Oops.
Back before the election, during the primaries and the pre-primary positioning period, one of my frequent comment themes and arguments was that if you read his book and listened to what he was saying, the post-partisanship Obama was talking about not about the "bi-partisan" utopia of David Broder's fever dreams in which "the center" is defined as Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham. Instead, I argued, it was about peeling away the remaining sane people who self-identified as Republicans or Republican leanders--who I estimated to be about 20-25% of the total--and getting them onboard to at least conditionally agreeing that we needed to try something else. The pitch was "I am for what works, not what some stale ideology says must be done."
My point (which, rightly or wrongly, I felt was also Obama's point) was that, at the time, the country was stuck in a 48% vs. 48% rut where we were constantly fighting over only a tiny sliver of the electorate. If we were going to accomplish anything, I said, we had to peel that remaining vestige of sane people away from the GOP. To that end, I frequently, to the point of being annoying, admonished my fellow Democrats that these people existed, that they were finding the growing insanity of their fellow Republicans increasingly difficult to ignore and they they could be persuaded to cross over to our side of the barbed wire if we would refrain from giving them the impression we were going to spit big green loogies in their faces as soon as they were in range.
It says, perhaps, something about how far we've come that I percieved this as a real problem at the time yet now I have to make an effort to remember why I thought it was a problem.
Anyway, if peeling those people away was Obama's mission, he's accomplished it. Dig into the numbers of this Gallup poll. Note that about a quarter of self-identified Republicans say Obama is doing a good or excellent job and that a surprising 35% of them are at least giving him a grudging "just okay." So congratulations Mr. President, you've managed to assemble just the kind of public coaltion necessary to do the big things you wanted to do.
There's just one problem.
In late 2007 and early 2008, I thought the crazyhead wing of the party was already long since off its meds and that their unmedicated craziness is what was going to drive the sane 25% away. I mean, c'mon, Dick Cheney? Rudy Guiliani? Tom Tancredo? This was the mainstream of the party. How could it get worse?
My bad.
I totally failed to grasp that the high-level radioactive lunacy radiating off the party in early 2008 is what the crazy people were like when they were on their meds. I failed to understand that that 25% I was coveting were the ones who'd been handing out the little cups and making sure the inmates weren't just hiding the pills under their tongues. Now those poor loons are locked up in that dank 19th century asylum with no light and and no one to talk to but each other.
Seriously, the still accelerating mental and emotional breakdown of the GOP was a foreseeable yet unforeseen consequence of a Democratic president whose approval ratings were in the high sixties. Unforeseen by me, anyway. So yeah, Obama is directly responsible for the growing derangement of the Republican Party. Not in any journalistic ha-ha "Obama Derangement Syndrome" sense, but literally and directly. He deliberately went after the support of a bunch of people who were the last remaining restraining force on the extremists and he stripped them away. One wonders if he or his advisors really understood that doing so might inflict a mortal wound on their party.
"One wonders if he or his advisors really understood that doing so might inflict a mortal wound on their party."
Do we have our pronouns straight? Whose party is mortally wounded? The one with fond attachment to the techniques of banana republics? (Mirrored sunglasses and truncheons.) That complains about being treated like the losing side in a banana republic? (One can dream.) That likely misses the days of banana republics? (see, Pat Buchanan.)
April 24, 2009 6:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
On Friday afternoon, correct usage of any part of speech, much less proper syntax, is more likely to be the result of that special Friday combination of semi-conciousness and hope. "Their" meaning the crazy people's party. I wonder if Obama, or any of the inner circle, realized that by coopting the sane 25% they might actually be killing the Republican Party.
April 24, 2009 7:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
As I said, one can dream.
April 24, 2009 11:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
You are right. They are utterly unhinged. Steve Schmidt and Megan McCain are currently their most rational spokespeople. I think it's hilarious. I've taken to listening to Laura Ingram sometimes at night. Her insane hysteria gives me the warm fuzzies.
April 24, 2009 8:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
NC, great work--as always. I think they knew. I think the highest minded strategists knew exactly what would happen.
I left the Republican party in 2003 because fiscal conservatism turned into foundationless gibber gabber. I held tightly to libertarian ideals. I felt alienated because Democrats were sane but disagreed with my economics, while Republicans were insane but spoke like my economics ran their party (yet acted like my economics were just a marketing scheme).
I saw a silver lining in Bush's reelection. I knew that by the end of it, more fiscal conservatives would feel alienated--as if the Republican Party was abandoning its secular element. What I didn't know was that someone like Obama would speak directly to sane conservatism. I didn't know that someone--on the national stage--understood the undercurrent.
(Around 2006 I began to understand Keynesianism--haven't looked back, but that's another story)
I think you're suggesting it too: Obama's inner circle, at the very least, had an inkling that they could pull the floor out from underneath the Republican Party. I don't know if they knew how quickly and easily it could be done. But they knew it could be done. They also knew--for the sake of the country--it needed to be done. Not to destroy the two party system, but to ensure that the minority party has members to watch the meds go down.
April 24, 2009 8:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
The days of Everett Dirksen, who was useful for making Democrats think about how to pay for stuff, are not what we have now. Democrats did learn the value of being prudent when it was affordable, so that one could develop reserve for events like now.
April 24, 2009 11:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm not familiar with Dickerson. But yes, Democrat's prudence is so dominant right now. I think the most meaningful consequence will be a tectonic shift in which the crazies are made irrelevant in the political arena. Amen.
April 25, 2009 2:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Republican party is now a Congressional party, only, and a minority one at that.
Still, we have to pick up three or four Senate seats in 2010 in order to be able to isolate our own blue dogs and avoid Republican obstruction. Doable but not easily doable.
April 24, 2009 9:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Worse (for them), they're a regionalized congressional party. *cough*Federalists*cough*
As of now, for whatever it is worth, they've got a lot more seats in trouble than we do. I think our biggest danger for 2010 is if we set the table for the traditional Democratic cannibalism feast too soon.
April 25, 2009 12:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree. Things in general are tenuous at best. It wouldn't take a whole lot to seriously upset the fragile balance. Sure democrats are in control, but right now that doesn't translate to an ability to wield the kind of power that the current makeup of the executive and legislative branches would normally suggest.
Last November's win was cool but what we got doesn't even qualify as a door prize. McCain is probably glad he lost. Which might explain why Meghan is making like she wants to take control. Has there ever been a 25 year old white republican female who has been able to get in the face of the republican power establishment and come out unscathed? 2020? Something to think about.
April 25, 2009 4:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hold on Folks...
Do not , and I mean a very strong do not, undersestimate the power of all the grandmas and grandpas and others who themselves or relatives left the farm to go to the cities, like Detroit and Cleveland, to get ahead. Many of these next generations are out of work, conflicted in their poitical views and their outlooks, and looking for the next place to land.
Their progeny may determine lots of stuff.
We are seeing a bunch of these foks making their ways back to WV.
April 24, 2009 9:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not sure I understand what you're saying wv. Would you expand a bit on your thoughts?
April 25, 2009 3:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hold on Folks...
Do not , and I mean a very strong do not, underestimate the power of all the grandmas and grandpas and others who themselves or relatives left the farm to go to the cities, like Detroit and Cleveland, to get ahead. Many of these next generations are out of work, conflicted in their poitical views and their outlooks, and looking for the next place to land.
Their progeny may determine lots of stuff.
We are seeing a bunch of these folks making their ways back to WV.
April 24, 2009 9:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
NC
What you are saying makes perfect sense now, there was a time when I couldn't have seen it.There was a time when I didn't vote for party, but for who ever seemed right. I was an ignoramus, ignorant of the history of governance and politics, as many still are here in the red soil of Texas. But the internet changed all that,now you can be informed.When you are informed even a little, I don't see how you can vote Republican again.Of course you could get the wrong information by winding up on a wingnut site and never get out,like a fly caught in a Venus fly trap.I'm fortunate to have landed here on TPM first, I hope many others are just as fortunate. Thanks for the post, except the part about "spitting the big green" I nearly hurled!
April 24, 2009 9:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
The GOP is being consumed by the fires of the radicalism which it had, for years, intentionally stoked in its base. I suspect that the party has passed one of Malcolm Gladwell's 'tipping points'. They will not likely be able to extinguish the fire until it has effectively destroyed them.
The immediate danger is that the Republican base is trying to take the rest of the nation with them as they reduce their own party to ashes. We must keep the GOP as politically isolated as possible while their base burns them. Of course, Republicans are doing everything they can (tea parties, obstructionism, etc.) to spread their radicalism. I believe that they want to create a political wildfire that would sweep (and burn) the nation. Many of these folks share the same corner of insanity as does Bin Laden but they don't seem to realize it.
April 24, 2009 10:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, they do realize it, I believe. Remember when Texas republican Pete Sessions (TX raises it's ugly head again) called for a Taliban-like insurgency?
April 25, 2009 3:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
New10, I shudder to think that you're absolutely right. Every indication is that the Republicans who still might hold even a teaspoonful of power are going to use it to destroy this country so that they can rebuild it to their own liking. They've always been the party of hate and spite, but they take it to new levels now. The thought of their own impotence is more than they can bear.
Their Viagra rests on the mountaintop where they need first to sit a while, contemplating what they've done. Introspection is not their strong point. Neither is enlightenment, but the prospect of chronic impotence might just make believers out of them.
I don't know how much longer the rest of us can wait for them to become countrymen again, working for the good of all.
(Wait. Strike "again". I can't think of a time when that was true.)
April 25, 2009 9:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ramona,
So far, the self-immolation being conduced by the GOP has been contained to within the party. The political isolation I referred to is with respect to Moderates and Independents. So long as they remain repelled by the right-wing the GOP will safely self-consume (any isolated acts of right-wing violence aside).
The danger I alluded to would be if the Republicans can find some populist angle with which to attract Moderates and Independents. Those tea parties might have become an real populist movement launching point, if only Republican leaders and base weren't so transparently hypocritical and hateful.
April 25, 2009 3:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
"They've always been the party of hate and spite . . .". Not quite true. The hate and spite didn't really start on a wholesale level until Nixon was forced out of office.
April 25, 2009 4:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Republicans have always behaved in the manner they are behaving now when there is a Democrat in the White House. The only difference between now and Clinton or Carter or Johnson or Kennedy or Truman or Roosevelt is that this one is black so we have a special dash of hysteria. Otherwise, it's just another repeat of the same lunacy we've seen with every Democratic President since 1932.
Peeling off some of the people that typically support the lunatics is not a strategy unique to Obama but it doesnt permanently change things at all. It only gets you support for a particular political figure for a limited duration of time. It's what the DLC and its acolytes have been spouting for decades and while that's one way to go about it, it's not a very good way to go about it or a way that will last.
What Obama and the Democrats need to do to forge a new and lasting majority is to put most of their effort into involving more of the people who wholeheartedly support the Democratic agenda. Those would be people who don't participate, or who rarely do, who are primarily in the working and lower classes who, as Democrats became more and more Republican Lite since 1980, have felt left out and unrepresented for many years. Obama, to his credit, drew in some of these people in the election but not enough. What he started in that area needs more cultivation and effort. That's the path that will pay real dividends in the long run and forge a new and lasting majority. Trying to convince people who are inclined to be Republicans that they should be on our side of the fence only makes us compromise more and get less done that needs to be done. Just look at how Democrats kow tow to those types now. What does it get us but watered down or useless versions of legislation and put us at the mercy of those who are not really on board with the Democratic agenda as we see in the case of the EFCA bill and the Obama budget, and with crucial appointees, and with cap and trade, and on and on and on?
April 25, 2009 10:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
Republicans have had a tendency to behave badly when they're in the minority since the 30s. They've always had members who were unhinged. There have been times when they have been uniformly unhinged about some things, like the Clintons--but even then what they were doing made a certain kind of sociopathic political sense. We've gotten so used to them behaving badly that I think some have failed to note that their craziness has taken a quantum leap.
I really don't think there's ever been a time when they were so completely and uniformly unmoored from objective reality, so utterly englobed in a comprehensive alternative reality encompassing everything from the nature of the universe to the number of people who identify with and agree with their positions. The crazy people used to be tools of the party. Now they're all that's left.
April 25, 2009 11:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think what this blog fails to address is that the unhinged crazies we see on TV or who are in Washington don't represent the entire republican party. There are local parties in various places that do quite well with reality and govern sensibly alongside their democratic colleagues.
To think the "conservatives" of any stripe are simply going to join the democratic party is missing the essential duality of our political system. We are going to have this bipolar politics no matter what the parties are called. I think the smarter ploy is to encourage "the other side" to start looking at things more rationally. Further, it will take many election cycles to change out representatives. Will some become crazier? Perhaps. But new blood will begin to trickle in over the years.
I think by concentrating so much on the crazy that democrats might be missing an opportunity to have a discussion with those who actually support Obama, by your admission 25% of the GOP with 35% at least willing to try something new. That is an opening that can be widened over time, but only if democrats don't expect it to happen overnight.
Despite the context-free recitation of democratic presidents above, our two party system is seldom so black and white. The modern republican party isn't the one it started out to be anymore than the modern democratic party is. Roosevelt's fantastic tenure was a feat not repeated under any democrat, though perhaps for a little but under Johnson.
Otherwise, both parties have been opposite sides of the same coin of Empire.
April 25, 2009 12:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
There is no question of you and your sane compatriots becoming Democrats. The question is whether you can keep being Republicans. At this point, it is almost easier to imagine you and your sane cohorts starting a new party that draws down the right wing of the Democrats and supplants the GOP than to imagine how you can take the party as it is now back. The institutional apparatus and inertia of the Republican Party are not to be dismissed lightly. But barring some event that turns the general population even more fear crazed than they were 2002-04, their abandonment of objective reality can only lead to their extinction.
April 25, 2009 2:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Agreed. The most likely path--consistent with objective reality--is that the Republican Party will use the same name and institutions but adopt the blue dog Democrat line of thinking.
That would retain the balance of a two-party system, save face for the crazies, and empower the "conservadems." I don't see anything else as a likely outcome.
April 25, 2009 2:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
The only practical future I can presently see for conservatism is via some form of libertarianism. Libertarianism could hold together wealthy and economic conservatives, Reagan small-government conservatives, and traditional, non-interventionist foreign policy conservatives. It likely lose the Neocons and would certainly lose the social conservatives. Whether or not a Libertarian movement could then bring about a sufficiently large re-alignment of Moderates and Liberals who are primarily concerned with civil liberties is the key question.
April 25, 2009 3:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's fair.
April 25, 2009 4:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is what I call progressive conservatism. It is truly compatible with progressive liberalism, but approaches the problem from a different direction. This would create a system where both parties started to respect the Constitution and each other.
I was a committed independent until the Obamicans and Ron Paul fans and many thoughtful former republicans around here proved to me there was hope within the right spectrum to build party that would be a helpful counter to one Obama was building on the left. A party that hasn't existed since LBJ was president. I became a republican because of my underlying political ideals not despite them. I also did it as a way to protest the control of the party by fools and tools.
So, the choice for me is either go back to being an independent (or move to Europe) if this country and its dueling parties of fools can't get their act together.
April 26, 2009 9:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
Perhaps, but take a look at the stuff they were putting out against FDR, Truman and Kennedy just as an example. Mainstream Republicans never stood up and denounced that stuff just as they don't do it today. They were no less committed to the idea that these men were traitors than the teabaggers are to their paranoid fantasies.
One group of rich wingnuts attempted to overthrow Roosevelt and were thwarted. Right wingers made Truman into a wild eyed communist sympathizer and wild eyed liberal on race issues who was betraying the free world by not engaging in nuclear war in Korea and provoking a wider war against China. The week JFK was killed fliers were being handed out in Dallas with his picture looking like a mugshot and the headline in all caps read "WANTED FOR TREASON".
The people that get peeled off from this core of lunatics identify with a great deal of what the loonies believe and that's why they tend to vote for Republicans and why they make bad allies for Democrats. This is the fatal flaw of the so-called postpartisan approach. It attempts to forge consensus among the pool of current voters instead of getting the working and lower classes back in the game at the levels they were prior to 1960. We need voters who are on board with a set of principles and beliefs, not just a majority coalition who likes the politician in charge right now. That sort of coalition evaporates the moment the popular figure leaves the political stage. If we expand the universe of those participaing to include more of our natural constituencies, we no longer have to dilute every decent bill in Congress to assuage the DINOs and the Republicans don't elect another President or control Congress for the rest of our lives. The way to get higher partcipation among those groups is not to pursue policies that are barely distinguishable from Republican policies and that make us the handmaidens of the crooked, wealthy interests such as Geithner and Summers are making us do with Wall Street, etc... We need to have a party and a President who serves the needs of the working and lower classes and protects their interests. That is an incentive to participate. We Democrats have not done this as we should for close to 30 years now and we're not doing much of it now. I'm not saying nothing is being done, but not as much is being done as we ought to do and in large part it is because we depend upon those who have temporarily defected from the Republican fold.
April 25, 2009 12:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
No argument. I am not saying it was right for all those things to have happened, on either side. I also think the democratic party has gotten away with as much ideological subterfuge as the GOP, they are just better at hiding it.
If the democratic party was truly the inheritor of FDR, I suspect that many of the evils we face today would have long since been resolved. I think they have mostly paid lip service to those ideals and have only accomplished progressive things by accident rather than by design. The republican party hasn't truly lived up to its stated principals in my lifetime, with Eisenhower being the last real republican to run the party.
What I would really like to see is both parties begin to actually represent the everyday people who make up the rank and file. If both republicans and democrats could, as you say, begin to actually govern for the majority who are struggling paycheck to paycheck. We have the power to force Washington to our bidding, but most primary elections barely crack double digits for turnout.
Until we solve that underlying weakness, neither party will ever truly represent our interests.
April 25, 2009 12:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, and wasn't Prescott Bush, G.W. Bush's grandfather, among the conspirators who wanted to overthrow Roosevelt?
April 25, 2009 3:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
That coalition was held together by the Unions, don't you think? The Labor movement is unlikely to regain its former strength because the industries where it flourished have been exported and technology has contributed to their loss, too.
Another way Dems lost the labor voters, I believe, is because of the environmental movement. The coal miners and loggers, who are some of the few laborer left will likely avoid supporting Dems because of environmental efforts to regulate and even do away with their industries which they see as a threat to their jobs.
April 25, 2009 4:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
If many of our Democratic elected officials hadn't left the labor movement out to dry they would be stronger than they are. If they had the balls to help labor out even a little and pass the EFCA bill that would go a long way toward organizing more of the workers of the country again despite the fact that the old insutries are far less prevalent.
April 25, 2009 5:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Couldn't agree more. I often wonder what this country could have become if we had maintained an appreciation of labor unions and worked toward more equity between worker wages and corporate profits.
I don't think it's a stretch to argue that if American workers had continued on the path to earning livable wages, coupled with the ability to buy American manufactured goods, we wouldn't be in the fix we're in right now.
April 26, 2009 11:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
I wonder what would have happened if the unions had banded together instead of remaining insulated in their industry silos. I think the reason the movement failed is it never turned into a united lobby, championing all workers equally. They remained divided, fighting each battle independent of the larger war, while Corporate America seemed to operate with a dedicated purpose called the bottom line.
April 26, 2009 3:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Great observation, Jason. Yes, that would possibly have worked to their advantage. The one thing they all had in common, though, is their conviction that the labor force was worthy of decent wages, equitable benefits and safety on the job.
They should have won the battles. Instead, they found new foes in the very people who should have been working for them and instead were working to destroy them--our own government.
April 26, 2009 11:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Nice work NC but I'd correct that last line. I think you can still edit it.
Haven't delved into the details of that Gallup poll but heard Chris Mathews babbling about it last night. Said Obama's approval rating among small business owners is 53%, CEOs 58% etc. He was all goggled eyed that huge chunks of traditional R demographics are in Obama's camp.
I don't find this surprising. The strategy was always about taking their voters and letting their political party further marginalize itself or get on board.
Of course he had a lot of help. Like Steve Schmidt, McCain's campaign manager said the other day, the election was over the day Lehman Bros died. That's just about the day McCain and Palin's convention bounce ended too. If the media had covered McCain's article in that healthcare trade mag published in early October advocating "doing for healthcare what we've done for the financial sector" would have given Barack a 60% landslide.
April 25, 2009 1:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Just testing to see if you can embed vid in a comment.
May 27, 2009 9:20 PM | Reply | Permalink