Monday Open Thread [8.25.14]
GOP columnist and consultant David Frum is down but not yet out on his Republican Party.
Three big trends have decisively changed the Republican Party over the past decade, weakening its ability to win presidential elections and gravely inhibiting its ability to govern effectively if it nevertheless somehow were to win. First, Republicans have come to rely more and more on the votes of the elderly, the most government-dependent segment of the population — a serious complication for a party committed to reducing government. Second, the Republican donor class has grown more ideologically extreme, encouraging congressional Republicans to embrace ever more radical tactics. Third, the party’s internal processes have rigidified, in ways that dangerously inhibit its ability to adapt to changing circumstances. The GOP can overcome the negative consequences of these changes and, in time, surely will. The ominous question for Republicans is, How much time will the overcoming take?
And yet… he still delusionally believes that a multiethnic, socially tolerant conservatism is ready to take over in the cyclic response to the Liberal Obama years, just as the alleged Compassionate Conservative Bush years followed the Liberal Clinton years, just as the law and order conservative Nixon years (a contradiction in terms) following the chaos of the liberal 1960’s. Just as, more generally, small government Reaganism was in response to New Deal Rooseveltism.
For every action, whether in physics or in politics, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The liberal surge of the Obama years invites a conservative response, and a multiethnic, socially tolerant conservatism is waiting to take form. As the poet T. S. Eliot, a political conservative, once gloomily consoled his readers, “There is no such thing as a Lost Cause because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause.” The message reads better when translated into American vernacular: “It ain’t over till it’s over. And it’s never over.”
And he may be right… in the LOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG term. But there is no way the GOP embraces multiethic multiculteralism and social tolerance in time for 2016, 2020, or 2024. A whole generation of angry white conservatives need to die before such an embrace can take place. And the danger for the GOP is that it may too die in the process, only to be replaced by a successor party, much like the Whigs were replaced by the Republicans.
Using your Whig example in an equally polarized US with much poorer communications, it’s important to remember how short a LOONN … NNNGGG time can be. Whig Party effectively disintegrates in 1852 presidential election; Fremont is competitive if doomed as first GOP nominee in 1856 and Lincoln wins in 1860.
8 years not a long time in many ways in the 1850s–an eternity today–but if the GOP does fragment I suspect it might happen quickly.
Also remember that the new GOP in the 1850s picked up a fair amount of conservative northern Democrats by 1860. Federal election and campaign laws being what they are, the new party may still be named Republican because it would be just too difficult to get a new party name enshrined into the statutes.
Oddly, I don’t consider Clinton or Obama’s Presidencies as particularly liberal. Both were inhibited by a conservative counter-balance. The last outright liberal that I can think of is FDR. It’s possible that Reagan was the opposite reaction to him, 40 years later.
Yes LG, this was my reaction:
The liberal surge of the Obama years…
Just because they keep saying this doesn’t make it so.
The liberal surge of the Obama years…
I remember, in 2008, when people kept labeling Obama as a liberal/progressive, and I kept saying they weren’t paying attention.
Yeah, I should have put “liberal surge” in quotations. Compromised and weakened moderate means to accomplish liberal goals during both presidencies due to Republican obstruction and intraparty betrayal (i.e. Lieberman, Baucus).
Steve, the problem you will encounter is that the base or core of the GOP today is still 25 to 30% of the total voting population, and they are a hateful evil people. They are not libertarian and they will not become libertarian or vote libertarian. They want to hate people and they want to use government to do their hating for them. Now, if you Libertarians are that desperate to take over 2nd party status and are willing to cow tow to these voters, well so be it. But I thought the whole idea behind Libertarianism is that you guys were truly principled in your ideology.
What I see happening is something akin to what happened to the Democrats during the 1850’s and early 1860’s. You are going to have split in the Republican Party, with multiple GOP candidates running.
Of all the conservative pundits Frum is perhaps the sanest, although prone to wishful thinking concerning his party. Like Liberalgeek I view neither the Clinton nor Obama years as anything remotely liberal, moderate at best. As for GOP disintegration the clock is perhaps ticking as racist, homophobic old white conservatives die off, propped up in the short term by plutocrat mega billions. But America remains mired in hatred and racism, frequently clothed in “Christianity”, and it will take decades more struggle to rid the nation of it’s assorted plagues.
Surprising no one, Chip continues to be a fuckwad!
From TNJ just now:
“Now, according to Delaware Elections Commissioner Elaine Manlove, Flowers indicated to a member of Manlove’s staff on Monday that he may delay the effective date even further, she said.”
http://www.delawareonline.com/story/firststatepolitics/2014/08/25/flowers-primary-withdraw/14578205/
DelDem
You mistake me. I gave up the idea taking over the GOP a long time ago, just like I gave up the idea that the Democratic Party was in any real sense the party of progressives.
Most days (when I am cynical) I see progressives as the captive voters that corporatist Dems keep stringing along by telling them how much worse the GOP would be, quietly looting the public treasury and the commons whilst they encourage you to point fingers at the Tea Party and go, “Nyah, nyah!”
When I am less cynical I see progressives as lost populists who will always be tolerated but never actually given power again. If you consider FDR the last progressive president, then consider that it had to have been the Dems themselves who didn’t want a truly progressive president in the next eight decades, or we would have had one at least come close.
And pandora, cassandra: I was calling Obama a corporatist not a progressive from day one.
@SW — the FB comments on Delawareonline’s posting of this article have one hilarious question for Chip Flowers:
The News Journal’s Aug. 25th editorial is the paper’s final warning to Flowers to withdraw from the race now, and even resign his position right away. It pretty clearly infers that Benner has spilled the beans to the paper about their romantic dalliance, including presumably the details of the State-charged lost Denalli weekend. If Flowers does not get out the race now, that story, the paper implies, will be the lead this upcoming Sunday. Indeed, the editorial’s title, with its use of the word “embarrassing,” signals what personal information it will publish about Flowers if he continues to stall on withdrawing.
That’s not how the newspaper works. The editorial board and the newsroom are separate, and the newsroom doesn’t bother writing and editing stories that might or might not run.
Beyond that, everybody already knows about their “dalliance.” I don’t know what Erika Benner’s game is, but her reputation is even worse than Chip’s at this point.
I read the editorial with eyebrows raised. The editorial board does not break news, and Benner claiming that they had a relationship would definitely be news, in the face of her denials.
I assume the editorial was based on a major Sweeney or Graham fuckup, and that a correction will be forthcoming.
I wouldn’t be so sure about who said what. Flowers talked off-the-record to a lot of people while the story about his attendance at the Patriots game was being prepared.
If it would be major news, why are most media outlets dismissing a lot of this as a post-relationship spat?
And if there was a dalliance — I’d be shocked if there wasn’t — I wouldn’t describe it as “romantic.”
If Chip is such a damaged candidate and if Barney was going to win by 10 points anyway, why does it matter if he’s on the ballot or not?
Because it determines whether there’s an election or not.