POLITICS FEBRUARY 22, 2012
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A specter is haunting the Republican establishment—the specter of Barry Goldwater. With recent polling data suggesting that Rick Santorum has surged ahead of Mitt Romney among Republican voters nationwide, the people whose livelihoods depend on Republican electoral victories are terrified by the growing possibility of a massive wipeout in November, much like the one that Republicans experienced in 1964, when Goldwater was their nominee.
But even if the magnitude of the Republicans’ defeat this year resembles that previous debacle, the path there will be significantly different. Whereas Goldwater’s campaign was the product of an insurgency against the reigning Republican establishment, this year’s disaster is the product of political atrophy that the current GOP establishment has itself actively presided over.
ONCE UPON A TIME, East Coast moderates comprised the critical mass of the Republican party leadership. In the middle of the 20th century, they consistently threw their weight against the conservatives’ preferred presidential candidates (principally Ohio Senator Robert Taft), which helped to hand the nomination to Republican moderates Wendell Willkie in 1940, Thomas Dewey in 1944 and 1948, and Dwight Eisenhower in 1952. But with the movement of industrial and financial power away from the Northeast, the East Coast kingmakers’ standing within the party deteriorated by the early 1960s—evidenced most notably by conservative activists’ ability to seize the nomination, to the moderates’ horror, for Goldwater in 1964.
There was a real rift running through the party in those years, between the moderate elements of the establishment and the conservative parts of the base: the GOP was an ideological coalition that, come election time, usually had to compromise on a platform. But as the moderates gradually, though inexorably, disappeared in the succeeding decades, the GOP became an ever more ideologically unified party. The popular belief that today’s Republican establishment is moderate is false. The current relationship between the Republican establishment and the party’s base is not so much a clash of moderates against conservatives as it is a difference in perspective between realistic professionals and passionate amateurs.
But the GOP’s current establishment never developed a successful way to deal with the tension between its ideological commitments and its partisan commitments. All things being equal, they would prefer maximally conservative politicians in office. But as political professionals, the party’s elites have always known that radical conservatives are only a minority of American voters, and that a Republican nominee has to win over large numbers of moderates and independents to gain the presidency.
To finesse this tension, the new Republican establishment adopted William F. Buckley Jr.’s famous command to select the most rightward yet viable candidate. But that has not proven a sustainable solution. Indeed, it only restated the problem in a different form. The only way to figure out when a candidate’s doctrinal orthodoxy eclipsed his or her political viability has been by trial and error.
In recent election cycles, the interests of the professionals and amateurs have sometimes happened to align, as with the candidacies of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and George W. Bush in 2000. And that seemed to also be the case with the Tea Party. The GOP establishment gladly encouraged the idealistic amateurs of the Tea Party movement when they provided the decisive margins for Republicans in the low-turnout elections of 2010. The GOP’s current elites were swayed by the new movement’s palpable enthusiasm for conservatism. But with the Tea Party’s ideological rectitude now revealing itself as nothing so much as fundamentalist grandiosity, it's dawning on the conservative establishment that its careful experiment may have created a monster.
Which brings us to Rick Santorum, around whom the Tea Party activists are now increasingly coalescing. In claiming that Santorum can beat Obama, they are consciously or unconsciously parroting the theory of a “hidden conservative majority” advanced by Goldwater’s supporters in 1964. According to this theory, most Americans are conservative but usually don’t bother to vote because the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates are too similar. Nominating a radical conservative like Santorum, however, would give the voters “a choice not an echo,” in Goldwater’s phrase, and the newly energized conservative majority would sweep the Republicans to victory.
GOP elites know, however, that when one party nominates a candidate that most Americans find extreme, whether Republican Goldwater in 1964 or Democrat George McGovern in 1972, the predictable result is resounding victory for the other party. Indeed, what tends to be forgotten is that Goldwater’s presence atop the ballot proved lethal for Republicans all the way down the ticket. GOP representation in Congress was reduced to its lowest level since the 1930s. Republicans in the state legislatures were decimated, as were candidates for county offices. An election with Santorum as a standard-bearer might produce a similar debacle, reenergizing the left and restoring the Democrats’ filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Obama might not only win reelection, he might feel liberated, or obligated, to move left. Republicans who claim that Obama in his first term was the most socialist president they can imagine clearly don’t have much imagination.
Elites are aware that more is at stake this year than ideology. In that way, the emergence of Santorum or Gingrich as the front-runner might provoke the establishment, in a fit of self-preservation, to back an alternative candidate, much as the threat of Goldwater’s nomination stimulated a challenge from Pennsylvania governor William Scranton in 1964. Conservative activists would undoubtedly cry foul, sparking a subsequent round of intraparty enmity and recriminations. But liberals would be blithe to assume that the ensuing crack-up would move the party in a more moderate direction, since, unlike in 1964, there are so few moderates left to take up the mantle.
In the meantime, the Republican establishment is in the position of the lookout on the Titanic who sees the ship speeding toward the iceberg ahead. They are dreading a disastrous collision like the one the party experienced in 1964. But the bitter irony of the present moment is that it’s the establishment, not an insurgency, that was responsible for charting this course to begin with.
Geoffrey Kabaservice’s most recent book is Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, from Eisenhower to the Tea Party.
20 comments
Extremely well-written and enlightening article. But I don't know if an extreme GOP presidential candidate in 2012 would cripple the party, even for a while. Republican voters are much more radical than they used to be, and they hate Obama like they never hated LBJ in 1964. Until Nixon employed his Southern Strategy and co-opted southern Democrats into the GOP, southern Republicans were the ones who helped blacks to the extent that they were aided in the South. They hadn't much reason to hate LBJ, who had also shown sympathy for blacks. But, like the author says, today's GOP is not only extreme, but almost monolithic. The leadership seems to be looking for a presidential candidate who doesn't care about the majority of Americans, but only an angry "Super-American" contingent of citizens who are living in a fantasy world of the past. I don't know if the GOP elites will go after Santorum behind the scenes like they did Gingrich. They'd be smart to do so, but maybe they think that Obama is hated by so many millions of voters, that only an extremist opponent can defeat the moderate Obama--a moderate GOP candidate wouldn't emotionally energize the base in the general election. The author is right, though, in saying that if Republicans get creamed in November, it's the fault of the party elites and not the base, or even an extremist candidate like Santorum.
- magboy47.
February 22, 2012 at 1:18am
Oh please. There are nine months to go and we're declaring the GOP DOA??? So many things can change during that span, including a Romney resurgence, an Israeli attack on Iran, spiking gas prices, a rebound in unemployment, etc., etc. etc. Yes, it's dire straights when one of our two major political parties is so radicalized. But that doesn't mean that party will lose come November and it certainly doesn't mean it get swamped. Rather, the fact of that party's orientation means the dire straights for the country as a whole even if the radical Republicans fall short in 2012.
- Thunderroad
February 22, 2012 at 2:27am
Although it's in bad taste to say it, the Republican Establishment is Captain Schettino vainly bringing the Costa Concordia too close to shore. They are only too lucky that there isn't an elder statesman and patriot screaming that, having tried to abandon ship, the Establishment should see to it that the problem it caused by soullessly carrying out the Southern Strategy is adequately solved and the cargo of terrified pensioners and the disillusioned white working class are well provided-for. If the Republican Party were composed of magnanimous individuals who were thusly concerned, people from GW Bush and Bob Dole down to Jeb Bush and Chris Christie would take their access to the national spotlight to say what the Republican Party needs to do in order to find its way back into the confines of reality. These people would articulate the parameters of a policy agenda and let the 2012 chips fall where they may. Realistically, they should take the loss and build on it, reforming the party. Curiously, David Frum keeps murmuring that this is his project, but I fail to see the outlines of a defensible conservative agenda that seriously grapples with the national problems we face. I suspect it's because Obama is operationally governing like a liberal Republican. Of course, that just means that the Great Conservative Project of the last half-century is complete. They can go to bed now. There is no way that Democrats will do anything crazy given the political constraints that conservatives have worked tirelessly to set in place over the last four decades. Constraints like oversensitivity to tax levels, pathological suspicion of the government, and a free market boosterism that is theological even as it ignores the problems of externalities and collusion while barreling into the predictable consequences of under-regulation. As to Kabaservice's points themselves (and I think his article is good): 1. Screw the people whose livelihoods depend on Republican electoral victories. They are a small clique of rentiers and flaks like the Willie Horton ad guy. The people who comprise the overwhelming majority of their electoral base have witnessed declines in livelihoods because of Republican policies and stand to benefit from Democratic ones anyway. (Gingrich's claim that he balanced the budget even though he tried to tax cut the surplus into oblivion, for example.) 2. The establishment is comprised of social moderates or at least people who are not theocons. Santorum scares them for standard electability reasons but also because, as Chait notes, he believes what he's campaigning on--he's a Bachmannian ideologue. Same reason they feared Huckabee and Buchanan in the past. 3. An overwhelming loss would serve the "center right nation" peddlers justice. It would also allow us to stop being ruled by people so far off the mainstream that Obama would be a right-wing politician in Europe. 4. The whole point of all those Super PACs is to ensure that Romney wins the nomination. Which will happen. Because the rich bankrollers of the Republican Party are no fools when it comes to economic self-interest, they will buy a non-crazy candidate if they have to. How crazy he must make himself in order to emerge victorious is another matter, however. 5. Because of all these points, I increasingly suspect that the Republican reckoning will be averted because they will discover they weren't conservative enough and no large faction of principled elders will smack them down and tell them they are crazy. Pretty sure McCarthy and Mondale didn't go on the dole for decades declaiming that the country was becoming Nazi Germany because we haven't legislated the Swedish welfare state. As magboy notes, the biggest problem for the Republican Party is that friends don't let friends drive drunk: the Establishment are a cowardly bunch of enablers.
- chaitless
February 22, 2012 at 3:38am
In the end Romney will take the prize and quickly reposition himself for the general election. At that point we will be in the hands of the gods. And yes, mister Santorum, there are actually many gods. I, myself, worship at the temple of Aphrodite and should you should give her a go sometime.
- paskunac
February 22, 2012 at 6:53am
OK, I'll be contrary. I think the opposite is true - the base and its right wing media destroyed the party by refusing to allow any Republican to govern. The "establishment" just does what they say. The kooks clearly run the show, not the beltway.
- WandreyCer
February 22, 2012 at 8:05am
The author overstates his case. The moderate Republicans of the 1940's and 1950's were moderate conservatives. They were very different from the New Deal Democrats just as they were very different from the Taft wing of the GOP. The same is true today. Today's moderate Republicans may be more conservative than the moderate Republicans of fifty years ago, but that's because the nation as whole has become more conservative in its politics. Ronald Reagan, for example, could not have been elected president in 1964, but he was elected president in 1980 and1984. George W. Bush could probably not have been elected president in 1964, but he won in 2000 (sort of) and in 2004. Even if the GOP makes the mistake of nominating Santorum, he may not lose to Obama by as large a margin as Goldwater lost to Johnson. Johnson benefited from the booming economy of the 1960's and from sympathy for the Kennedy assassination. Obama's economic performance has been decidedly lackluster. And even if Obama were to win a Johnson-sized landslide, the Democrats will probably not regain a large enough majority in the Senate to stop GOP filibusters. To do that, the Democrats would have to gain 8 Senate seats and there are only 10 Republicans seeking reelection this. It's highly unlikely that the Democrats would beat 80% of them.
- Spengler47
February 22, 2012 at 8:42am
As someone who once worked for the GOP and once upon a time thought of himself as a “Moderate Republican,” I am currently enjoying Professor Kabaservice’s obituary to me and my kind. But it occurs to me that no label in politics suffers from greater misunderstanding and abuse than does "moderate." To ideological true believers "moderates" are untrustworthy people without firm principles. To demagogues like Rush Limbaugh moderates are gutless wonders who by his reckoning "can't be brave" because they "don't have opinions." Even to their admirers, moderates are a distinctly colorless lot who lack the fiery resolve of Ronald Reagan's conservative revolutionaries "raising a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors, which make it unmistakably clear where we stand." The problem for moderates begins with the fact that few people understand just what it is exactly that makes a moderate, moderate. To most people, "moderation" is vaguely perceived as a belief in a set of political convictions and policy prescriptions that reside somewhere equidistant between the extremes of far right and far left. Moderates, in short, are passive and reactive people who take their political bearings from what other people believe. But this is wrong. What separates moderates from extremists isn't ideas, beliefs or positions on specific issues necessarily. What separates us is the nature of our political commitments, the beneficiary of our attention and responsibilities. An extremist is an extremists because of his or her commitment to the advancement and ultimate supremacy of one particular economic, racial, religious or other cultural subgroup over all other subgroups within a given society. What sets moderates apart from these extremists is the moderate's commitment to the health, prosperity and stability of the society as a whole, in what the moderate perceives to be his or her responsibility as custodian of that going concern called the American Republic. That is why "moderates" in the Democratic and Republican party have always been able to work together in a bi-partisan way because they both have the same end in mind even if they disagree over means. But that is what good faith debate is for, unlike right wing extremists who make a virtue of the fact they never compromise -- on anything -- because their aim is the absolute advantage of their tribe over all others in a zero sum game. The Tea Party is a perfect example. The Tea Party pretends to be a movement concerned about subjects of general interest, such as federal deficits and government spending. But it's real purpose is to advocate on behalf of the social prerogatives and government programs that benefit the Tea Party's overwhelmingly older, white, evangelical Christian -- and mostly male -- membership. On specific issues, Republican moderates might agree with Tea Party radicals that budget deficits are both unsustainable and dangerous to the economic health of the country and so in the national interest spending must cut. But unlike Tea Party radicals, Republican moderates did not become promiscuous "fiscal conservatives" only after a liberal black Democrat was elected president -- and after standing idle and mute for eight long years while their own Republican Party cut taxes, launched needless wars and doubled the national debt. Unlike right wing Republicans, in other words, Moderate Republicans do not agree with Dick Cheney that deficits don't matter just so long as they are Republican deficits that benefit other Republicans.
- TedFrier
February 22, 2012 at 9:27am
Counting our chickens, are we?
- sullydog
February 22, 2012 at 9:36am
If, as expected, Mitt gets the nomination, Obama should win narrowly, 51-49 or maybe 52-48 (with all the usual caveats about the Euro, Iran, etc.). In the unlikely event of a Santorum nomination, it will be impossible to guess the numbers because there will almost certainly be a third party challenge, perhaps more than one. Look to Ron Paul or the Third Way crowd to split the vote, probably to Obama's advantage.
- timteeter
February 22, 2012 at 10:00am
Thank you, 02/22/2012 - 9:27am EDT | TedFrier - emphasis on the dilemma of "no compromise", which now afflicts both extremes of the partisan divide. And the litmus tests. Just yesterday, I was advised that it is not enough to be a fiscal conservative concerned about the dysfunction of Federal government - in orderto even participate in "conservative" discourse, one must also be as rigid as Santorum and be "pro-life". Calvin Coolidge fails the 2012 litmus tests of c"conservatism".
- K2K
February 22, 2012 at 10:26am
i am with spengler on this. This is just so much wishful thinking.
- blackton
February 22, 2012 at 10:30am
lots of tnr folks are overdosing on happy pills. There is almost no way that BHO wins big-time AND brings in a Dem House and Senate [None of you never notice that he's more re-elect me-centered than Bill Clinton??] If unemployment is around 8% (and NOT dramatically better--- a HIGHLY unlikely scenario), BHO probably wins... but has one or both Congressional branches Republican. That continues the legislative stalemate, leading to probably a worse economic outcome than a BHO loss. Because Repubs will block most everything unless BHO compromises in advance then compromises over and over again to give Democtric cover to Repub policies. In which case Repubs get to run against a Democratic Hoover for a generation. And forgettabout Moderate to Progressive replacements to SCOTUS... They'll have NO trouble blocking any BHO appointments for four more years. If unemployment is above 9% (about 50% probability), it's ABO time (anybody but Obama) and Repubs capture the Presidency and both branches of Congress. Repubs will then be responsible for the continuing economic disaster-- which they are likely to make worse, but maybe not as bad as it would be under BHO (see below) because they will rediscover they like Keynesian economics. Excellent chance for a major Progreessive recovetry in 2016. The good news may yet be that bad shorter-term news is the best possible longer-term outcome.
- drofnats1
February 22, 2012 at 11:23am
Excellent post and discussion. One point - don't use 2000 as an example of when the stars aligned for the Republicans. George Bush, as we all know, actaully lost, and had Ralph Nader not drawn away progressives, would have lost with a much larger margin - I'm talking nationally, not just in Florida. I would also concur with those cautioning against optimism and counting chickens. The recent economic news is encouraging, but the recovery is still fragile and unemployment still high. We could be in a crisis with Iran or Syria. Anything could happen. It's 9 months to the election, an eternity.
- dubyadoubte
February 22, 2012 at 11:26am
Great article, Geoffrey. Bravo to you. You the first political writer at TNR, who views the GOP's dilemma, within a broader historical context. (And of course, who agrees with me. But that has nothing to do with it.) I am an aging baby boomer. I also am a Vietnam veteran. And even though I knew George McGovern was going to be defeated, I voted for him in the election. I just couldn't take the war any longer after my experiences as a medical corpsman. The anti-war movement within the Democratic Party at the time bares an eerie resemblance to the Tea Party in the GOP. Democrats were reeling after the debacle in Vietnam, and political in-fighting among other groups besides the broader protest movement, such as first-wave feminists and civil rights activists. The Democrats were having a slow-motion nervous breakdown, to put a melodramatic spin on the events. And the average American voter was just politically fatigued by the unending war. and the growing divisions within the country between those who went away and those who stayed behind. The GOP is going through a similar crisis of identity. The Tea Party are hardcore ideologues. As radical in their views as the anti-war activists. And there is a corresponding leadership vacuum among the experienced, professional elites. They can see the handwriting on the wall, which is how I interpreted Karl Rove whining on Fox News about Clint Eastwood ad, "Half Time in America, at the Super Bowl. But any ad that can make Rove throw a public hissy fit must be doing something right. And once again the average American voter is politically fatigued by two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which are certain to rival the blunder in Vietnam. But the GOP also suffers from the blowback from the financial meltdown in 2008. It's a perfect storm. At least in the Vietnam War, the smokestack industries were still booming. And after my discharge I went back to working at the steel mill in my hometown in northeastern Ohio. That's all gone. And it isn't ever coming back. And again moderate voters are focusing their attention on their wallets and pocket books, despite Rick Santorum's cynical attempt to ride this crest of cultural and political resentment of the Tea Party members to capture the GOP nomination. I should also include Rep. Darrell Issa's shenanigans with his committee hearings, and the continuing struggle House Speaker John Boehner has had maintaining party discipline prior to the cave-in on President Obama's plea to extend unemployment benefit until the end of the end. I really have no idea if the defeat at the polls will equal Barry Goldwater's or George McGovern's. But it will be a wake-up call for the Republican Party. And I assume they will be doing a lot of rebuilding in the coming years.
- rewiredhogdog
February 22, 2012 at 11:31am
I wouldn't dare predict whether or not Santorum can beat Romney in Michigan in 6 days, let alone that the GOP will melt down in November. Which is to say, as Sulley did, you're counting eggs here which may not even be fertile. When you've got live, peeping chicks, you can start counting for real.
- IowaBeauty
February 22, 2012 at 11:39am
Brilliant article. Since, through Reagan's policies, we're living in the days Goldwater's policies created, it's interesting that the current Republicans and the Tea-Party want to move even further Right. As if the destruction to our economy, earning power, and deficits have not been sufficient yet. Since the engineered bankruptcy of the American economy has not yet resulted in the destruction of Social Security, I guess they haven't been sufficient yet. But continuing to bankrupt the country to 'starve the beast' and kill Social Security has such destructive results, this would be a good time for the moderates and liberals to vote in more responsible, and Democratic, representation.
- AllanL5
February 22, 2012 at 12:05pm
There's a very simple solution: abolish plurality voting. This is what abolishing plurality voting would do, moderate republican pols, instead of going to CPAC to grovel and say why their program is conservative could greet CPAC with an outstretched middle finger and say simply, "See you in November." The right-wing loonies could nominate whomever they please, but the moderate's decision of whether or not to run in November would have no effect on the outcome between the Republican nominee and any Democratic candidate, thus he/she could run in the general election without the blessing of a primary victory and thus license to dismiss the hoops demanded needed to jump through for the nomination.
- sighthnd
February 22, 2012 at 12:18pm
This has all the markers of a piece written in 2013 speculating about why Romney lost. But we're still in 2012.
- ironyroad
February 22, 2012 at 12:38pm
"Republicans who claim that Obama in his first term was the most socialist president they can imagine clearly don’t have much imagination." Heh. I remember making someones head explode by demonstrating how Kennedy would probably be a conservative in Europe. They have no idea.
- Nari224
February 22, 2012 at 1:33pm
Some people have tried to identify current political parties and ideologies with roots in early American politics. Was Thomas Jefferson a early Democrat or Republican? Was Alexander Hamilton and early Democrat or Republican? Should we bring back duels? Was America saved from tyranny or disaster because Burr killed Hamilton? Is our current (relative) racial integration and harmony the result of Jefferson schtupping his slave and fathering children? Things change. We're still a remarkable country with a remarkable Constitution, but every so often the tree of liberty has to watered with the blood of tyrants and every so often our parties need to be redefined and renamed. So who gets to be in charge of the demoPubs and who gets to be in charge of republiCrats? If I am extremely successful with this comment, the next sound you hear will be Nari224's head exploding, but probably it will be nothing more than a muffled popcorn popping.
- skahn
February 22, 2012 at 5:15pm