last President who was a policy Dixiecrat was Wilson, and even he had an enlightened (if naive) foreign policy. Outside of the South itself, Dixiecrats had very little long-term impact on Democratic policy initiatives.

The Republican party, by contrast, has not had any redeeming features at least since Teddy Roosevelt left in 1912 (and the Republican elites like Hanna and Rockefeller never liked Roosevelt). Practically the only oasis in an endless desert of reactionary, anti-egalitarian, and anti-democratic Republican policy initiatives was Eisenhower's decision to support school desegration. And Ike's foreign policy was a disaster too, courtesy of the Dulles brothers.

This is why I have a hard time taking seriously anyone who even hints at moral equivalence between the Democrats and Republicans. Get with it, guys.

[andres]

Cranky:

"If I had three wishes from the pony-fairy I think I would actually use one to separate the concept of Mussolini-ism from the concept of Nazi-ism once and for all. I have a hard time seeing how any reality-based person between 2 and 8 on the political scale can argue that there are not some parallels between our current political situation and Mussolini-ism that should be considered without getting into poo-flinging over who called who a Nazi."

And of course Mussolini is well-remembered for his epic resistance to Hitler's Final Solution, as illustrated in movie classics such as _The Garden of the Finzi-Continis_.

More seriously, the difference between Mussolini's Italy and Nazi Germany was one of degree, not overall direction. Both countries engaged in foreign military aggression, both mixed up anti-Semitism with anti-communism. About the only minor difference was that Fascist Italy worked with a theory of cultural superiority as opposed to the Nazi theory of Aryan racial superiority. Fascist Italy did not initiate the Holocaust, but participated quite eagerly with Hitler once it started.

People who equate Nazi Germany with today's Republicans (especially the ones who go into hysterics about Islamofascism and wars of civilization) are being very unoriginal and exaggerated; hence, they are being rhetorically ineffective. However, they are dead on in that Nazi Germany is the abyssal bottom of the slippery slope that today's Republicans are taking us towards. And from that I don't budge.

[Bernard Yomtov]

"And of course Mussolini is well-remembered for his epic resistance to Hitler's Final Solution, as illustrated in movie classics such as _The Garden of the Finzi-Continis_."

Not sure if you're joking. It wasn't epic, especially since Fascist Italy passed some anti-Semitic legislation, but the US Holocaust Memorial Museum web site (http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005455)

has this to say:

"Although allied with Germany, Fascist Italy did not willingly cooperate in the Nazi plan to kill the Jews of Europe. Italians generally refused to participate in genocide, or to permit deportations from Italy or the Italian occupation zones in Yugoslavia, Greece, and France to the Nazi extermination camps. Italian military officers and officials usually protected Jews and Italian-occupied areas were relatively safe for Jews. Between 1941 and 1943, thousands of Jews escaped to Italy and Italian-occupied territory from German-occupied territory."

It was not until the German occupation of Italy that there were large-scale deportations and murders.

[Chris Brown]

Leo Strauss counseled that to keep the unwashed mashes with the program always present an enemy and encourage the practice of religion.

[Student]

It's not a coincedence that Norman Podhoretz has now written a (totally looney) book titled "World War IV" that is being lauded across the right wing.

Brad is right: it's all they've got going for them, and they will do whatever they can to keep it going. It seems to be inherent in the nature of human decision-making that this sort of appeal is much more effective than it deserves to be on the rational merits.

I wish I knew how to counter it, but something needs to be found. Perhaps personal smearing, which in this case can be done using nothing but the truth, will work.

[andres]

Bernard: I was of course being sarcastic. Your quote from the USHHM is a good reminder, but it doesn't mention the general differences between the leadership of Fascist Italy, which did whatever they could to keep Hitler happy, and the rank and file, who had not been brainwashed with fanatic anti-Semitism the way Germans had. The point being that Mussolini and his political machine still made the equation Jew = Bolshevik = Potential Traitor and still used the same ideology of fear and clash of civilizations as a motivator to send thousands of Italians to their deaths in Spain and Russia.

Not only is this substantially similar to what the neocons are spouting today, but it's only a step removed from genocide. Hitler benefited from a more efficient propaganda machine and a more ingrained anti-Semitic tradition among Germans. But this doesn't absolve Mussolini, who might have decided on a mass murder of his own if he had had the political means to do so.

When I hear neocons talking about Islamofascism and the need to take preemptive military action against Iran, I could almost swear I'm back in late 1930's Europe. A grim struggle lies ahead.