We hear much talk now about the Republican Party trying to reinvent itself, fixing its "brand," facing an "identity crisis" or entering a period of internecine war. I'm skeptical about all this. We knew where the Republicans were coming from in the primaries, with a phalanx of middle-aged, rich white guys as candidates. All they had to offer was the same discredited mantra of tax cuts, theocracy and fear, with perhaps the exception of the entertaining libertarian Ron Paul. John McCain emerged as the perfect vessel for this exhausted, intellectually bankrupt yet madly power-hungry political party.
In the wake of a crushing defeat, several bigwigs are meeting at the Virginia estate of Brent Bozell, including "prominent conservatives" such as Grover Norquist — he of the lust to make government small enough to drown in a bathtub — and the religious extremist Tony Perkins. Same old, same old. The reality is that the Republicans have been reduced to a Southern white regional party, with some appeal in Southernized white rural areas elsewhere and the rural white libertarian West. This was brought home in a remarkable map in the New York Times, showing party gains in 2008 vs. 2004.
It's not just that the party's limited bag of ideas have been shown to hold frauds, and has finally been soundly rejected by the public. It's not just that the politics of hysteria and hate don't work now. This is a party totally out of step with the country, which is more diverse and urbanized than ever — even suburban voters recognized their essentially urban issues this time — and becoming more so in the future. This is a party whose ruling creeds are incapable of dealing with a complex modern society or the multi-layered challenges of the 21st century. And whose hidden creeds — policy crafted to ensure a plutocracy — were exposed in the financial crisis.
As Paul Krugman has pointed out, defeat will only make the Republicans more extreme, partly because it will complete the last purge of "moderate" Republicans — the onetime mainstream of the party. Already, Bill Kristol and the boys at the Project for the New American Century have identified Sarah Palin as the future of the party. This from the same bunch that plotted the Iraq war.
One of the two major parties needed to go the way of the Whigs in the wake of this elections. The Democrats would have been prime candidates if they couldn't score a 1932-sized win. The Republicans should now shuffle off the stage, in a historical irony, being the party that replaced the Whigs. But the GOP has come far from Lincoln, TR and Eisenhower. Truth be told, those giants were outliers. The party was quickly co-opted by predatory big business interests — "economic royalists," to use FDR's term — and they never really let go.
Laws of nature would dictate that the Republican rump splinters now, creating European-style special-interest parties. One for law-of-the-jungle wealth, concealed by slogans of "tax cuts" and "individual liberty." Another for the theocrats. More going over to the Libertarians. This would ensure decades of Democratic dominance. Yet the desire for power will probably keep the GOP together, pretending to be a mass party like the Democrats.
The election of 1932 also made many Republicans more rabid. Still, the party was more ideologically diverse then — Alf Landon, from the moderate-liberal wing, was chosen to run in 1936. (Before he was traumatized by the Depression, Herbert Hoover was a progressive, mistrusted by the party's business wing.) Yet deep in its bones, the plutocratic heart of the party never stopped in its desire to overturn the "socialism" brought on by "that man in the White House." You know, stuff like Social Security, deposit insurance, rural electrification… The Republicans found renewal in the red scare of the late '40s and '50s and Democratic exhaustion after 20 years in power. And this was before the entrance of the theocrats.
Selfishness, greed and intolerance will always have a primal appeal, especially when clothed in words like "property rights," "the free market," "freedom of the individual" and, most outrageously, Jesus. So don't count the GOP out.
It's too bad we couldn't have a loyal opposition that was reality-based.
In the meantime, Barack Obama and the Democrats have a chance to show Americans what liberalism really is. There must be no Carter or Clinton missteps.
Dogpatch conservatives allied themselves with Wall Street because they were comfortable enough in their economic lives. That they imagined themselves titans of the Free Market could only happen in a nation untethered from ordinary reality. Now they’ll have time to ponder the discrepancy between the alternative reality of talk radio and their own increasing insecurity.
Obama is nearly ideal when it comes to calmly describing unwelcome truths. But for Republicans, the temptation will be to double down on the more fanciful elements of their ideology. What matters most is bolstering their cultish identity markers: white skin, Christianity, and victimology.
The Republican “base” is not just the rump of the party, it’s the party itself. A Mitt Romney may learn from Sarah Palin that ignorance is an advantage in establishing one’s bona fides with these folks. There is no road back to establishment Republicanism. It’s dead. What lies ahead is a political apparatus attuned to believing its own extremist impulses. For a country with just two political parties, it’s a sobering realization.
Here is a collection of maps that show the election with modified maps.
https://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2008/
Until the duhs and ignos learn to see through the empty promises that are never fulfilled, they will follow the leaders that only want their vote. Don’t hold your breath. They are also the largest contingent that reject reality based on belief.
I hope that we can finally see that the lesson of 2000 was NOT that one had to have the thecrats to win, tough that was what both parties thought it was all the way through Tuesday.
The proper lesson to learn from Bush’s first victory is that if one can get ALL of the voters from one block, that tip the balance in your favor.
Both the Democrats and Republicans have been courting the religious vote and calling it the key to victory. They were wrong.
The proper counter-move was to let the GOP have them (Blue America doesn’t want them or need them) and mobilize a different group of people that are normally split and unite them for you. Preferrably find a group that you actually agree with and actually would help if you were in power.
Looking at the results, it seems that the Democrats did just that, even if it was un-intentional. Men were evenly split between the two parties. Women were almost 60-40 for Obama. Voters under 35 were the rest of his victory.
It is not suprising to me that younger voters may be less prejudiced against a black President. This is a historical trend.
It gives me hope to know that women did not merely vote for the last woman in the race. They seem to have realized that we don’t need a woman, we need the right woman. Neither Sarah nor Hillary was that woman.
Republicans first have to admit they love Big G just as much as the Dems — freeways, military, corporate welfare, etc. — before they can begin to reinvent themselves.
Now I have to ask: I joined the Republic party in 1990 under the wave of euphoria that came with refreshing new ideas like “Enterprise Zones,” which Jack Kemp made me believe was a real Republican answer to racial inequality and urban blight. Then, by the time it made it actual policy, the idea had been stripped down to something like a Harley with flat tires and a two-speed transmission.
It’s disappointing. I find myself engaged by Ron Paul, but the total lack of pragmatic solutions — trying to square off the national deficit under 10 years, for example — makes me run back to more conventional progressives, though I struggle with progressive politics at a federal level (Keynsian economics would be brilliant if ever actually practiced in earnest).
And I guess that’s the rub for me. I *want* to be a Libertarian, a practical one not so dogmatic about philosophy that I alienate myself from reality, but there really isn’t a party like that out there. So align myself with centrist Dems that seem close to me on social issues and hope and pray their micromanagement of the economy doesn’t somehow send us over the brink like the faux-supply siders we’ve had in office the past eight years.
I’m up for a new populist party. Can you find me someone other than whacky Ross Perot to lead it?
Jon, here is a very interesting analysis from an insider regarding the direction of conservatism in this country:
https://www.joebageant.com/joe/2008/11/sarah-palin-is-the-future-of-conservatism.html
I am getting a new tie for x-mas to go with my new 501’s and T-shirt.
cal lash