In The Wilderness
Greg Sargent reports on RNC Chair Mike Duncan’s latest thinking:
In a frank and private memo sent today to Republican National Committee members, the RNC chairman acknowledges that the GOP has grown too addicted to ideology, places politics before policy, and is bereft of ideas — and that it’s imperative that the party shift towards a genuine effort to develop concrete policy solutions to people’s problems in order to rescue itself.
The memo, which we obtained from a Republican operative. was written by RNC chief Mike Duncan to explain the RNC’s decision — first reported by Politico — to create a new in-house think tank called the “Center for Republican Renewal,” which is devoted to coming up with new policies and ideas to chart a new direction for the party after November’s devastating losses.
I think this is a mistake. Ambitious people don’t like the idea that their fate is out of their hands. But an opposition political party’s fate is largely out of its hands. The Democratic Party’s recovery from its low ebb in the winter of 2004-2005 had very little to do with Democratic policy innovation and a great deal to do with the fact that the objective situation facing the country got worse. The time for the GOP to improve, policy-wise, was back then. Had the Bush administration been animated by better ideas, Bush might not have led to declining incomes, rising inequality, and catastrophic military adventures. But since he did, the GOP lost. And now the reality is that it’s the Democrats’ turn to govern. If things work out poorly, the GOP will get back in whether or not they have an ideological renewal, and if things work out well the Republicans will stay locked out.
But the time when it’s smart politics to have smart policies is when you’re governing. The public is okay at assessing results, and not otherwise that impressed by policy arguments.
63 Responses to “In The Wilderness”
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December 20th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Frist…
Maybe the actual idea is to have smart policies in reserve for *when* they get back to governing. But its difficult to fix things once you’re already back in power so better to do it now.
December 20th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
It seems to me that Republicans value policy solutions which, when enunciated and promoted, lead to them winning elections. That is what counts as desirable policy options.
Then, once in power, they do whatever the hell they want, and if it destroys the country, their strategy apparently is to double down and hope no one really notices.
December 20th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Does ‘go fuck yourself’ qualify as an ideology? That’s what the Republicans have been saying to everyone, especially during the last eight years.
December 20th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
The Republican party decided that it didn’t need smart policies when it chose Bush/Rove in the 2000 Republican primary. Fortunately, it turned out that no amount of clever message management could compensate for an inability to actually govern.
How long it takes for Republicans to return to power does depend a lot on how well the Democrats do. But the time is likely to be shorter if the Republican party appears to change enough that people don’t expect the next Republican administration to be a repeat of the Bush administration. And if the Republican party expects to stay in power very long, it has to actually change.
December 20th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Fortunately or unfortunately, it isn’t the case that the public is good at assessing results. What they’re good at is reacting to their own pocketbook, which isn’t the same thing at all, as Democrats are likely to discover.
December 20th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
It sure doesn’t help the country for the Repubs to sit around waiting for the Dems to fuck it up so they get their turn for the same ol’ same ol’. Seems to me that a GOP that realizes it has become enslaved to ideology, and has put politics ahead of policy, and is ready to go back to the drawing board to think about ways to solve real people’s real problems would be positive development. Unless you’re just interested in the scoreboard aspect of politics, the ol’ who’s winning.
I don’t really expect the GOP to actually emerge from this as a very changed party, willing to shed slavish devotion to its socially atavistic and in-it-for-the-money base, but it’s a better development than them believing it’s just a matter of the Dems having a better playbook in the last electoral go-round. Though they probably think that, too.
December 20th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
The point is, when the Democrats inevitably screw up, the Republicans have to have some reasonable sounding options to make the public listen to them. Reagan faced this test in ‘80, so did Clinton in ‘92.
And if I understand Matt correctly, he isn’t saying that the Republicans are wrong to think of new ideas, just that it isn’t what will get them back in power. But when they do get back in power, don’t they have to have something to avoid Bush redux?
December 20th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Don’t worry, Matt. By the next election the Republicans will have devoted about 1,000 times as much energy to lying, dirty tricks, and voter disenfranchisement as to coming up with new policy ideas.
December 20th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
If things work out poorly, the GOP will get back in whether or not they have an ideological renewal, and if things work out well the Republicans will stay locked out.
You keep saying this, and it keeps being wrong. If the bottom drops out, and the next four years are basically a mini-Depression, few people will say “we should have listened to the guys who didn’t want to do anything”. Even if the bailouts prove to be costly failures.
If there is a political danger, it is actually that the economic crisis is shorter-lived and less acute than supposed, we recover fairly quickly, but everyone is mad about the massive sums spent on the various bailouts. Sort of like when the mayor evacuates the whole city, but the hurricane comes ashore somewhere else.
December 20th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Matt —
You keep reiterating this point, but I think you take it too far. Indeed, I think the Republican response to the 2006 election, the Democrats inability to act between 2006-2008, and the Democrats’ success in 2008 highlight the weakness of your argument.
Basically, the Republicans AGREED with your analysis after 2006. They openly decided to obstruct everything and blame it on the Democrats. They assumed that the voters would punish the Democrats in 2008 when things got worse. Instead, the voters punished the Republicans. Not just at the presidential level, but at every level.
It is true that elections are MOSTLY referenda on the ruling party, but the minority party has to look acceptable. The Republican party has managed to make itself look unacceptable, and people aren’t going to forget the last 8 years right away. The Republicans need to distance themselves from the last 8 years, and that is going to require some ideological and policy movement. They also need to look like they were making constructive criticism, not just obstructionism.
You’re right to point out that the Democrats need to deliver, but you’re wrong to think that the Republicans can capitalize on Democratic failure without any change.
December 20th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
Had the Bush administration been animated by better ideas, Bush might not have led to declining incomes, rising inequality, and catastrophic military adventures.
We could have avoided the catastrophic military adventures, but I’m not sure we could have avoided the economic meltdown. It’s the culmination of worldwide forces that no one was really in control of. I don’t see a Gore or Kerry administration avoiding the housing bust or the Wall Street earthquake that followed.
December 20th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
I don’t see a Gore or Kerry administration avoiding the housing bust or the Wall Street earthquake that followed.
With Gore, I see the bubble being popped in its infancy in late 03, early 2004, leading to a mild economic slowdown or perhaps contraction, and leading Gore to a single term like Bush 1 or Carter. With Kerry, it may have popped in mid to late ‘05, leading to a mild recession and an unpredictable impact on the ‘06 midterms – but likely recovering enough not be a big issue in his ‘08 reelection campaign. But neither would have lead to the complete meltdown that occurred by letting everything ride until it all blew up.
December 20th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
Re: With Gore, I see the bubble being popped in its infancy in late 03, early 2004
How? Would Gore have leaned on Alan Greenspan so hard that the old guy agreed to cause interest rates?
I just don’t see that happening. Greenspan acted like an infallible pope and he expected presidents to kowtow to his wisdom (which they did). And behind Greenspan’s insistence on keeping rates low lay a fundamental problem: American business just did not want to expand after the recession on 2000-01 had officially ended. Rather, firms sat on piles of cash and undertook very little new investment and kept their employment rolls recession-lean. How would Gore or Kerry have changed that?
You’re right that Gore probably would have been a one-termer in face of that trouble, especially if 9-11 had gone down and the GOP was hitting him on that as well. Probably we would have had a one-term presidency of John McCain following, with a belated (and slightly better managed) Iraq War. As to where we’d be now politically (about to inaugurate Hillary Clinton?) is just guess work. But I do think the economy would be in deep doo-doo all the same. This was not a political crisis, and it wasn’t just Made in America: it was something much deeper, with a cast spanning the globe.
December 20th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
How? Would Gore have leaned on Alan Greenspan so hard that the old guy agreed to cause interest rates?
My theory, which I admit skirts around the edges of conspiracy theory if not delving straight into it, is that Greenspan & the Fed would not have kept rates as low as they did throughout ‘03 in a Gore Administration. And would have ignored calls from a Gore Administration to lower them the same way he (Greenspan) ignored calls from the Bush I administration to lower them.
Part of this theory rests on the fact that the Bush administration was seen in early ‘03 as adrift in the realm of economic and fiscal policy, with the recent firing of the Treasury secretary and (I think) the OMB director and/or CEA chair. So Greenspan was a man alone, and had no ying to go with his yang. A Gore administration, likely with Summers still at Treasury (and people like DeLong and Krugman working in the administration) may have provided the correct structure, even if the were opposite ends of the political spectrum and some policy positions.
The more conspiratorial part of it is why Greenspan kept rates so low when he didn’t do it in Bush I nor did his predecessor do it during Carter / Reagan. It is obvious that the fed position came at a political cost to Carter, Bush I and even Reagan (in the form of Congressional losses). Doing things differently this time (in ‘03) sure made it easier for Bush II and congressional republicans to secure their reelections in ‘04.
December 20th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
just to add, I agree with this “This was not a political crisis, and it wasn’t just Made in America: it was something much deeper, with a cast spanning the globe.”. My point is that moving the day of reckoning forward would have required a smaller overall adjustment. Like zapping a tumor while it’s still benign and not letting it metastasize and spread throughout the body.
December 20th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
Don’t be naive
Your argument would apply only if this “Center for Republcan Renewal” actually were intended to come up with new Republican policy initiatives. Actually, it is certainly just another one of the oppo research entities that have always been what the Republicans have where a party might have folks thinking about actual policy.
December 20th, 2008 at 9:38 pm
What’s the point of creating another think tank? Don’t the Republicans have plenty of other think tanks at their disposal? Isn’t it a bit rich to assume that there is some pool of thinkers who are dying to give up their positions at the Hoover Institution, Heritage, or AEI to come work for a new think tank that doesn’t even exist yet?
I suspect that the “Center for Republican Renewal” is just a place to raise funds to pay the salaries of a group of soon-to-be-unemployed executive branch politcal appointees.
December 20th, 2008 at 10:13 pm
What is the difference between ideology and
ideas? Like is not the conceptual content of one’s
ideology one’s ideas? Or ideas refer only to
procedures, options, emphases–the pragmatics
of pursuing an ideological end point?
December 20th, 2008 at 10:15 pm
Perhaps the most important de-regulatory change, letting banks take on the massive amounts of debt they did, did not occur at IIRC the SEC until 2004, so I doubt that would have happened under Gore. (There was a good article in the NYT about the change that was published in October or so.)
Good point. Non-crazy Tories should have been able to beat Blair and New Labour after the start of the Iraq War, but they decided to run hard right on things like testing immigrants for AIDS. Instead, Blair and co. got re-elected and Blair only left office when basically his own party pushed him out.
December 21st, 2008 at 3:45 am
The counter-argument is that in complete opposition lockout, throwing whatever you can think of and seeing what fits costs you nothing, particularly in a media climate where last week’s policy arguments might as well be last century’s. The counter-counter-argument is that even with a degree of turnover, and with a wider Republican pool than in a parliamentary opposition, the survivors may be inclined to hunker down: you think that the people who went nuts for Sarah Palin are going to give up their delusions of her political future, or that Crazy Michele Bachmann doesn’t feel vindicated by her re-election?
Non-crazy Tories should have been able to beat Blair and New Labour after the start of the Iraq War, but they decided to run hard right on things like testing immigrants for AIDS.
That’s a difficult argument to make, given the electoral timing. Labour comfortably won re-election in May 2001 with almost the same majority as 1997, and while there was talk of the need to shift to something more akin to a soft libertarian / Free Democratic kind of platform, the top-ranking Tory survivors in parliament were mostly Thatcher-era veterans, and Thatcher herself stuck the knife into Ken Clarke during the leadership election. (David Cameron and George Osborne only became MPs in that election.) Once the Tories sided with Blair over Iraq, offsetting anti-war Labour MPs, the die was pretty much cast for 2005, even with the 2003 leadership change.
I suspect that the “Center for Republican Renewal” is just a place to raise funds to pay the salaries of a group of soon-to-be-unemployed executive branch politcal appointees.
Ding ding ding, we have a winner. Even when the usual donors are feeling the squeeze a tiny bit, wingnut welfare survives.
December 21st, 2008 at 4:18 am
It’s a feint.
The GOP has always put politics ahead of policy. Reagan’s “you can have your cake and eat it, too” policies were once correctly derided as “voodoo economics” by some Republicans, but embraced as holy writ the moment they won an election.
The GOP became cheap hucksters, selling the policy equivalent of “Chaser,” the allegedly herbal hangover preventative, because there’s a sucker born every minute, and enough of them are in the United States Congress to pass tax cuts and war authorizations without bothering to look at anything other than the marketing campaign.
Policy first, my butt. They’ve been politics first for decades.
December 21st, 2008 at 6:48 am
It does not matter what the Republicans do in the future, the changing demographics of the U.S. will ensure that they will be irrelevant.
The real question for the U.S. is how will the country function as a one party state. In 2016 the real election for president will occur in the Democratic primaries between the Iowa Caucus and Super Tuesday. Image how few competitive elections will occur in the coming one party state.
All of the progressive activist who plan on having careers in politics by running elections and getting people elected had better start planning on a different career.
December 21st, 2008 at 9:10 am
It seems to me that Kerry advertised few policy proposals (or rather, the press ignored them) and ran largely on competence. In ‘06, the Dems ran on a single proposal (withdrawal from Iraq) and this year ran on a complex policy platform.
I don’t think the competence argument works for an opposition party. The GOP needs to make some modest proposals for 2010.
December 21st, 2008 at 10:58 am
Is it just me, or does Matt have something like half a dozen hobby horses, one of which he will be riding in every post he makes?
December 21st, 2008 at 12:37 pm
DTM,
PLease explain how the Repubican Party will recover in California and have a majority in the state house or Senate. If you cannot provide a sufficient model, then admit that the U.S. could easily become like politics in California where the Republican Party is on a slide to being irrelevant.
Do you really believe that any group inside the party in power will give up power by leaving. If the existing party hs control of government regulations and government spending, it can easily keep 65% of the people happy.
By the time the economy collapses under massive entitlement spending coupled with changing demographics, politics will not matter that much (See current day Detroit).
December 21st, 2008 at 1:58 pm
dtm,
There will be conflicts within the coming one dominate party. That is why the Democratic Party will have to support every expanding entitlements and government spending. The Conflicts will be smooth over with every expanding money.
You may want to look at Mass. or Maryland. Does it benefit anyone to be a Republican in those states. Republicans have zero say in policy or spending. The Republicans serve as foils for the existing dominate Democratic Party stracture.
Look at how politics worked in the south pre-1960. ONly Democrats won and the real elections were in the primaries. Even blacks in the south voted for jim crow supporting Democrats because the Republican Party was irrelevant. And that was a time when the federal government was much smaller.
As the government continues to expand, no group can afford to be out of power or in the minority party for any lenght of time. Being in the minority party marks that group as prey for the dominate party.
And no, if you look at the effects of the Voting Rights ACt, non-whites do not oppose each other, do not compete with each other, and always vote Democratic. When almost 100% of the black and non-cuban Hispanic politicains are Democratic, there is no path for non-Democratic minorities to ever get started in politics.
December 21st, 2008 at 3:52 pm
Re: . Does it benefit anyone to be a Republican in those states.
I don’t know about Massachusetts, but outside the Washington/Baltimore corridor the GOP holds its own here in Maryland. Both the Eastern Shore and the mountainous western counties have a dominant GOP presence. In the last election, even Anne Arundel county (south Baltimore suburbs, stretching down to Annapolis) voted for McCain over Obama. Maryland is not a one-party state.
December 21st, 2008 at 4:30 pm
JonF,
The Maryland Republican Party is so incompetent that it managed to lose one of the two U.S. Congressional districts that were gerrymandered to produce a Repubican win.
It does not matter that the Republicans get 40% of the vote in Maryland. The few elected Repulbicans have zero effect on policy, budget, or government management. Even having a Republican governor for four years was pointless in Maryland since Ehrlich spent four years having his vetos overturned and was not able to have any effect on the administraiton of the government.
The Democrats can do whatever they want in Maryland and the Repulbicans or conservatives are powerless. That is the definition of a one party state.
December 21st, 2008 at 6:54 pm
I would like to observe that the notion of a permanent majority of a party based on demographic trends is fallacious. On the basis of the demographic trek to Republican suburban belts we were supposed to get a permanent GOP majority.
Democratic coalition is “disparate” and GOP is full of ideas how to exploit it. E.g. lower income parts of that coalition can be swayed to homophobic planks. Granted, those are not new ideas, but still, in CA we have a GOP governor and Proposition 8 passing.
One can ask very legitimately how GOP will gain from yet another think tank. AEI and Heritage Foundation (and some other) have photogenic galleries of articulate folks who keep pressing some “ideas”. I hate these folks and their “ideas”, but this is not an obvious position for an RNC person. I would prefer to see “naming names”. What GOP meme should be discarded, what policy areas were ill served?
December 21st, 2008 at 7:48 pm
piotr,
So what none white demographic group is going to leave the Demographic party to join the Republican Party or the Green Party? Unless you have a good answer, then the idea that the Democratic Party can be the one dominate party based upon non-whites along with Jews, union members, public sector employees, college professors and NGO types can easily be 60% of the voters.
December 21st, 2008 at 8:24 pm
Really smart analysis from Kolohe up there.
December 21st, 2008 at 8:25 pm
I can’t see Gore or Kerry letting the MBS market go unregulated for so long.
Without that, this whole thing is a mild slowdown and some home improvement shows getting dropped by HGTV.
December 21st, 2008 at 9:57 pm
Demographics do mean that the Republican party will need to come up with a new approach. They face a serious problem unless they adapt.
Furthermore, embracing anti-homosexual or culture war politics is definitely not enough. Sure, when you can break out gay rights issues through ballot initiatives, you can splinter the Democratic coalition (similarly, you can splinter the Democratic coalition on affirmative action through the same strategy). But, people who really, really care about and prioritize anti-homosexual positions aren’t in the Democratic coalition now. You’re not going to grow the Republican coalition that way.
Republicans face a real problem because culture war politics fundamentally are hard to pull off across racial divides. You can do it when you break out issues, but it’s hard to find a candidate who can both run on cultural homogeneity and still appeal to numerous racial groups.
Now, the current governor of CA might provide a template for Republicans, but it’s worth noting how different he is from the rest of the Republican party. It’s also worth noting that he has run California into the ground. So, that paradigm has problems too.
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:53 am
the Demographic party
Calling Dr Freud: poops dropped his guard on that one.
December 22nd, 2008 at 4:56 am
DTM,
All the historic references are uninportant. All of the previous rearrangements involved white voters moving between political parties. In the 1930’s, well over 90 percent of the voters were white. Now whites make up less than 70% of the voters.
Also, federal politics is just the sum of the politics of 50 states. You cannot argue that California, New York, Mass., Maryland, Illinois, can all be one party states and then argue that the U.S. is naturally a two party country.
Also, you can create one likely scenerio where any group currently in the DEmocratic Party would leave. Why would any group want to leave the one, dominate party and try to overcomes the massive obstacles of starting a new party. Also, for a political party to start up, it needs to separate itself from the existing parties. No group is going to leave the DEmocratic party to become the Democratic-lite party. Too many of those groups in the DEmocratic Party depend upon having easy access to the largess of the government. None of them can walk away from that on principle.
Also, if California is small enough to be a one party state, then how many people does it take to naturally become a two party state. The number of races that are being competed for is going down. Creating a new party would require finding candidate that do not exist. AS the Republican Party collapses, people will just start voting in the Democratic Primary and the national election will just become the Democratic primary. There is nothing inherent to the Constitution or federal structure to prevent that from happening.
December 23rd, 2008 at 5:42 pm
Actually, rather than poring over 100 year old (and more) history, it is already instructive to check what happened to the theory that suburbanization and migration to the Sun Belt will result in permanent dominance by GOP.
In that scenario that was partly corroborate by contemporary trends, as folks settle in suburban belts, they acquire real estate and investments, aversion to taxes and sympathy for “pro-family” issues championed by GOP, regardless of the previous background.
Then several things happened, but two are most important. Number one, the coalition so gloriously assambled was disparate, with “culture warfare” being necessary to retain some elements while being revolting to others. The second was the general fuckpup. Voters actually sometimes check if they favorite party delivers what they need. Even more, voters may realize what they need, even if think tanks do not (e.g. suburban voters may suffer from congestion and develop needs for government services that exceed the designs of propertarian ideologues).
Culturally, Democratic coalition is disparate, although it is a plus that as a matter of pride and ideology Democrats cherish those disparities (with smiles and teeth gnashing). Also, Democrats seem to believe in meritocracy, and this decreases possibilities of a general fuckup. BUT IF WE TAKE TOO MUCH FOR GRANTED, there will be fissions in the coalition and too much fuckup for voters to bear.
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