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Is This the Beginning of the End for the Republican Party?--Reposted
For those who saw it before, please forgive me for reposting this. Apparently I hit send before the new system was completely online (tap tap tap hello? is it on now?) and it slid off into Silicon Heaven.
Political parties are not immortal, even in this country.
The Federalists ceased to be a national party in 1800 and subsequently ceased being even a regional party with a national voice as a result of their opposition to the War of 1812. The lack of effective opposition after the Federalist Party's demise allowed simmering tensions within the Democratic Republican Party of Jefferson and Madison to come to a boil and it fissioned into the Jacksonian faction, which became today's Democratic Party, and everyone else. The remaining bits and pieces swirled around for a bit, forming minor parties and coalitions and within a fairly short time, these parties, along with the remnants of the Federalists,, coalesced into the Whigs.
The Whigs were hampered in developing a coherent ideology because doing so would have required them to confront the slavery issue head-on. Doing that, they knew, would have alienated voters in one region or the other. Instead, they stood for a vaguely defined nationalism that favored Congressional supremacy over the executive, programs of internal improvements, a protective tariff, and a slightly more "energetic" central government than that favored by the Democrats.
The Whigs were just credible enough of a threat to cause the Democrats to keep a lid on the tensions between those who were strongly in favor of slavery and those who were merely not against it. (In practice, in other words, the Whigs bore a surprising resemblance to the kind of barely credible threat that the Republicans dreamed of reducing the Democrats to the heady crazy days between the 2002 midterms and the Schiavo debacle.)
The Whigs' imperative need to avoid taking strong policy positions caused them to look to old war heroes for presidential candidates. Unfortunately, both of the heroes they managed to get elected quite promptly died in office. Between the lack of ideological vigor, the inability to get a strong personality elected President and the growing unavoidability of the slavery question, in the 1850s, the Whigs just unraveled. Their leaders either quit politics altogether or drifted into other new, fringier parties like the American a/k/a "Know Nothing" Party (think Lou Dobbs if he lived in antebellum America), the Anti-Masonic Party ("Against Secret Societies!"), and the the Free Soil Party (against the expansion of slavery into the west).
In 1848, the Whigs won their last presidential election. Their candidate, Gen. Zachary Taylor, hero of the Mexican American War, of course, promptly died. In 1852, the Whigs nominated Gen. Winfield Scott, hero of the War of 1812 and of the Mexican American War. Scott was resoundingly defeated by Franklin Pierce--not exactly a political superstar--and thereby managed to survive another ten years. By 1856, there wasn't anyone left in the Whig party of sufficient stature to merit a nomination. Their sad little convention that year nominated Millard Filmore, the head of the Know-Nothings, and went home, never to meet again.
Also in 1856, another little fringe party started and promptly began competing with the Free Soilers for former Whigs and anti-slavery Democrats. They called themselves Republicans. By 1860, the Democratic Party was also splitting in two, between the "not necessarily against slavery" and the "if you're not for it you're against it" factions, the Republicans swept up the remnants of the Whigs, the Free Soilers and--gingerly and with a certain amount of nose-holding--the Know-Nothings and won the election, their second.
If the Civil War had not followed, the split in the Democratic Party might well have become permanent and the party dissolved. As it happened, once slavery was abolished, northern and southern post-war Democrats found they could deal with one another once again. Since then, factions have hived off of the two major parties only to eventually rejoin the mother party or drift over to the opposition--the Bullmoose Party split off and rejoined the Republicans. The Dixiecrats split from the Demcorats, rejoined, split off again as the "American Party" of George Wallace, rejoined again and then their members answered the siren song of Richard Nixon's southern strategy. The LaRouchites -- okay, actually I've never known what the fuck those loons were all about or why, exactly, it was they nominally Democrats.
My point is that the persistence of the Democratic and Republican parties in the face of splits that previously would have been fatal has lent them an air of unquestioned permanence over the last century and a half. The Republicans may have fantasized about the end of the Democratic Party, but eventually they had to close up their skin mags, zip up and and let someone else use the stall. The Democrats survived and came roaring back from their low ebb following 9/11 just as the Republicans came back after Nixon's disgrace made many suspect they were washed up as a national party.
And despite that, I'm really wondering if we're seeing the last days of the Republican Party.
Most likely not. Almost certainly not. But consider the following. The main difference between a two party and multiparty system is that in a multiparty system, every ethnic group, every religion, every social and economic viewpoint, can have its own party with a rigid ideology and the coalition building occurs after the election. In a two party system, however, each party must be a coalition of competing interests, viewpoints and agendas in order to thrive. The Democrats have always been better at being a big tent and, in any case, ever since the segregationists abandoned the party, the agendas of the various groups within the party are rarely truly contradictory. There is tension, of course, between left and center, and,of course, there's our delightful penchant for turning primary contests into brutal cannibalistic rituals, but by and large we get along.
Republicans, however, have become a simmering kettle of mutually antagonistic interests. Libertarians vs. authoritarians. Anti-immigration activists vs. the people who employ the immigrants. Theocrats vs. the corporatists who want maximum freedom to cater to our most base desires. Isolationists vs. neocon militarists. And, of course, professionals and intellectuals (a few real, most psuedo) who want government by reason vs. the ignorant hateful rabble who want government from the gut.
The only thing that held them together was that they hated us and a common nearly patholocial fear that our policies would lead to social, economic and moral collapse. Now that their policies have led to social, economic and moral collapse, however, all those differences have boiled over and the stupid people appear to have won.
For decades, the Republicans have been more than happy to patronize to the bigots and haters, to the rabid anti-intellectuals, the xenophobes and the just generally stupid. Heretofore, they've used those people, but they never let them run the party. In recent years, however, they let the camel get its nose into the tent when they stopped just giving the theocrats their ear and, instead, gave them a seat at the table with the corporatists and the militarists. Meanwhile loud voices appeared in the media to feed the belligerent delusional ignoramus faction's insatiable appetite for stupidity--Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly, Coulter, Malkin, and on and on. And slowly but surely, as those people took control of the belligerent ignoramus faction, they found themselves in a position to give orders to Party rather than taking them. Increasingly, the agenda of the Republican Party was set not by the Bill Buckleys and George Wills and the Reagan alum. No, increasingly, the agenda was being written by the people who controlled the rabble: Limbaugh and O'Reilly and Hannity and the wingnut bloggers.
And now, the victory of the belligerant ignoramus faction is complete. They've found their champion in Sarah Palin, they develop and coordinate their ideology and worldview through unhinged emails and in the comments sections of the MSM's websites and, at last, the people who used to use these ignoramuses are recoiling in horror.
The list of defectors, people who can no longerstand to be associated with a party run by its pro-ignorance faction, grows by the day: George Will, David Brooks and Christopher Buckley. Lincoln Chaffee, Chuck Hagel and Susan Eisenhower. Wall Street has abandoned the Republicans, donating more to Democrats in the ratio of 2:1. As David Brooks noted recently, the Republicans have lost the professionals--doctors and lawyers, architects and accountants.
The belligerent delusional ignoramus faction still has the neocons on their side, of course. Bloody Bill Kristol and Rich Lowery are on board for the duration but that's hardly surprising. They're just better educated versions of the belligerent delusional ignoramuses who are calling the shots now, kindred spirits. That's not a plus for the Republicans.
If one thing should be clear to us, it is that a political party run by delusional ignoramuses cannot survive. If that premise is granted, I confess that I can see only two possible futures for the Republican Party as I write today. Either the professionals, the country clubbers, the elitists and the libertarians take advantage of the seismic defeat they're about to suffer as an excuse to stamp out the power of the belligerent delusional ignoramuses, or else the ignoramuses keep control and the Republican Party follows the the Whigs and the Federalists across the bridge to oblivion.
Maybe not. There's a lot more institutional infrastructure holding parties together these days; think tanks and donor networks, PACs and national congressional campaign committees. However, one other lesson of history is that when parties die, it can happen faster than anyone imagined--one election you're electing presidents and two election cycles later, the party doesn't even exist.
The Whigs were hampered in developing a coherent ideology because doing so would have required them to confront the slavery issue head-on. Doing that, they knew, would have alienated voters in one region or the other. Instead, they stood for a vaguely defined nationalism that favored Congressional supremacy over the executive, programs of internal improvements, a protective tariff, and a slightly more "energetic" central government than that favored by the Democrats.
The Whigs were just credible enough of a threat to cause the Democrats to keep a lid on the tensions between those who were strongly in favor of slavery and those who were merely not against it. (In practice, in other words, the Whigs bore a surprising resemblance to the kind of barely credible threat that the Republicans dreamed of reducing the Democrats to the heady crazy days between the 2002 midterms and the Schiavo debacle.)
The Whigs' imperative need to avoid taking strong policy positions caused them to look to old war heroes for presidential candidates. Unfortunately, both of the heroes they managed to get elected quite promptly died in office. Between the lack of ideological vigor, the inability to get a strong personality elected President and the growing unavoidability of the slavery question, in the 1850s, the Whigs just unraveled. Their leaders either quit politics altogether or drifted into other new, fringier parties like the American a/k/a "Know Nothing" Party (think Lou Dobbs if he lived in antebellum America), the Anti-Masonic Party ("Against Secret Societies!"), and the the Free Soil Party (against the expansion of slavery into the west).
In 1848, the Whigs won their last presidential election. Their candidate, Gen. Zachary Taylor, hero of the Mexican American War, of course, promptly died. In 1852, the Whigs nominated Gen. Winfield Scott, hero of the War of 1812 and of the Mexican American War. Scott was resoundingly defeated by Franklin Pierce--not exactly a political superstar--and thereby managed to survive another ten years. By 1856, there wasn't anyone left in the Whig party of sufficient stature to merit a nomination. Their sad little convention that year nominated Millard Filmore, the head of the Know-Nothings, and went home, never to meet again.
Also in 1856, another little fringe party started and promptly began competing with the Free Soilers for former Whigs and anti-slavery Democrats. They called themselves Republicans. By 1860, the Democratic Party was also splitting in two, between the "not necessarily against slavery" and the "if you're not for it you're against it" factions, the Republicans swept up the remnants of the Whigs, the Free Soilers and--gingerly and with a certain amount of nose-holding--the Know-Nothings and won the election, their second.
If the Civil War had not followed, the split in the Democratic Party might well have become permanent and the party dissolved. As it happened, once slavery was abolished, northern and southern post-war Democrats found they could deal with one another once again. Since then, factions have hived off of the two major parties only to eventually rejoin the mother party or drift over to the opposition--the Bullmoose Party split off and rejoined the Republicans. The Dixiecrats split from the Demcorats, rejoined, split off again as the "American Party" of George Wallace, rejoined again and then their members answered the siren song of Richard Nixon's southern strategy. The LaRouchites -- okay, actually I've never known what the fuck those loons were all about or why, exactly, it was they nominally Democrats.
My point is that the persistence of the Democratic and Republican parties in the face of splits that previously would have been fatal has lent them an air of unquestioned permanence over the last century and a half. The Republicans may have fantasized about the end of the Democratic Party, but eventually they had to close up their skin mags, zip up and and let someone else use the stall. The Democrats survived and came roaring back from their low ebb following 9/11 just as the Republicans came back after Nixon's disgrace made many suspect they were washed up as a national party.
And despite that, I'm really wondering if we're seeing the last days of the Republican Party.
Most likely not. Almost certainly not. But consider the following. The main difference between a two party and multiparty system is that in a multiparty system, every ethnic group, every religion, every social and economic viewpoint, can have its own party with a rigid ideology and the coalition building occurs after the election. In a two party system, however, each party must be a coalition of competing interests, viewpoints and agendas in order to thrive. The Democrats have always been better at being a big tent and, in any case, ever since the segregationists abandoned the party, the agendas of the various groups within the party are rarely truly contradictory. There is tension, of course, between left and center, and,of course, there's our delightful penchant for turning primary contests into brutal cannibalistic rituals, but by and large we get along.
Republicans, however, have become a simmering kettle of mutually antagonistic interests. Libertarians vs. authoritarians. Anti-immigration activists vs. the people who employ the immigrants. Theocrats vs. the corporatists who want maximum freedom to cater to our most base desires. Isolationists vs. neocon militarists. And, of course, professionals and intellectuals (a few real, most psuedo) who want government by reason vs. the ignorant hateful rabble who want government from the gut.
The only thing that held them together was that they hated us and a common nearly patholocial fear that our policies would lead to social, economic and moral collapse. Now that their policies have led to social, economic and moral collapse, however, all those differences have boiled over and the stupid people appear to have won.
For decades, the Republicans have been more than happy to patronize to the bigots and haters, to the rabid anti-intellectuals, the xenophobes and the just generally stupid. Heretofore, they've used those people, but they never let them run the party. In recent years, however, they let the camel get its nose into the tent when they stopped just giving the theocrats their ear and, instead, gave them a seat at the table with the corporatists and the militarists. Meanwhile loud voices appeared in the media to feed the belligerent delusional ignoramus faction's insatiable appetite for stupidity--Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly, Coulter, Malkin, and on and on. And slowly but surely, as those people took control of the belligerent ignoramus faction, they found themselves in a position to give orders to Party rather than taking them. Increasingly, the agenda of the Republican Party was set not by the Bill Buckleys and George Wills and the Reagan alum. No, increasingly, the agenda was being written by the people who controlled the rabble: Limbaugh and O'Reilly and Hannity and the wingnut bloggers.
And now, the victory of the belligerant ignoramus faction is complete. They've found their champion in Sarah Palin, they develop and coordinate their ideology and worldview through unhinged emails and in the comments sections of the MSM's websites and, at last, the people who used to use these ignoramuses are recoiling in horror.
The list of defectors, people who can no longerstand to be associated with a party run by its pro-ignorance faction, grows by the day: George Will, David Brooks and Christopher Buckley. Lincoln Chaffee, Chuck Hagel and Susan Eisenhower. Wall Street has abandoned the Republicans, donating more to Democrats in the ratio of 2:1. As David Brooks noted recently, the Republicans have lost the professionals--doctors and lawyers, architects and accountants.
The belligerent delusional ignoramus faction still has the neocons on their side, of course. Bloody Bill Kristol and Rich Lowery are on board for the duration but that's hardly surprising. They're just better educated versions of the belligerent delusional ignoramuses who are calling the shots now, kindred spirits. That's not a plus for the Republicans.
If one thing should be clear to us, it is that a political party run by delusional ignoramuses cannot survive. If that premise is granted, I confess that I can see only two possible futures for the Republican Party as I write today. Either the professionals, the country clubbers, the elitists and the libertarians take advantage of the seismic defeat they're about to suffer as an excuse to stamp out the power of the belligerent delusional ignoramuses, or else the ignoramuses keep control and the Republican Party follows the the Whigs and the Federalists across the bridge to oblivion.
Maybe not. There's a lot more institutional infrastructure holding parties together these days; think tanks and donor networks, PACs and national congressional campaign committees. However, one other lesson of history is that when parties die, it can happen faster than anyone imagined--one election you're electing presidents and two election cycles later, the party doesn't even exist.
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The Republican Party is going to completely need to rebuild. Return to conservative principles and dump the morons on the far right (or educate them). Whatever happens, this is the end of the Party we've seen over the past eight years.
October 13, 2008 8:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Return to conservative principles..." is what us "morons" on the far right have been calling for.
October 14, 2008 9:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
That would be "we" morons.
October 14, 2008 9:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, the "right" have been calling for neoconservatism and social conservatism for years. That is not the party of Teddy and Abe. We need to go back to at Eisenhower to find a true conservative in charge of the republican party.
It is time we returned to our roots and not simply genuflect to the ultra-right cabal that has taken over our party. True conservatism is returning to the republican party for the first time in decades.
October 14, 2008 12:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
If you consider yourself a member of the far right, I'd say you probably have no idea what true conservatism represents. Hint: a true conservative would never have supported George W. Bush's second term.
October 14, 2008 12:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Let's not count chickens just yet.
October 13, 2008 9:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
What?
October 13, 2008 10:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
One!
October 14, 2008 1:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm glad you reposted this, Steve. I saw it this morning when it was impossible to recommend, as I recall.
October 13, 2008 9:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Brand power is just too strong now, I'd say. Look at GM. Dinosaurs still have brand recognition.
October 13, 2008 9:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not exactly a great example. Right now, asking Magic 8-Ball if there will still be a GM ten years for now gets you "Answer unclear. Ask again later."
October 14, 2008 4:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Heartily rec'd.
My take on it is that the GOP will still be around, and rebuilding, in future elections. The party in power always over reaches, or just accumulates too many enemies and mistakes, and the pendulum swings again.
I suspect that the ignoramus faction will be put back into the pens again, and a gloss of respectibility will again allow the Rep's to claim the baton again eventually.
If Democrats are stupid, that is. But then, it's inevitable that they will be, eventually.
October 13, 2008 10:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
The U.S. has an institutional push to have exactly two political parties. Basically, the same things that make it hard to build a third party make it hard to get rid of either of the two you have now.
I think the biggest problem is the fact that your government has two chambers: the House of Representatives and the Senate. When one party controls one, its opponents will push to control the other, and if they are split, they will both fight over the White House to break the tie. This is repeated in every state throughout the country.
Look at the current situation. The Democrats are going to take both the White House and the House of Reps. They may even get 60 seats in the Senate. Anyone who wants to oppose the Democratic agenda has to rally behind the Republicans to stop the Dems from controlling the Senate. If the Republicans split in two, that will be almost impossible.
For the Republicans to break up, each of the various factions within it has to be more afraid of another faction running the Republicans than it is of the Democrats running the country. That's not impossible, but if you assume it will take close to two decades to build a new coalition from scratch, I think they're more likely to stick with what they have.
Even here in Canada it took 13 years (1993-2006) for the Conservatives to build themselves into a (barely) viable governing party. And it's easier here because A) There is only one house of government and B) having more than two political parties allows a small party to hold the balance of power. It won't work in the States because being able to obstruct one chamber will only force the ruling party to use the other one to get things done.
October 13, 2008 10:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Totally agree that our Founders accidentally created a system that pushes us toward two parties, and, frankly I think its been a good thing. I'm not one of those people who think a multiparty system would be good for us because,except until recently, the two party system tends toward accomodation of diverse interests and dampens extremism.
What I'm wondering is whether its going to be the same two parties ten years from now.
Either the Republicans so radically transform themselves from within that they're a different party with the same name (which is most likely), or they disintegrate and a new party forms from some of the remnants plus disaffected Democrats plus, probably, some Libertarians.
October 14, 2008 8:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think the republican party has already been a different party with the same name. The last forty years are an aberration.
I see a return to republican roots as a way to find a new identity that will help this country move forward instead of constantly anchoring it down.
I agree with you that we can function well enough as a two party system, but only when the zealots are put in their place.
October 14, 2008 12:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
I would like to respond to this comment, but also to a line from the main post:
I guess that is not at all clear to me. It might well be that the party run by the delusional ignoramuses will not greatly benefit the country by its leadership, but that is not to say that it will not be able to find a profitable market niche in the political marketplace.
With that in mind, I would like to say that I agree with you that the Republicans are facing an imminent and massive defeat which will spark an intra-party civil war as various factions of the coalition try to blame the other factions for this crushing blow. This will be a hard fight for any one side to win decisively, because much as they hate to admit it now, they were all of them (or at least most of them) behind Bush in 2000 and even in 2004. The western libertarians, the old-money WASPs, the southern evangelicals, etc. - they all own a piece of this failure.
I expect, then, that reasoned argument about the causes of this failure will not succeed, and the end result is that someone will end up saying "I am taking my marbles and moving elsewhere." I cannot say anything for sure, but I tend to lean to the expectation that the party that will bolt will be the libertarian wing - the ones who like the GOP for low taxes but dislike the abortion/gay marriage/intelligent design planks of the overall platform. That is because the coming years are going to see a general disfavor for libertarian economic policies regardless of who is in power. There just will not be much room for either party to be less regulation-oriented than the other, so the real difference between the two parties will be more over the culture-war issues, because that will be the points on which they can easily differentiate themselves. With that in mind, the libertarian republicans will say to themselves something like "as long as I am stuck with tax-and-spend economics regardless of which party I support, I might as well go for the tax-and-spenders who agree with my views on privacy in the bedroom."
The upside of this is that our party will suddenly find itself endowed with new and larger majorities from our newfound support in western states with traditional republican leanings (MT, AZ, CO, WY, AK and perhaps even KS and ID in good years). The downside of this is that we will inherit a new set of intra-party struggles as a result, as these new arrivals align themselves with the old blue dogs in an effort to scale back New Deal style social safety net agendas. This will not, likely, be as bitter a struggle as one sees between the country-club set and the Sunday-go-to-meeting crowd in the present Republican coalition, but it will be one more headache for us every four years.
October 14, 2008 12:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Okay, maybe it was only clear to me.
My implicit thesis is that in order to thrive in a competitive democracy, a party must be able to both win elections and govern effectively after its won. What we've seen in the last eight years is that a delusional ignorant policy platform can win an election or two, but, once implemented, it inevitably--if not immediately--results in a tidal wave of political and economic disasters which, in turn, ultimately leads to electoral disaster.
That's the central problem facing the Republican Party today and I don't know if they are instituationally capable of facing up to it and fixing it.
October 14, 2008 1:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good post but you have to be careful in splitting the Republicans into the "elites" and the stupid theocrats.
I agree that the party has lost the "me and my money are mine" elites. They won't chuck money at a party with policies that they don't agree with.
But...there are a large number of thoughtful Christians that are supporting the Republican party because they tell them that they will end abortion. These people are not rabble, they do not like the war in Iraq, they do support environmental stewardship.
This part of the republican base does not have a real voice in the party for the same reason that the progressives don't have a real voice in the Democratic party - They are too busy working in homeless shelters and organizing hurricane relief efforts.
If the Republican party loses as badly as it looks like they will, it is possible that the opportunists and fame seekers that flocked to the "permanent majority" will switch to the Democratic party and the Republicans will start to rebuild from the ground up with a group of faithful people (Catholics, Baptist, and other conservative mainline denominations) that have one goal - ending abortion. Along with it, they will talk about caring for the homeless, immigrants and other disadvantaged.
If this happens - the Clinton Democrats better watch out.
October 13, 2008 10:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
With due respect, why would Clinton Democrats have to watch out for an emerging party energized behind one issue that the vast majority of Americans do not oppose (abortion)? This is not a 50/50 split. Americans overwhelmingly believe in a right of privacy and in reproductive freedom without intrusion from the government. How will the party you envision survive?
October 14, 2008 12:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think the theory is that by showing themselves to be virtuous and compassionate in ways that inspire respect and approval from others, they hope to turn that respect for their altruistic acts into respect for their opinions.
"Hey, someone who does all those good works can't be all bad, right?"
It's a very optimistic and honourable approach... and just as naiive. Still. More power to them if they can boost charitable works and donations. I just hope they never succeed with their endgame goal.
October 14, 2008 3:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
So we get the Party of God. Great. Just the thing to nurture a thriving democracy.
October 14, 2008 12:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
No, I guess I didn't explain myself well enough. I'm from Minnesota so my experience is probably skewed from what is seen deep in the bible belt.
It isn't that the Republican party would turn into a theocracy but I think we saw a little of what it could be like with Mike Huckabee. I know a lot of Democrats that attend church regularly that felt that many of Mike's positions more closely matched their world view.
We aren't talking about the "Name it Claim it" Christianity for wealth crowd. We are talking about people that give 10% of their income to their local congregation, serve in homeless shelters and just see too many people concerned with making piles of money.
Obama speaks to these people very well and I believe that is part of what is improving the Democratic self identification in polls.
In talking to these Christian Democrats, they are deeply concerned by the party's stance on abortion. They put up with it because they believe that our party best represents their understanding of caring for all life - limited war, limited death penalty, greater support for social welfare and the environment.
If the Moderate Baptists and Catholics now in the Republican base wind up overrepresented by virtue of the disaffection of economic libertarians and those that are just there to back a "winner" you could see them overcome the neocons and become a party that values all life - not just the unborn.
If this happens there are many Democrats that may leave - especially if the Democrats field too many candidates who aren't true progressives in the hope of scooping up disaffected Republicans.
October 14, 2008 1:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
This post made me think. Though I don't think the GOP is really going to crack up, I do think that its future is a very interesting question.
But the problem that confronts the GOP coalition is not a consequence of defeat. It's really a consequence of success. When a coalition is out of power for a long time, the various interests that compose it become willing to make compromises in order to gain power. We're in that position now. But after a coalition has been in power (off and on) for 30 years, all its components start to feel they can afford to be inflexible, and start to blame each other for every setback. The Republicans are heading that direction at the moment.
But I have no idea which component of the GOP coalition will come out on top. NCSteve has rightly noted that a lot of center-right intellectuals are unhappy now. But I'm not sure they were ever a very important part of the GOP. Do Republicans really care what David Brooks thinks?
The conflict isn't between intellectuals and ignoramuses. I think it's between 1) theocons, 2) believers in the authority of the military State, and 3) small-government types. Part of McCain's problem in this election has been that he's torn between all three factions. The consequence has been really incoherent policy.
If you forced me to guess, I would guess that faction (3) is likely to be the strongest in 2012. But I really have no idea.
October 13, 2008 11:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
I would say you hit it on the head. I wanted to re-title your groups, but I decided you had it covered.
If anything - I think there will be a break on the conservative's part (the small gov type in your post). They are tired of getting dragged along to grab power with no pay-back and they likely will not play along anymore.
I also think an interesting thing happened when the conservative arm realized what was occurring on the international stage and how their brand had been used to please desires of the theocons. Such a clear mis-management of tax dollars assured that the Republican brand would get reformulated or something new would arise.
It does make me wonder if the "third way" will see a resurgence in the next elections. The reality is that Obama is closer to the middle than not, so it seems likely.
October 14, 2008 3:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
While the paradoxes of political perspectives will continue to thrive. We are about to have perhaps for the first time ever, if not in my lifetime, a leader who understands how to hold paradoxes and not 'just' take a position. I have watched senator Obama and saw his skill at integration the first time I heard him speak. Problems generally cannot be solved on the same level of development they were created.
What is going to happen for democrats and republicans alike is that this is going to affect them and us and our capacity to see and hold more integrative perspectives is going to grow however slowly... because of the person leading us.
From there no matter what they call themselves... there will inevitably be shifts all around and I am curious and excited to see how politics may shift from the usual pendulum swings.
October 14, 2008 12:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
Seriously? Are you kidding?
The Republicans redefined the electoral map by taking traditional democrats away from from the Dem party. So this must be the group of anti-intellectuals, xenophobes, and stupid folks to which you refer.
Or aren't you calling the Dems that?
As for "decades" -- do you mean 3 or 4?
Here is a map showing a rather nasty election. And you know what? The Dems recovered. Eventually. Once they were able to get back to the center of their party.
All you are seeing now is the beginning of a pendulum swing back -- maybe. It is still quite possible that if things go to hell in a handbasket for the Obama administration, the GOP can get right back on top... or the Dems will have a party split.
I highly recommend James McPherson's book BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM to understand the complexities of the party collapse in the 1850's. It was very much tied to the slavery crisis. It is quite possible for either of the political parties to implode in the coming crisis of the end of cheap energy and the restructuring of American society.
October 14, 2008 1:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, I'm saying they "stole" the haters from the Democrats with Nixon's "southern strategy" in 1972. One could argue that they weren't stolen so much as driven off by LBJ, but I don't think so. If LBJ could have had civil rights and kept the Dixiecrats, he would have been glad to do so. It took Nixon saying "y'all come on over and we'll make you feel at home" to really get the stampede of angry, uneducated whites moving to the once-hated Republicans. Nixon and Reagan rode them to victory. Bush I tried to ignore them. Bush II and Rove gave them the damn reins.
Would the Democrats have recovered from 1972 if there had been no Watergate and Nixon had completed a successful, scandal free presidency? Maybe. Certainly, the economic policies he put into place to heat up the economy before the '72 election were going to cause a bad recession regardless of the purely political scene. But that said, I'm not sure that squeezing one more one-term presidency out of the New Deal realignment before it collapsed qualifies as a "recovery." Sounds more like a "last gasp," to me.
October 14, 2008 12:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Don't forget about the Reagan Democrats in the Rust Belt. You might as well talk about how stupid those people are.
In fact, your post is that anyone who doesn't vote your way is stupid! Your argument is based on the idea that only stupid people vote for the GOP -- and the only people that crossed over to vote Reagan were also stupid.
I submit that is exactly why the Dems lost their way. They didn't have anything to offer. They didn't appeal to the middle class and that was their major problem. Obama is coming on strong with the middle class -- the entire middle class -- and you can see the results.
I also submit that the GOP was looking more and more like the old Dem party: more intrusiveness into your life, not less. That was another reason why people got tired of the Dems -- they were getting rather preachy about knowing which was the best way to live and how you should be living. Now the GOP has that association -- and you can see the results.
Finally: external events also play an important role. There is a very real danger that if the Dems win both Congress and the Presidency -- and they don't show real leadership during the present financial crisis and energy crisis -- they will be driven out by a knockout blow. (This also applies to the GOP on the very slim chance they become a dominant political force in the coming election.)
Don't kid yourself: as Noam Chomsky and Ralph Nader continue to point out, the differences between the Dems and the GOP are slight -- and not as vast as partisans would have us believe. Really what you are electing is the judgment of the person in charge of their party. (This is the reason why it was trivially easy to vote for Gore over Bush in 2000.)
October 14, 2008 1:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent post, Steve.
I've been wondering about this. If we really do have an electoral landslide of 1932 proportions, (i.e. not only does Obama win, but Democrats get 60 Senate seats) I don't see how Republicans can hold it together long term. Their whole political brand ever since Goldwater lost has been corporate-style governance masquerading as lower class white populism. How can they possibly explain how they failed so miserably? They can't tell big business that they can run the economy, they can't tell the religious right that they stopped abortion, and they can't tell small-government types that they kept government small. All they have left is "Obama is a muslim terrorist".
In other words, to borrow from Blazing Saddles, the only reliable constituency left is:
"You know... morons".
October 14, 2008 1:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't think the Republicans will get back in power by "explaining" what went wrong over the last eight years. You're right, it's unexplainable.
I think they're going to have to imitate the DLC or New Labor, in order to declare themselves "New Republicans," who have been purged of their party's ideological excesses.
The only question is, exactly how they do it, and what lessons they learn. Right now they'd like to distance themselves from Bush largely by saying that he spent too much money. I.e., they want to tack further to the Right. I don't think that's going to do it; it's not enough to woo back the generation of young adults who were raised on the Daily Show over the last eight years. But I don't think the GOP base is flexible enough right now to embrace anything more substantial in the way of reform.
October 14, 2008 8:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent post. I think a sign of where things are headed will be whether or not Palin runs in '12 or has become such a punchline that she has faded into obscurity. McCain's toast--I'm not worried about him; I AM concerned that Palin will become the standard-bearer, the de facto leader in the same way the Clintons have been de facto leaders in the past decade, and that rather than rebuilding the Republicans will become an even meaner, stupider party. For the good of America, and nominally the Republican Party, let us hope that Sarah Palin has NO future as a national political figure beyond November 4th, 2008.
October 14, 2008 1:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
IF (big if) Palin becomes the standard bearer the Republican party will dissapear. There are not enough people in her "base" to support a party, more to the point there is not enough money in her "base" to support a party. Brooks had a good commentary on this in NYT. Don't know html (someone could give me help on where to learn how if they want) but here is the link
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/10/opinion/10brooks.html
Palin's vp candidancy is the meta example of selling your soul to the devil. She is the cumilation of the repubs going after the evangelicals to with the fake "abortion issue" and gay marriage scare in order to pump up the numbers. And it is Palin and her elk that are running everyone else out of the republican party. Thanks nc steve for opening this thread.
October 14, 2008 9:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't see the GOP disappearing. After all, it didn't disappear in the 1930s, although it got very small for a while.
However, some very big fault lines are becoming evident.
My guess is that the business wing of the party (or at least a good part of it) is the most likely to break off.
If this happens, look for Huckabee or Palin to lead the GOP into a populist, culturally conservative future.
October 14, 2008 2:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent post, and something I've definitely been contemplating for the past several years.
Certainly the Republican Party has long lost any meaningful connection to its Burkean roots. Our majority-rule government, however, greatly limits the ability of other political parties to supplant the existing ones, but as NCSteve notes, it has happened.
Apropos, there are two wonderful graphics which visually document the rise and fall of US political parties over the years:
1730 to 1892: http://www.historyshots.com/Parties/index.cfm
1892 to 2005: http://www.historyshots.com/Parties2/index.cfm
(Clicking on them allows you to explore them in detail)
October 14, 2008 6:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
"In practice, in other words, the Whigs bore a surprising resemblance to the kind of barely credible threat that the Republicans dreamed of reducing the Democrats to the heady crazy days between the 2002 midterms and the Schiavo debacle.)"
In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne's customs officer character said (I paraphrase, as I no longer have the book): "No party is more mean-spirited, more malevolent in victory than the Whigs."
October 14, 2008 7:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
Can this be reposted again so it doesn't go off the top of the recommends? Looks to me like we aren't finished commenting on this. And I am thrilled my link worked without the html tags. I know there are some real intelligent commentors around here and I would love to hear thier input. Because I have heard so many hard core republicans saying they are either staying home or voting for Obama I think this is a very timely topic NC Steve.
October 14, 2008 9:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well, I've already kind of cheated once to push it past its normal lifetime under claim of "exigent circumstances." I really don't think its fair to do it again. But it will still be be on my spanking new, if still somewhat mysterious, new TPM blog page.
October 14, 2008 2:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
The GOoPers will slink off and lick their wounds, but they will be back! How long they are out of vogue will be up to Democrats. By avoiding Abramoff and Mark Foley-like scandals of our own, we can sustain our dominance. We also have to do some "good works" to demonstrate that we are the party of "competence."
October 14, 2008 12:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is a great post on a very interesting topic, Steve.
I also see the Republican party splintering, although I don't yet have a clear opinion as to what fractions are affected. Your observation of the elite vs. ignorant factions is right on, but it glosses over an earlier symptom of the problem -- the inability or lack of desire to run from the center, due to internal party constraints.
Brooks and the other center-right Republicans would be much more tolerant of the Palin wing if the party still proposed pragmatic policies. The vote in the House on the bailout is the best example here. The anti-bailout Republican wing weren't necessarily rubes, but those that weren't just pandering were ideologues of the far right.
Rather than a split per-se in the Republican party, the first change is more likely to be the peeling off of the center and center-right to the Democrats, leading (cross your fingers) to an extended period of Dem dominance, ala post-FDR. And if the Republicans are really out of power for an extended time and without the ability to deliver goodies to their base, anything could happen to their party.
October 14, 2008 12:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Easy there, tiger. Four years ago, Rove was aiming for a "permanent Republican majority," and everyone was writing Democrat obituaries much like this one. It only takes one shitty President and one collapsing economy to reverse history.
October 14, 2008 12:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
There's a huge difference. Rove was seeing a permanent RUMP Dem Party.
This article sees the Republican party dying or becoming a small party of well, stupid crazies, and the rest of the right/center reorganizing into a NEW political party that competes with the Democratic party with the capability to beat them.
So in other words, the Republicans are replaced by a sensible center-right party that is the NEW major 2nd party.
October 14, 2008 12:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, I remember Karl "THE Math" Rove. I don't remember hearing about the Democrat obits. And if there was talk of Demo destruction it wasn't caused from within the party. That is the difference with the Republican Party destruction as it appears from the outside. The R. party looks to be breaking up from the inside and I think it is Karma plain and simple and about damn time!
October 14, 2008 12:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
And Genghis, also thanks for the no more cats avatar.
October 14, 2008 1:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
The current Republican Party is pretty much screwed. Limbaugh and Hannity on one side, David Brooks and Charles Krauthammer on the other. Those two sides won't ever be friends, hell, they won't ever respect each other.
I look forward to the new Republican Party that emerges from the ashes. The Ron Paul, libertarian leaning, small government, fiscal hawk types. That will be a good complement to the Democratic Party and their habot of sometimes leaving the lights on and the water running.
October 14, 2008 1:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Agreed. I've always been someone on the center-left, liking most of what the Democrats stand for, but thinking that they need someone to keep them (us)from going too crazy. The current Republican party IS that crazy.
A dissolution/reformation of the Republicans back into a conservative, fiscally sound party sounds good to me. But right now, the Republicans are borrowing money for races that they cannot win.
One caveat: I'm not conservative, so me prescribing what's best for them is like me telling fans of the opposing b-ball team what they need to do. I just think we need a balance.
October 14, 2008 6:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Even in a down year the Republicans are only losing elections 45% to 55%, all it takes is a few people back on the republican side to get them back to 50% plus one.
The interesting thing will be what new group of voters the republicans try to add. Of course the problem for conservatives is that they cannot actively court minority voters or women without offending one of their other base groups.
Somne of the smarter people in the republican part saw the demographic trends and tried to court hispanics and that did not work out to well.
October 14, 2008 1:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
To all the naysayers, I think I was pretty clear that I consider this to be an outside possibility, not a likelihood and am thus a naysayer of sorts myself. But, honestly, I don't see how the former coalition can reach an accomodation any more that enables it to both win elections and govern effectively after they've won. And if they remake the coaltion, how much is left and where to the people who've been kicked out of the tent go?
But as long as we're looking at outside possibilities, I have also been a little worried about the possibility that they theocratic fundies will be the ones who are kicked out. That is truly the one faction of the Republican Party that I would be most afraid of if it felt alienated from the system and from normal politics. If upteen million religious fundementalists felt that way, its easy to imagine how at least a few hundred could descend into fanaticism and organized terrorism.
October 14, 2008 1:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Honestly? This sounds like the fear from the right during the 60s-70s that the leftist radicals splintering from the Dem party would change society through violent revolution.
(And let's remember that a lot of lefty people did preach -- and build bombs -- for just that purpose.)
It's amazing how many arguments on the left have already been made by people on the right -- and vice versa.
October 14, 2008 1:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Alienation from the society and from participation in the society's politics plus religious fundementalism is a uniquely dangerous combination. And under those circumstances, fundementalists who call themselves Christians are just as capable as beliving that God commands them to commit horrific acts of terrorism as fundementalists who call themselves Moslems, Jews and Hindus.
Most of the truly extreme awfulness that has occurred in the world's history has been caused by people who are absolutely certain that they are right, that they are in sole possession of THE truth, the only one and only eternal truth. Historically, some people have gotten that dangerous certainty from systems of political or social thought like anarchy or Marxism or National Socialism, or racism. But religion that asks no questions and brooks no dissent has always been the easiest and surest path to that kind of awful certainty.
October 14, 2008 2:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Please don't try to put me in the position of defending religion -- my views on dogma have been clearly expressed!
My only point is that many here are just as dogmatic -- as you point out. Being "certain" is not the issue, in my view, it's being dogmatic with a set of beliefs rather than working things through rationally and logically.
See, for example, Des's excellent blog concerning how revisionism helps keep us "pure".
October 14, 2008 2:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
What do you mean could decend? They already have had people firebombing abortion clinics and stockpiling weapons for the end of days - they are only backing off and staying out of the spotlight now because 911 made it politically incorrect.
October 14, 2008 1:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
I mean I'm worried that they'll graduate from one-off terrorists like Rudolph into something more like the SLA or, God forbid, a Taliban. And you pinpoint another reason why I desparately do not want to see the fundementalist Christians become alienated from society or from politics, as could happen if the knives come out in the Republican Party. The infrastructure is already in place and when you've got tens of millions in the population, it only takes a minescule splinter to create an Al Qaeda sized problem.
October 14, 2008 2:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
If you'll pardon the backhanded compliment, this turned out to be a much more intelligent post than I expected from the title. Which is to say, I recall people talking about the demise of the GOP at least as far back as Anne Richards saying "Stick a fork in them; they're done" before she went on eventually to lose to George W. Bush. And from what I read, people have been saying it at least as far back as Watergate, though I was too young to understand it then.
But your analysis of the factions within the GOP, if stated somewhat abrasively, does ring true. I also find it unlikely to expect the complete collapse of the GOP. But a seismic shift is possible--after all, the party of Bush and Reagan was once the party of Lincoln, and if it could change that much over time then it can certainly change again.
Not that I think they'll have that magnitude of a shift this time around; as someone pointed out, even as their ideology seems to collapse, they still show 40% support in the polls, so there's got to be some people ready to believe in their brand no matter what. But it will be interesting to see where they try to pick up that other 10%.
October 14, 2008 2:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
And let us not forget that the party of Barack Obama was once the party of Strom Thurman and George Wallace.
Lincoln, I think during the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, in describing what we would call a flip flop by Douglas, said it reminded him of a fight he once saw between two inebrieated men who were too drunk to do each other any harm but, in the course of their fight, worked themselves out of their own coats and into the coat of the other.
The Dems and the Reps have done that a time or two. I suppose it could happen again if social and economic circumstances change to the extent that our current understanding of what's "left" and what's "right" cease to make sense.
October 14, 2008 2:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Reports of the GOP's demise are greatly exagerrated. Having said that;
As long as minority groups don't feel they are welcome in a party that appears to marginalize anyone who isn't a WASP or evangelical, the GOP will be marginalized themselves.
As long as minority groups grow, coupled with centrist and liberal whites, the GOP will have to struggle to make a majority in Congress.
They have shot themselves in the foot...
October 14, 2008 3:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Palin will survive politically, just barely until the end of her one term governorship, and lose under a haze of ethics violations and national embarrassment. My take on the future of the Republican party is that it's going to take one giant step to the center socially and make common cause with the Libertarian fiscal conservatives who will become the watchdogs of the post-recession era as the economy lurches back to functioning. And the last of the Blue Dog Democrats will join them, because the Democratic Party won't need to pander that far to the center any longer.
October 14, 2008 3:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think it's too early to see what the future of the Republican party holds. Much will depend on what sort of candidate rises from the ashes of McCain/Palin in 2012. Bobby Jindal? Charlie Crist? Mitt Romney? Ron Paul?
The GOP isn't in its death throws so much as a mid-life identity crisis, I would guess.
October 14, 2008 3:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
As more proof of the descent of the Republican party Chris Buckley is forced to resign at his father's National Review for endorsing Obama.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-10-14/sorry-dad-i-was-fired
October 14, 2008 3:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
One other point to consider is that during its post-Contract With America heyday, the GOP hasn't just become more factionalized than the democrats, the factions have become a lot more willing to actively work against the interests of their competing factions. You could argue that the leftwing of the democratic party runs primary challengers just as often as the Club For Growth. But, how often do you see democrats running suicide missions like the CFG did with Lincoln Chafee? Chafee was barely a republican, but he was the ONLY hope the party had to hang onto that seat, and they did all the could to damage him in the primary. In the same way, the evangelicals (led by Dobson) were quite open that they would NOT show up for McCain in November unless he put a nutcase on the ticket. There are basically three factions in the GOP - the tax jihadists (Club for Growth), the evangelicals/social conservative, and the national security / militarist people (not all of which are neocons). And here's the rub: two of the three factions are quite willing to work against the greater party good when they perceive that their interests are not taken seriously. This mix has only gotten more combustible during the past few cycles. You have to figure that these competing interests will become more willing to compromise once they're completely out of power. But we also have to take into account that the last eight years have brought discredit to the intellectual underpinnings of the conservative movement. Recovering from Nixon was one thing - the party could point at his misdeeds and plausibly claim that here was a case of a small band of crooks taking over the party. Not this time. I don't really doubt the republican party will survive, but 2, 4, 6 years from now, I expect the politicians running against democrats in general elections won't be invoking the "Reagan conservative" brand that's been successful since the early 1980s. That brand is dead and gone.
October 14, 2008 4:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
The thing is, it seems to me that the evangelical/social conservatives have been taken for a ride, mainly by the CFG crowd. They promise them a lot, but what, exactly, have they delivered? Has abortion been outlawed? Do teachers lead their students in prayer? The evangelical/social conservative agenda has gone nowhere, and I think that's driving a lot of the dissatisfaction from this group.
One commenter above said that coalitions form of necessity from out-of-power groups, but as soon as they gain power, the infighting starts and they inevitably fragment. This strikes me as right on the money. How they react to getting their tails kicked this year is going to be interesting to watch. Bush&Co. really screwed the pooch, and it will be a while before the Republican brand recovers. It's possible that they will fragment, but regardless, some new coalition will form and it will still be called the Republican party. If I had to bet, I'd bet on the faction with the money, which means the CFG crowd will still own the Republican party.
October 14, 2008 5:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good points, all.
I don't think our party is free of fratracidal idiocy. Some might say that Kos and the netroots have done from the left what the CFG does from the right. Certainly that's what Lieberman (sound of me spitting on floor) would say. But, yeah, anyone who witnessed the civil war the Republicans fought here in NC a few years ago has to say that they're far more willing to start knifefights on the deck of a sinking boat.
You're also right that how long it takes them to admit that their realignment is over and ours is on is crucial. It took the Democrats a decade to admit it after the Reagan realignment. It took the Republicans until 1952 to come to grips with the New Deal, though one could argue that they managed to nominate candidates in '40 and '44 who were ahead of the rank and file on that.
October 14, 2008 5:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
When, exactly, did they "come to grips with the New Deal"? They fought it tooth and nail for 20 years, and the fight only went underground for the 8 Eisenhower years. They're still trying to kill Social Security and there's hardly a one of them who wouldn't vote immediately to end Medicare if the opportunity arose. Don't kid yourself. They view wealth inequality as their birthright and will fight to the end to keep it.
October 14, 2008 5:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
One possibility I see is the rise of declared Independents and undecideds, where both parties fight for them. I think both parties might shrink, with the Republicans shrinking MUCH faster and more completely.
Great analysis, but premature.
Let's talk about this on the 5th, K?
(Dear Lord, was that a preview? Forget what I said. Obviously, ANYTHING'S possible in this crazy world:)
October 14, 2008 6:32 PM | Reply | Permalink