Morsi’s out, Zimmerman’s free, Spitzer’s back, Snowden’s still in Moscow, and the G.O.P. is still dominated by right-wing true believers. Those were the headlines during my two weeks off, and, in the interest of maintaining the holiday spirit for another day or two, I’m going to focus on the last one. (Note: if you haven’t read Jelani Cobb’s moving post on the Zimmerman acquittal, read that first.)
If you are anything like me, I suspect that part of you—the dark, cynical part you’d rather not acknowledge—has rather enjoyed the Republican Party’s two-decade-long descent into wacky, quasi-religious, know-nothing nativism. From Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan to Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann to Rick Perry and Rick Santorum, let’s be honest—the Party’s recent history has resembled a dark comedy scripted by Aaron Sorkin and designed to insure a Democratic hegemony in the Oval Office. Who knows? If it hadn’t been for the intervention of the Supreme Court in 2000, the G.O.P. could conceivably have lost six Presidential elections in a row, instead of four out of six.
Following the G.O.P.’s latest electoral debacle, many commentators, myself included, called time on this rib-tickling farce. Surely now, we opined, the fiendishly effective political party of Eisenhower, Nixon, and Reagan would reassert itself, cast aside the crazies, and present a more voter-friendly face to a country undergoing a demographic and social transformation. As my colleague Ryan Lizza reminded us the other day, we pundits weren’t alone: many G.O.P. insiders, including the sages at the Republican National Committee, whose job it is to get the party elected, signed onto the rebranding project. They published numbers-laden reports; talked up the prospects of younger, less divisive figures, such as Marco Rubio and Chris Christie; and looked forward to comprehensive immigration reform as the symbolic moment when the G.O.P. would embrace the future rather than the past.
So much for all that. Despite the best efforts of senators like Rubio, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and even some representatives of the party’s antediluvian branch, such as Bob Corker, to construct an immigration bill that would be palatable to the party’s right, Speaker John Boehner declared the bill a non-starter in the House of Representatives, which is where the soul of the G.O.P. now resides. And late last week, as if just to make their intentions even more clear, the same House conservatives who forced Boehner’s hand on immigration turned around and stripped funding for the food-stamps program, which provides basic nutrition to millions of poor families, from the farm bill.
Did somebody mention “compassionate conservatism”? Not that I saw. George W. Bush, who built his Presidential career on that slippery but effective slogan, did descend for a moment from his Texas ranch, and his efforts to help the starving millions in Africa, to express his support for immigration reform. A lot of good that did. Together with the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, David Brooks, and the army of Chamber of Commerce/Silicon Valley lobbyists who supported the Gang of Eight bill, the former President finds himself isolated from the grassroots of his party, which, on this issue, remains staunchly aligned with Rush Limbaugh and what remains of the Minutemen.
With even some respectable political analysts now peddling the argument that the most urgent task of the G.O.P. is to appeal to more alienated and absentee white voters, is it time to junk the theory that the party will eventually direct its attentions to the electorate at large? Could the party really remain in thrall to the God, guns, and anti-government brigade until Ronald Reagan returns to save us all from eternal damnation? That’s doubtful. Clearly, though, the adjustment process is going to take more time.
How much more? At this stage, it is looking like at least another four years—time enough for the party to suffer a third straight crushing defeat at the Presidential level. Based on history and common sense, that will probably be enough to give the reformers the upper hand. With today’s G.O.P., though, you never can be sure.
Part of the problem is ideological—a deep commitment to outmoded doctrines and superstitions—but there are also structural issues. Appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, some parts of the G.O.P. are prospering and see little need for change. At the local level, the party is still dominant. Thirty states—including seven of the ten most populous—have Republican governors, and twenty-nine have G.O.P.-controlled legislatures. With this firm grip on local power, the party is able to gerrymander Congressional districts to assure itself of continued success in the House of Representatives. Despite opinion polls showing the last Congress to be one of the least popular on record, there was never any real prospect of the Democrats overturning the G.O.P. majority. And in next year’s midterms, the Republicans may well gain more seats.
If that happens, where will the incentive come from for a big push to the center in 2016? To be sure, some G.O.P. governors and potential Presidential candidates, like Christie, Bobby Jindal, and Nikki Haley, are more centrist than the party is nationally. But John McCain and Mitt Romney, to name but two, can testify to how hard it is for such figures to win the nomination without compromising their moderate credentials. Come 2016, the same dynamics will be in place, and the cry will go up for a “real conservative” to confront the anti-American taxers, secularists, and gun confiscators. If the G.O.P. primary is as bruising as it was in 2008 and 2012, the eventual outcome of the election is likely to be the same.
Would a third successive defeat bring the G.O.P. to its senses? Perhaps not. As the big money that traditionally financed the party continues to migrate towards the Democrats, a process that the rise of Silicon Valley has accentuated, it’s at least conceivable that the Republicans could become a rump party—a determined but diminishing redoubt of white reaction. If that were to happen, the big political battles of the future would take place within the Democratic Party, between the pro-business Rubin-Clinton-Obama wing and the more populist Krugman-Warren-Spitzer wing.
It’s a possibility, but I can’t see it happening. The two-party system is too well established, the G.O.P. is too entrenched at the local level, and history demonstrates that a third successive defeat, unlike a second one, can have a cathartic effect. A party that loses once can put it down to bad luck or the political cycle. A party that loses twice can blame a bad candidate. (That’s you, Mitt!) A party that loses three times can hardly avoid some navel inspection.
In 1992, having lost to Reagan twice and George H. W. Bush once, the Democrats nominated a moderate Southern governor who supported the death penalty, embraced market forces, and pledged to follow a centrist “Third Way.” At about the same time, the British Labour Party, having lost three times to Margaret Thatcher, underwent a sweeping internal review, which saw it modify its traditional commitment to public ownership and the trades unions. (The Conservatives, after swapping Thatcher for John Major, still narrowly won the 1992 general election, but “New Labour,” under Tony Blair, swept to power in the next election.)
The list goes on. In 2012, the French Socialist Party, having been defeated in the Presidential elections of 1995, 2002, and 2007, finally won, but only after its candidate, François Hollande, a former left-winger, moved markedly to the center. Democratic political parties, if they wish to be governing parties rather than interest groups, can ignore the views of the median voter for only so long.
For now, the G.O.P. and many of its tribunes on Capitol Hill appear content to ignore this elemental fact of political life. Maybe things will change during the next few months, but I wouldn’t wager on it. More and more, it’s looking like it will take Hillary Clinton, or another Democrat, succeeding Barack Obama in the White House to bring about real changes in the G.O.P.
To put it another way, the great G.O.P. freak show still has a ways to run. From the point of view of the cynical heckler in the cheap seats, that’s just dandy: extremism and nuttiness makes good copy, and it keeps the Republicans out of the White House. The problem is that, diverting as it is, the show is paralyzing the government and doing great damage to the country.
