How Long? Not Long
Bruce Bartlett has a column lamenting the poor outlook for the Republican Party that concludes with this:
Eventually, Republicans will tire of being out of power just as Democrats did, and they will do what it takes to win. But I fear that Republicans will have to at least lose in 2010 and again in 2012 before they start to come to their senses. Perhaps by 2014, some leader with maturity, resources, vision and discipline will find a way of leading the GOP out of the wilderness. But I see no one even in a position to start that process today.
I think that’s probably right. Then again, I’m not sure that outlook is so bleak. After kinda sorta losing in 2000, some thought the lesson was that Democrats were way too liberal. Folks like Will Marshall and Mark Penn warned that they had to turn much more conservative in order to win elections. Their warnings went only semi-heeded and, consequently, Democrats lost ground in 2002 and lost more ground in 2004. But guess what? By 2008 they had strong congressional majorities and a popular new president ready to support universal health care, tough action to limit greenhouse gas pollution, a public more supportive than ever of equal rights for gays and lesbians, etc., etc.
Looking at the Republican side, the electoral map is just very bad for them in the 2010 Senate race no matter what they do. And the odds are that we’ll be in an economic recovery by 2012 that the voters will credit Obama for and he’ll get re-elected. But by 2014, the Senate electoral map will be bad for Democrats. Who wins in 2016? It has more to do with what’s happening in 2016 than with what the candidate says.
The problem with the conservative positions pushed by Bush and DeLay and Lott & McConnell and now McConnell & Lott and Boehner and Cantor and Pence isn’t that they’re “unelectable” positions it’s that they don’t work as a governing agenda. That’s bad for the country and also means that if they do get back into office, they’ll run things back into the ditch and probably get voted out again.
49 Responses to “How Long? Not Long”
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May 2nd, 2009 at 2:07 pm
I wonder if 9/11 and the Iraq War had anything to do with political trends in 2002 and 2004.
May 2nd, 2009 at 2:09 pm
Well, the ‘Democrats lost in 2000 by being too liberal’ BS the media spewed was always transparent.
They lost because 2 million members of their base voted for a guy more left-wing than their own candidate. If Democrats hadn’t spent the entire decade of the 90’s pissing off liberals, then they certainly would have won in 2000.
IF anyone in the actual party managed to misread that fact, it’s because they wanted to. They most certainly couldn’t say that in an intellectually honest manner. There was no case to be made there.
May 2nd, 2009 at 2:13 pm
> heir warnings went only semi-heeded and,
> consequently, Democrats lost ground in 2002
> and lost more ground in 2004.
I am not sure where this sentence is supposed to be leading. Neither Bill Clinton nor Albert Gore Jr. nor the DLC-dominated Democratic Party were in any way “liberal” in 2000. Nor did the heapings of “more Republican-lite policies” prescribed by the DLC and the Bullshit Moose prove very effective in 2002 or 2004 (indeed, support the Iraq war turned out to be a disaster for the Dems). It wasn’t until enough of the DLCers had lost (or their consultants humiliated in enough elections), and Republican policies in general were put on display as utterly failed by Schaivo and Katrina, that we started to get movement in the better direction. And that better direction was emphatically NOT Republican-lite.
Cranky
May 2nd, 2009 at 2:14 pm
I wonder if 9/11 and the Iraq War had anything to do with political trends in 2002 and 2004.
Yes, events matter. But if Dems continued being non-partisan (as opposed to non-ideological) after 9/11, they would have continued to lose. Good thing they learned that unified opposition must also be combined with being open to those who have different views, but who are also are proud to be a Democrat. The Republicans are so focused on purifying their party to understand this.
May 2nd, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Lott’s not in Congress anymore. He’s on K street.
May 2nd, 2009 at 2:27 pm
Yep, It’s basically impossible to be ‘non-ideological’. Everyone has an ideology, they just assume that theirs is common sense
Be wary of anyone who claims to be non-ideological. They are either lying to themselves or trying to lie to you.
May 2nd, 2009 at 2:34 pm
The underlying assumption of many of the discussions of the Republican Party is that something must be done to fix the party. But why? It is certainly healthy for our democracy to have more than one major political party, but the combination of the ultra-wealthy and white evangelicals can’t get away from one another to form a viable party. They need each other to have even the relevance and power the GOP has today. I see no reason to think they will be able to recover from their current woes absent a radical change in the political atmosphere that is unlikely to occur while Barack Obama, who has proven himself both politically shrewd and an effective steward of government, is in office. Nor do I see a way that the Democratic Party could splinter or a third party could arise. But, most importantly, the current Republican Party is a blight on our republic. We are better off without them. That leaves us in the uncomfortable position of something close to single party rule for the next six years at a minimum, but it is better than a return to a form of government where the party of Bush, torture and the abandonment of the rule of law have more power than they have now. Indeed, we would benefit if they were simply reduced to running a semi-viable presidential candidate every four years and have a solid block of, say, 25% of Congress.
The Republican Party is in the condition it is in now simply because it is a failure. Its failure has cost us dearly. We don’t need more of the Republican Party.
May 2nd, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Bartlett has a much better understanding of the hole the GOP has dug itself than Matt. To sum up, 2002-2004 was not nearly as bad for the Democrats as 2006-2008 was for the GOP, and the GOP is currently far more unpopular than the Democrats have recently been.
Matt’s misunderstand of the situation is captured in this contrast:
The thing is, a solid majority of Americans now understand that these policies not only don’t work, but lead to huge disasters. Meanwhile, every year a new group of people whose only memory is of Clinton, Dubya, and Obama are joining the electorate, and for them THE political lesson of their lifetime is that Republicans are completely incompetent.
Hence, these ARE unelectable positions, because too many people now know what Matt knows: these positions suck. And so unless Obama is as incompetent as Dubya–which would be quite a trick–the GOP is going to need to clearly repudiate these policies and come up with something new. And with the way things are going, that will likely take a generational change in the GOP, building up from the local and state level.
May 2nd, 2009 at 2:52 pm
If Democrats can maintain a hold on pro-business social liberals, they’re golden.
May 2nd, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Re: If Democrats hadn’t spent the entire decade of the 90’s pissing off liberals, then they certainly would have won in 2000.
And exactly what liberal agenda were the Democrats supposed to enact in the 90s given that the GOP controlled Congress for most of the decade?
May 2nd, 2009 at 3:18 pm
Barbar has it: The 2002 – 2008 elections were highly influenced by 9-11/Iraq war, first to the advantage of the Republicans and then, when it became obvious the the Iraq war was a fiasco, in favor of the Democrats. By 2008, the vast majority of the electorate no longer accepted the hyper security/big stick policies pushed by the Republicans as the answer to terrorism. I believe the Republicans are being hurt right now by excess dogma in place of realism, but as soon as the current recession is past, I imagine that social issues will come to the fore. If Democrats, instead of attacking hard issues like funding for social security and medicare (let alone health and pension reform), try to placate liberals with laws aimed at soft social issues (gay marriage, etc), they likely will experience a backlash.
May 2nd, 2009 at 3:19 pm
The idea of an ever-swinging political pendulum is attractive because of its simplicity. It is also false. It ignores important demographic changes in the electorate, shifts in public opinion about existing issues, the emergence of totally new issues, and the potential for effective Progressive governance to create a pro-progressive feedback loop.
In fact, our national polity tends to move rather steadily in one direction (specifically, towards an ever-fuller embrace of liberty, equality, and government-backed social safety nets) for decades on end, with (usually) brief periods of backsliding sometimes giving the false appearance of a shift in the other direction (and weren’t those last 30 years fun!). It is very hard to name a single right or privilege, or a government responsibility, which HAS existed in our history but has been revoked at a later date. (Welfare, maybe? – but that had only a partial existence to begin with, and only suffered a partial repeal in the 90s).
All of which is a long-winded way of saying that the Republican party, as it is currently construed, is not likely to simply bounce back to victory if it waits through a few tough electoral cycles. It is more likely that it will have to be completely reformed into a PROMOTER of progressive change (ie, “left” of the Democratic government on some critical issues of the future), just as the Democratic party leapfrogged the GOP on civil rights in the 50s/60s, or risk going the way of the Whigs and find itself replaced by a new party that can fill that role.
In short, while the DEMOCRATIC party will almost certainly lose its grip on total power at some point in the not-to-distant future, we shouldn’t assume that this automatically means the conservative Republican party will be the beneficiary.
May 2nd, 2009 at 3:23 pm
According to Chairman Newt – the future is but a static positivist regurgitation of the past and things couldn’t be sunnier. Just water the horses and Jindal, Palin, Pence & Co. will ride in to Dodge to save the day. There’ll never be the kind of soul-searching reassessment outliers suggest, but instead all efforts will go to monkeywrenching Obama and hope (if not actively work towards) somehow initiating a massive 9/11 style terrorist attack. Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re coordinating with Netanyahu to paint Obama into a corner by bombing Iran sooner ratther than later.
May 2nd, 2009 at 3:25 pm
> If Democrats, instead of attacking hard issues
> like funding for social security and medicare
> (let alone health and pension reform), try to
> placate liberals with laws aimed at soft social
> issues (gay marriage, etc), they likely will
> experience a backlash.
“I’m going to go hard at Social Security, once I can drain the politics out of it” – George W. Bush, closed “Rangers” fundraising dinner, circa September 2004.
Shorter Emrys: if Democrats don’t start adopting hard-right Republican policies then they will lose again just as they did in 2006 and 2008.
Cranky
May 2nd, 2009 at 3:35 pm
I’m not clear why the map will look bad for Demcorats in 2014…
May 2nd, 2009 at 3:38 pm
Don’t underestimate the power of voter fatigue, which punishes the successful as well as the failures. In the postwar era there is only one time when the ruling party held the White House more than 8 years in a row. I suspect that no matter how well Obama does, no matter how easily he is re-elected in 2012, voters will still be inclined to turn against the Democrats in 2016. It’s not as though Joe Biden is likely to be a viable candidate that year because he will be 74.
One thought for my Democratic friends. Think about replacing Biden in 2012 with someone who might be a a good candidate in 2016–perhaps someone that Obama could anoint, who would otherwise not be viable.
In 2004, I wrote a piece in the LA Times teling Bush he should replace Cheney with Rice or Powell to give the GOP a fighting chance in 2008. But, as with all of my advice, it was ignored. I still think if Powell or Rice had been VP from 2004 to 2008, that person, who would have been the presumptive GOP nominee, would have had a good chance of winning–certainly better than John McCain.
May 2nd, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Emrys says: I believe the Republicans are being hurt right now by excess dogma in place of realism, but as soon as the current recession is past, I imagine that social issues will come to the fore. If Democrats, instead of attacking hard issues like funding for social security and medicare (let alone health and pension reform), try to placate liberals with laws aimed at soft social issues (gay marriage, etc), they likely will experience a backlash.
Huh? Seems like the Dems are going to be able to handle “hard issues” as well as “soft social issues”.
The GOP had six solid years of complete control and managed to only placate their rich corporate supporters through tax cuts, crony contracts, etc. They didn’t shrink government spending, they escalated government intrusion into individuals business through the “War on Terror”, they pillaged the federal treasury…
May 2nd, 2009 at 3:44 pm
as soon as the current recession is past, I imagine that social issues will come to the fore. If Democrats, instead of attacking hard issues like funding for social security and medicare (let alone health and pension reform), try to placate liberals with laws aimed at soft social issues (gay marriage, etc), they likely will experience a backlash.
I don’t understand why you think there will be a backlash. The electorate is growing increasingly liberal on social issues, especially when you look at the age breakdown. Civil unions already have majority support and gay marriage probably will in a few years (or already does if you believe last week’s poll). I could see FOCA or especially the assault weapons ban being unpopular but Obama doesn’t seem like the type to mess with anything like that.
I’m not clear why the map will look bad for Demcorats in 2014…
Mostly because it’s the 2008 seats, of which Democrats won 8 in a very democratic year. Begich will surely have trouble, and there’s no guarantee the Colorado Udall, Shaheen, Hagan, Merkley, Franken, etc will be looking good. They certainly do now but that’s because it’s the same blue-tinted map as November. If Democrats lose 5 points nationally those seats could be in trouble. If they don’t, of course, then Democrats should be well over 60 for some time and there may well be a fundamental shift to render the Republicans a regional party.
May 2nd, 2009 at 3:53 pm
The answer to how long will be forever. The Republicans have been out of power in places like Chicago and Baltimore for almost 50 years and have zero chance of coming back. As the demographics of the U.S. will resemble the present demographic situation in places like Chicago or Los Angeles, the is no reason to believe that the Republicans can recover.
Of course, many punidts will argue that all the Republican Party has to do is become the Democratic-lite party. But then the question is why does the U.S. need two big government, big spending, nanny state, pro-social engineering parties. If people want big government it is easier to vote for Democrats instead of the Republicans tryng to convince people that they can be one too.
The other question is that as the Democorats redistrict in 2010, the Republicans will lose a large number of seats in 2012. By 2016, the Republican Party will be so irrelevant that I doubt that the MSM will even bother to spend money covering their primaries. By 2016, the real election for President Obama’s replacement will occur in the Democratic primaries and will be decided sometime betwee the Iowa Caucuses and Super Tuesday.
May 2nd, 2009 at 3:56 pm
A lot of the gains made by Dems in 2006 and 2008 were in traditionally GOP areas, or in close districts that were won by relatively conservative Democrats. Look at the state of Indiana, for example, as well as some of the districts in North Carolina and Virginia.
Now, whether or not the Democrats needed to “shift to the right” is another debate, but it is perilous to think that the addition of Blue Dogs wasn’t critical to the ascendancy of the Party in the last two election cycles.
Cranky, I’m afraid that there are a lot of “Bullshit Moose” out there, and mocking it, and the need for moderate/Blue Dog/Bull Moose types in the Democratic Big Tent is the kind of Gingrichian/DeLayian arrogance that led to the downfall of the Congressional GOP.
May 2nd, 2009 at 3:57 pm
I’d say that the electoral map for 2010 and 2012 is unknown right now. The Feds – starting with Bush, and continuing with Obama in an even bigger way – are pumping trillions of dollars out. If the economy does start to recover, the Fed will have two stark choices:
– allow massive inflation
– raise interest rates dramatically to stop inflation (yielding a correction like the one in 1981/82)
That’s the “elephant in the room”, as it were, and the possibility (seemingly remote right now) of buyers of t-bills getting nervous about their future value makes it even more dicey. Obama inherited this problem, but he has chosen to make it worse. Thus, he gets to own it.
May 2nd, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Historical comparisons aside, I think the GOP is doomed for the simple fact that they are actively shrinking their coalition.
There’s no such thing as a liberal (or these days, a moderate) Republican. But there’s plenty of conservative Democrats…
May 2nd, 2009 at 4:05 pm
Herb,
Those conservative Democrats have soon realize that having the Democrats in total control may not be the greatest thing when President Obama nominates a progressive-activist judge. Blue Dogs like Webb and Tester may support gun rights or private property rights but if they vote to support a Supreme Court nominee like Sotomayor those same Blue Dog Democrats are really voting against gun rights, private property rights, and many other individual rights.
May 2nd, 2009 at 4:09 pm
The problem with the conservative positions… isn’t that they’re “unelectable” positions it’s that they don’t work as a governing agenda.
You’re half-right. The problem is both of those things. Our Republican friends have always known that if they honestly stated their agenda, they would lose elections. A clear and consistent majority supports the programs and policies that the GOP is most determined to eliminate. (Social Security is at the top of that list.) “Vote for us – we’ll take away your job. We’ll drive you, your children and your grandchildren into poverty.” Not exactly a winner. Much better to run on a platform that amounts to “Vote for us – we don’t like those people any more than you do.”
Of course, on top of that, they put their real agenda into place, and the voters began to realize that they were “those people” too. The one thing that the GOP feared came to pass – people figured out what they really meant. Between Iraq, Katrina, and the economy they had to pay attention. You can’t pretend you’re not getting punched in the face when you have two black eyes and a broken nose.
It would be nice to think we’ll learn our lesson from this. But we should have learned it in the 1930s. The catastrophic failure of these very same ideas did not prevent a moron with nice hair from getting elected to re-implement them fifty years later.
May 2nd, 2009 at 4:14 pm
I’d say that the electoral map for 2010 and 2012 is unknown right now.
While the generic D vs R is unknown, we do know who’s up for reelection in the Senate. And regardless of how the economy’s doing people like Bunning, Burr, and Toomey are really bad candidates and there’s a lot of Republican retirements in competitive races. So the Senate map looks noticably worse than the House map for Republicans. In 2012 it may well look better as you get people who barely won in a blue year like Webb and Tester to go against. And any of the deep red state Democratic seats (AR, ND, SD, NE, WV) have to be Republican-favored if any of them ever retires. That’s the real elephant in the room nobody mentions.
May 2nd, 2009 at 4:15 pm
Bruce says: Don’t underestimate the power of voter fatigue, which punishes the successful as well as the failures. In the postwar era there is only one time when the ruling party held the White House more than 8 years in a row.
Bruce, that’s just a mix of selective statistics and wishful thinking on your part. The case for “voter fatigue” punishing successful and and unsuccessful parties alike simply doesn’t exist. In the last Century, there have been FOUR instances of one party holding the White House for more than 8 years (’00-’12, ‘20-’32, ‘32-’52, ‘80-’92), and only ONE where it held for less than 8 years (’76-’80). Nearly every change in power (’12, ‘20, ‘32, ‘52, ‘68, ‘76, ‘80, ‘92, ‘08) can be directly attributed to the ruling party failing (usually dramatically failing). Unpopular wars, recessions and huge scandals cost these parties the White House, not some reliable “voter fatigue”.
Only twice in the last hundred years (and I think I could go farther back if I understood late 1800s Presidential elections better) has an incumbent’s party lost the White House despite the lack of a recession, war, or scandal: 1960 and 2000. And what weak examples these are! Neither Ike nor Clinton was a huge success – they both governed as moderates during periods of ascendancy for the other party, didn’t inspire much devotion from their party bases, nor did either get the opportunity to lead the nation through a serious crisis (which tends to make Presidents more popular unless they screw up spectacularly, like Bush). And they both had VPs who were far less personally popular than they were, who had the distinction of losing narrowly in the race to succeed them.
What’s more, in the 1960 and 2000 elections the incumbent party could just as easily have WON – after all Nixon in ‘60 almost certainly would have won the popular vote if it hadn’t been for a few deeply corrupt big city machines backing Kennedy and might have lost the EC for the same reason, and Gore certainly did get more votes, would have won the Electoral college if it hadn’t been for Naderites, and probably ought to have won it anyway if it weren’t for Florida’s terribly designed ballots and 5 Bush-friendly justices. And those are the best examples that exist of supposed “voter fatigue” costing the incumbent party the White House.
No, the only way the Dems lose the White House in 2016 is if Obama actually screws something up worse than it was when he came in to office – a tall order, indeed.
May 2nd, 2009 at 4:17 pm
For me, Jesse wins this argument. Of course only time will tell, but the pendulum idea a useful default that at some point stops working because history changes. It’s not a perpetual cycle of return to zero.
May 2nd, 2009 at 4:18 pm
Blue Dogs like Webb and Tester may support gun rights or private property rights but if they vote to support a Supreme Court nominee like Sotomayor those same Blue Dog Democrats are really voting against gun rights, private property rights, and many other individual rights.
That’s a stretch. It’s not like Casey’s going to vote against every nominee made by a Democrat because they all support Roe and he’s pro-life. Nor should he. You can agree with someone on 80% of the issues and still think either that they’re a good choice all things considered, or that a president is entitled to seat who he wants. And I’m quite sure it would be impossible to find a pick that 50 Senators agree with on every important view they have.
May 2nd, 2009 at 4:52 pm
please, stop.
you don’t anything about what 2010 holds in store for us, let along 2012.
May 2nd, 2009 at 6:49 pm
I think many think that GOPers will rise again when there is another terrorist attack. I’m not sure that’s the case with Obama. He’s a very calming and steady presence. I could see him having a FDRish effect psychologically on Americans. I don’t think most Dems could manage that with most of the American people. Rather, I still think that many Americans would be looking for some GOP big swinging dick to keep them safe were other Dems at the helm. (Maybe Iraq was perceived as such a f-up as to dissolve this perception, but I don’t think so.)
May 2nd, 2009 at 6:56 pm
29. Cleek,
Is your comment referring to Matt or Bruce Bartley?
May 2nd, 2009 at 7:29 pm
“Lott’s not in Congress anymore. He’s on K street.”
Aren’t Congress and K Street pretty much the same entity?
May 2nd, 2009 at 7:41 pm
I guess the hope would be that the “leader with maturity” comes up with some functional policies that still fall under the aegis of conservatism. But politicians rarely invent policy. So the future of the Republican party probably lies largely with conservative think tanks. When CATO comes up with an idea that is plausible, Republicans will start coming back.
On the other hand, I think there is some logic that, at least these days, Democrats get elected when things are bad and we want selfless effective government policies, and Republicans get elected when things are good and we want selfish and hedonistic policy. So as soon as the Democrats fix the Republican mess, the Republicans will seem more electable. Sad.
May 2nd, 2009 at 8:22 pm
Roddy McCorley Says: Our Republican friends have always known that if they honestly stated their agenda, they would lose elections…“Vote for us – we’ll take away your job. We’ll drive you, your children and your grandchildren into poverty.” Much better to run on a platform that amounts to “Vote for us – we don’t like those people any more than you do.” Of course, on top of that, they put their real agenda into place, and the voters began to realize that they were “those people” too
Bingo! During the Bu$hco reign the GOP allowed the federal Treasury to be pillaged, our countries infrastructure weakened as to resemble a Third-world country, our system of laws and elections to sink into a banana republic, and they think most Americans want their government to focus on who is sleeping with who.
That’s only fun when it’s the latest celebutard in US Magazine.
May 2nd, 2009 at 8:54 pm
Cparis,
Detoirt, Newark, Baltimore have been run by Democrats for decades. Yet they have produced nothing but failure, poverty, job loss and despair. What most white progressives love to ignore is the black and hispanic majority cities and counties that have super high unemployment, high crime, lousy schools, and despair.
May 2nd, 2009 at 9:27 pm
Some free advice for the Republican Party: after you get waxed in 2012, ditch the religious conservatives. Publically and ruthlessly. Sure, they may still provide the G-No-P with footsoliders for campaigns and a reliable voting bloc, but their views are electoral poison to a large and ever-growing majority of Americans. I mean, seriously: we’re coming up on the second decade of the 21st century, and you want to go to war on abortion? Gay marriage? Creationism?!? Let them fade into the background, accept their votes, but for heaven’s sake, don’t have any of them speaking to the American public on your behalf ever again!
You’re in luck, since with Falwell, Robertson, and Dobson fading from the scene, they’ve never been weaker. And if you can keep some of your other coalition members from agitating Hispanics, you might yet have a chance!
May 2nd, 2009 at 9:30 pm
er, “agitating against Hispanics” is what I meant to say.
May 2nd, 2009 at 10:04 pm
superdestroyer, I’m not sure how valid comparing municipal policy with federal policy is when comparing the relative efficacy of the political parties. Furthermore, there are often times many, many externalities that impact the success or failure of a region (e.g. the suburbanization of metro areas, or the impact of globalization on many cities in the rust belt could hardly be attributable to the mayors of those cities).
May 2nd, 2009 at 10:12 pm
6 and 8 years after the last election, my assumptions is that the population will have aged. The voting pattens by age and what we know about when voters establish party identities looks like a big problem — long term — for the GOP.
May 2nd, 2009 at 11:51 pm
the odds are that we’ll be in an economic recovery by 2012
Don’t count your chickens.
May 3rd, 2009 at 6:51 am
On the subject of voter fatigue, and the related subject of economic conditions dictating election results: one of the things that is more or less impossible to control for in studies of these issues is the behavior of the parties. So, suppose it were true that a longish time in power for one party plus subpar economic conditions created an opportunity for the opposition party to do well in an election. But now suppose that opposition party did not do what was necessary to make use of this opportunity–say, for example, by reminding voters they support policies which led to even worse conditions in the past, and in general taking position unpopular with the electorate. In such a case, they may well blow their opportunity.
Of course, ordinarly you would expect political parties to avoid such behavior and take such opportunities, and the historic data might well confirm that. But you might theorize that in some cases parties would lack the internal conditions necessary to take these opportunities instead of blowing them, at least for some period of time, before they either corrected their internal deficiencies or were replaced by a functional party.
Personally, I do in fact suspect the GOP will have an opportunity to come back at some point: probably not 2010 or 2012, but maybe as soon as 2014 or 2016. In my view, however, the question is whether the GOP will do what is necessary to make use of this opportunity, or whether they will blow it. And right now they seem hell-bent on blowing it.
May 3rd, 2009 at 7:49 am
Think of it this way: in 2008 46% of the electorate thought it perfectly all right to have Sarah Palin a malignant mole away from the Presidency. The reservoir of ignorance, bigotry, apathy, provincialism that the Republicans swim in is still so vast that they will always be a threat.
May 3rd, 2009 at 9:40 am
Even Nixon decided to be pragmatic.
The Republican party is going to have to bit the bullet and deal with the reality of the American public’s mind set in the 21st century. As long as they avoid that reality they won’t get into power any time soon.
May 3rd, 2009 at 10:25 am
Currently the Republicans aren’t saying if they’ve learned anything from the collapse of the financial markets. They are cruising by as a party with an opposing viewpoint simply because they’re saying “No” to everything. Like a mynah bird. Or Poe’s Raven. Or John Cleese in the Monty Python skit. What’s behind their “no” is unclear. They hint that they’re opposed to all this government spending and government regulations which puts them in the position of saying that the country needs bankrupt bankers, bankrupt allies (a huge amount of AIG money went abroad), huge unemployment, and absolutely less in the way of banking regulations. What we need, iow, is a good long Depression.
IOW, they’re intellectually and morally bankrupt. I would guess that most of the Republican rabble don’t know it yet, and that the professional Republican politician is too callow to ever admit it. We’re in for an interesting 10 years or so. And by interesting I mean “End of the Empire interesting”. Self-interest. And lots of violence and confusion.
May 3rd, 2009 at 11:24 am
What i find missing from these debates, is the fact that much of the political warfare from the last 40 years originated from the 1960’s.I am not laying all of the blame on the baby boomers, but i think that the younger generation in BOTH parties is much less dogmatic ,and more pragmatic.
So much attention was ,and is, paid attention to Obama’s race that we often forget how young he is.I think many of the youth today are fairly pragmatic and will vote for the party they think will adress the problems we face, and try to solve them. I do not think that they are interested in idealogical purity.
I think the media and the internet sometimes hides this fact.Not intentionally, but because the loudest, and angriest voices get heard the most .
I think that most people do not think that the republicans are taking the country ’s problems seriousely [tea parties, joe the plumber and glenn beck as spokesmen ,ect.]
This obviousely benifets the Democrates . But they should not take the situation for granted and rest on their laurals.
As i have said before ,it is in all of our intereste to have more than one, healthy , viable and sensible political parties.
May 3rd, 2009 at 7:36 pm
If you take the pendulum theory too seriously, you’ll wind up waiting for the next pendulum swing back in favor of slavery and against women’s suffrage.
When was the last time you saw someone demonizing Irish? Italians? Poles? Once a group gets into the “Real Americans” club they can’t be thrown back out, because an attack on them is an attack on Real Americans.
A century ago the idea that a black or a woman could run for President would have seemed ridiculous; now a black man has won, a woman has put up a credible campaign that came close to winning, and the idea that they should have been disqualified *because* they are black or female puts you in the lunatic fringe. That change is not a pendulum and it won’t swing back.
May 4th, 2009 at 9:38 am
[...] are no guarantees in politics, and the public mood can change rapidly within a few short years. Matt Yglesias takes this and smartly argues that the current period of Republican weakness might simply be a short-term condition which will [...]
May 4th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
[...] are no guarantees in politics, and the public mood can change rapidly within a few short years. Matt Yglesias takes this and smartly argues that the current period of Republican weakness might simply be a short-term condition which will [...]
May 5th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
@soullite –
Yes, you’re correct — I should have measured my words a bit. It is impossible to be non-ideological. I should have said: more partisan and less ideological. Whereas the left used to be interest groups battling it out to influence the Dems, it seems the left now focus their energies within the Party. The Party is the primary vehicle for change, as evident from Obama’s centralized control over the Party.
Republican activists now seemed totally consumed with their ideology. When this comes first, you forget the fact that you got to win so the other guy doesn’t start torturing, start unnecessary wars, give tax cuts to the top 1%, and other horrible things. Now it’s the Republicans who are a bunch of interest groups, all battling it out for the “soul” of the Party.
While Dem activists were painted post-9/11 as being the “angry left,” it was really former moderate governor Howard Dean’s forceful-Dem-talk that seemed refreshing. So Ned Lamont and Bob Casey Jr. and Claire McCaskil and other moderates got huge online support. Even though their positions don’t necessarily fall in line, we wanted to win. If we were upset about ideology, we’d challenge them in the primary … but the Party needs broad support once elections come around.
Republicans on the other hand are totally consumed with their party’s purification. When ideology is the sole focus, there’s no thinking about what actually works. That’s what non-politics obsessed people actually care about, though … and that’s why they will keep losing.