THE PLANK APRIL 7, 2009
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A propos of my earlier post on the Times poll and the deep unpopularity of the Republican party, I was trying to think of a framework that captured the no-enemies-on-the-right dynamic that seems to be pushing the GOP further and further into the political wilderness. And while the metaphor is far from exact, I think there's some level on which the leaders of the GOP--not only in elected office, but in the media as well--are behaving like candidates in a contested primary all the time.
Take the House. John Boehner knows that he's exceedingly unlikely to become Speaker in the foreseeble future, and that if the opportunity somehow arises, it will be due to events beyond his control--an economic collapse, a terrorist attack, etc. On a fundamental level, he's not competing with Nancy Pelosi, but with Eric Cantor and Mike Pence and any other party rivals eager to displace him. As in a contested primary, the dynamic generally pushes away from the center, but here particularly so, because a) the moderate wing of the House GOP has basically ceased to exist; and b) none of these guys is likely to be in a position to influence Democratic legislation in any substantial way any time soon. Everyone tries to outflank everyone else to the right--zero votes on any Obama-supported bill! a hyperconservative budget with no numbers! a hyperconservative budget with made-up numbers!--because there's no obvious, non-heretical way to establish yourself as a player otherwise. Denied the opportunity to govern (by their own intransigence as much as by the size of the Democratic majority), they have nothing to do but campaign 24/7.
The Senate is somewhat different of course, but not entirely different. How much higher is Jim DeMint's profile since getting nearly the entire party to endorse his "stimulus" vision of trillions of dollars of upper-bracket tax cuts? Does Mitch McConnell worry more about a leadership challenge from the left or from the right?
If anything, the competition among conservative media stars--a few of whom wield more influence than the parties' titular leaders--is probably worse. Sean Hannity isn't worried that Alan Colmes is somehow going to come back and take his job away. He's worried that Glenn Beck will--and with good reason. Again, there's no percentage here in being reasonable: It's not like any of these commentators has aspirations of becoming an anchor at, say, ABC News. They have their own conservatives-only playing field, and the way to run up the score--i.e., the ratings--is to be more hysterically partisan (in Beck's case, literally) than the next guy. A run-of-the-mill right-wing blowhard like Bill O'Reilly can barely keep his name in the news in a conservative media environment like this one.
Eventually an opportunity will come along for the GOP to retake the reins
of political power, and some figures within the party will rediscover the
virtues of (at least relative) moderation. But for now, Republican leaders are behaving much like primary opponents with no general election in sight, competing with one another to amass as much of the party's eroding turf--House leadership positions, Fox News airtime--as they can.
--Christopher Orr
29 comments
OK, Chris, good analysis. Now, next question: How come when Democrats were out of power, the same kind of dynamic didn't take hold? Instead they've generally acted like they were terrified of challenges from the right, not the left. What makes for the difference? Why do we have two parties that seem to operate on similar rather than complementary fears?
- JSmith125
April 7, 2009 at 2:43pm
very insightful -- thanks!
- JackR
April 7, 2009 at 2:49pm
Christopher, I love you man, but when you write, "Eventually an opportunity will come along for the GOP to retake the reins of political power, and some figures within the party will rediscover the virtues of (at least relative) moderation," I have to ask:
Where did you spend the last generation? Because it appears not to have been America. Much of the GOP's problem is that they did have the reigns of political power, for most of 28 years, and over this period the GOP became vanishingly less moderate. Power does not moderate conservatism, nor does the manifest failure of conservative policies when put into practice. Never has, never will. Expecting political power to moderate conservative lunacy is about as sensible as expecting the crushing responsibility of possessing nuclear weapons to moderate the Iranian government.
- rhubarbs
April 7, 2009 at 3:01pm
In a few months time, after the last of the appointees have gone through and Franken takes his seat I hope Obama goes all transparent on the Repubs and releases the torture memos. Republican threats to filibuster everything will be meaningless unless Snowe, Collins, and Specter all publicly sign on. And, of course, releasing the torture memos will put old McCain on the spot as well. A one seat margin to ensure the filibuster pretty much means the Senate Republicans have to play ball behind closed doors.
- blackton
April 7, 2009 at 3:03pm
JSmith, the reason that Democrats must honor the center is that a considerable portion of the caucus is middle-of-the-road. A conservative governing environment in the 1980s basically negated the Democratic left because the Republican minority created a "conservative coalition" with Blue Dog Democrats. Also, I think the Democratic left today is much more pragmatic and closer to the political center than the Republican right -- which is a major reason why Democrats are in the majority right now.
- rozenson
April 7, 2009 at 3:05pm
Just another example of the GOP's complete lack of interest in governing.
- Wandreycer1
April 7, 2009 at 3:17pm
Rhubs - The GOP *was* relatively (important qualifier) moderate when Bush was in office and when they controlled Congress. There was no lunatic talk of 5-year spending freezes in a recession or tax cuts on the order of the DeMint plan. Yes, the GOP was very, very conservative during the Bush years (with a few execptions, notably on spending). But it was positively socialist relative to the noises now coming out of the rump. (Yeah, gross image, I know. But kinda apt.)
And JSmith: There are a lot of reasons why the pressures on the Dems and Repubs are different. Broadly speaking, there isn't a liberal "movement" in the same way there is a conservative one. But on a practical level the simplest difference may be rise of the conservative media structure. It was designed to be an alternative to the mainstream media (not to, say, the Nation) and it functions as such for a lot of conservatives. But while the mainstream media may tilt left in many (though not all) regards, it functions nothing like the conservative media echo chamber. And while that echo chamber paid real dividends for a while, I think at this point it hurts the GOP more than it helps, by walling conservatives off from anything that takes place outside of it.
- Chris Orr
April 7, 2009 at 3:19pm
rozenson, I agree with you about all that, but I'm asking why that is.
- JSmith125
April 7, 2009 at 3:23pm
OK, Chris, I agree with all that as well, and thanks for answering. But it's just an interesting phenomenon that bears further explaining -- why the right developed that kind of "echo chamber" while the left didn't (or somehow didn't connect it with governing power). But I understand it's a big question and probably subject matter for several books.
- JSmith125
April 7, 2009 at 3:25pm
Chris, I overstate for rhetorical effect, but still. The Bush-era GOP was "relatively moderate"? Relative to what, the platform of the John Birch Society? The pillow-talk of every YAF undergrad who ever got into bed with a sophomore objectivist? The tenets of National Socialism?
I mean, sure, last week's GOP "budget plan" consisting entirely of tax cuts to the rich sounds pretty extreme, unless your frame of reference is the economic platform of the GOP as enacted when they last held power, which consisted entirely of massive tax cuts for the rich. And sure, I suppose that a budget document consisting of absent or made-up numbers sounds radically irresponsible, unless your frame of reference is the actual budgets most recently passed into law by Republican majorities in Congress, which often simply didn't count huge swaths of spending (absent numbers) or used wildly inconceivable revenue projections (made-up numbers).
And while it's true that the Bush-era GOP didn't propose spending freezes and firing sprees in the midst of major economic crises, that's only for lack of opportunity. In fact Republicans kept a reasonably tight lid on most non-defense discretionary spending, even cutting spending in many places relative to economic growth all while running up record deficits and more than doubling the national debt during precisely the period of apparent prosperity when we most needed to pay down debt and build the government's capacity to borrow in hard times. So the apparent Hooveresque extremism of the GOP-in-opposition is a trick of timing more than a change in attitude.
One could go on, but the behavior of the GOP in opposition since November seems to me to demonstrate more continuity than contrast with the behavior of the GOP in government since at least 1991. I never expected Republicans or conservatives to be anything less than batshit crazy when they held power, and they never fell short of my expectations. So what we see now feels like more of the same to me, not like some kind of explosion of id that will be cured by a return to power. They're not saying crazy thing because they don't hold power; they're saying crazy things because they're crazy, and if they get power again, they'll go right back to doing the crazy things they say, just as they did last time. Only more so, just as the GOP of the 2000s was more extreme than the GOP of the 1990s was more extreme than the GOP of the 1980s.
- rhubarbs
April 7, 2009 at 4:06pm
"But it was positively socialist relative to the noises now coming out of the rump."
Yes, Chris, let's encourage the use of the term socialist for anything that involves spending. Good work!
- MichLib
April 7, 2009 at 4:07pm
On the other hand, comparing to current GOP rhetoric to noises coming from a rump is sheer rhetorical genius.
- cspencef
April 7, 2009 at 4:56pm
I just popped some popcorn for the Rhubs v. Orr match. Orr is down but still breathing. Now where is that fold-out chair?
- icarusr
April 7, 2009 at 5:22pm
"the noises now coming out of the rump"
Heh heh. Did you read that, Beavis?
- WoodyBombay
April 7, 2009 at 5:34pm
Rhubs - Yes, the GOP has (obviously) grown more conservative over the last three decades, though hardly in every particular: The Revolutionaries wanted to shutter three Departments; Bush instead added one; the prescription drug benefit was a greater Democratic priority than a GOP one, and the fact that Bush turned it into a vehicle for pharma-pork doesn't actually make it conservative, etc.
My narrow point is that the unanimous and near-unanimous proposals coming out of the congressional GOP right now far outstrip anything we saw in the latter Bush years: cutting upper-bracket taxes by trillions of dollars in the face of a public that overwhelmingly wants the rich taxed more, freezing spending in a major recession, cutting Medicare, etc., etc. The reason we're seeing these proposals right now is not merely that they have virtually no chance of being implemented, but that they won't even get much attention in the media. They're freebies intended to curry favor with talk-radio warlords and the Club for Growth. Why? Because spending cuts are very popular in theory and very unpopular in practice, which is why you saw so much of the former during the Bush years and so little of the latter.
Now, obviously I don't know any better than you what GOP leaders will do if and when they come back into power, whether via Congress or the presidency. My assumption is that they will trim their ideological sails a bit to make their proposals more politically palatable. You seem to think they won't, which, if true, will likely make their return to power a brief one.
In any case, this argument seems awfully marginal. We both agree that the broad evolution of the party has been to become more conservative. We both agree (I think) that today's congressional GOP is more conservative than last year's, than the latter Bush administration's, and than the McCain campaign. And we both agree that their recent proposals are flat-out crazy. I'm not sure it's worth fighting over the relative reasons why.
- Michelle Cottle
April 7, 2009 at 7:11pm
The "moderating" influence on the Democrats operates mainly in the economic area, and it has to do with the close ties between the current generation of Democratic leaders and the financial industry. Scratch a leading Dem and you'll see a present or future hedge funder, trust funder, bank/FI corporate director, investment banker, or husband or wife of same.
All of the following have now or have had a direct financial stake in one of more investment banks, hedge funds or venture capital funds: Rahm, Pelosi, Dean, Gore, Holbrooke (director of AIG from 2001-2008), Corzine, Rubin, Clinton.
Each of these characters was AWOL when it came to regulating the financial sector properly. None of these characters has any real grasp of what economic insecurity-- the prospect of losing your health insurance, your house, your life's savings, everything-- really means as it affects US families today. If they did, they would have stopped shilling for the financial oligarchy and would have focused on single payer, and gotten it passed *years ago*.
- teplukhin2you
April 7, 2009 at 8:10pm
Whoops. For any wondering why Michelle was making my case vis a vis Rhubarbs, that was in fact me. Changing you name in the "name" field evidently doesn't change your, you know, name. Boy, I'll miss this interface...
- Chris Orr
April 7, 2009 at 10:32pm
Hahaha. I WAS wondering that, Chris.
- rozenson
April 7, 2009 at 11:11pm
"None of these characters has any real grasp of what economic insecurity-- the prospect of losing your health insurance, your house, your life's savings, everything-- really means as it affects US families today. If they did, they would have stopped shilling for the financial oligarchy and would have focused on single payer, and gotten it passed *years ago*."
When exactly would they have done that? That sort of thing pretty much requires Democratic control of the House, Senate, and Presidency (see, e.g. Medicare). Over the last 28 years, there have been exactly 2 in which they've have had such control, and they tried and failed at passing a much less ambitious health care proposal. Before that, you'd have to go back to the Carter administration, when most of those guys didn't even hold public office (Gore was a freshman congressman and Clinton was AG of Arkansas, neither really a position from which to launch a campaign for single payer).
- AlanSP
April 7, 2009 at 11:21pm
The answer to why the GOP is acting so unhinged, not even TRYING to get back into power by appealing to moderates and independents, is that after their 2006 & 2008 beatings at the hands of the Dems they have ceased to be a national party. They now represent and answer to only the Deep South and a few sparsely populated western sage brush states. When the Dems were on the outs they at least still represented parts of the entire country and could reaonably expect to make a comeback. The GOPers are pissed off and not very nice and they don't care how many people they alienate anymore, as they have little left to lose. Many of them are just plain bad people, too, as exibited by how awful they have behaved since Obama became President. It has now become so bad for them that even a catastrophe caused by the Dems might not give them a chance to get back on top.
- frilz1
April 8, 2009 at 4:58am
AlanSP - they botched it in '93-94, for starters, and have again and again shied away from putting this at the very top of the agenda. Had they done so, they could have made their case effectively to the nation and built a coalition that included moderate midwestern and northeastern Republicans back when such existed. Instead we've wasted DECADES, and in the process allowed the bankers to run wild and bring the world's economy crashing down.
Do you seriously believe that there have been significant differences between D and R as regards opposing artificially cheap money, serial asset bubbles manufactured by the fed, lax financial regulation? Wellstone, maybe. But not any other major Dems. Even Frank allowed the house of cards to be constructed at Fan 'n' Fred.
- teplukhin2you
April 8, 2009 at 6:56am
Ripensando alla quantità di notizie che hanno attirato la mia attenzione in questi giorni, mi sono reso conto che qualcosa di davvero importante sta capitando alla politica Americana. Il Partito Repubblicano - come è possibile verificare
- Anonymous
April 8, 2009 at 7:20am
Chris - I had no trouble envisioning Michelle as having written that post, especially with a brilliant Michelle-ish rhetorical flourish like "talk radio warlords." I am stealing that, BTW.
The Republican Party is psycho because that level of denial takes increasing amounts of energy and vigiliance, with no let up in the frustration that causes. I think of someone holding a beach ball under the water. Its never going to work.
- Wandreycer1
April 8, 2009 at 8:33am
Dropping The Smart Bomb: Why Obama's Stance On Nukes Makes Me Sleep Better At Night , by J. Peter
- Anonymous
April 8, 2009 at 10:10am
Love that term, Michelle, "talk radio warlords"! Hope it makes it into the standard polititical/intellectual vernacular.
- desertdog
April 8, 2009 at 10:48am
Well, I cede the field to Christopher and/or Michelle. Totally didn't mean to make it sound like a serious argument against Christopher's basic thesis regarding the radicalizing effect of the conservative position right now, which is the most clearly stated such analysis I've read, merely to express skepticism that holding power is likely to (or really ever has) exercised a moderating effect on the conservative agenda that will be established during their minority. It's a shrinkingly marginal objection on my part.
I just kind of feel like I've spent the last 28 years having conservatives beat my country with a metal pipe, and now that they don't have the pipe in their hands anymore, even an implicit suggestion that maybe things wouldn't be so bad if we ever gave them back the metal pipe makes me run screaming for the rhetorical hills to the point of overreacting. It's a form of post-conservative-government stress disorder (PCGSD). My thinking is that, after a generation of conservatives beating the country with a metal pipe, we should operate on the assumption that when they promise now to beat us even harder with an even bigger metal pipe if they have the chance, they actually mean to do it. That's the problem with promises made in the course of a primary: The people who voted for you will expect you to fulfill them. Which brings me back to my basic agreement with Christopher's thesis above regarding the forces at work radicalizing the GOP.
- rhubarbs
April 8, 2009 at 11:34am
Rhubarbs.......
LMAO (even though it's NOT really funny) at your metal pipe and PCGSD analogies of the past two decades of Republican/conservative/bible-thumpers holding our beloved democracy hostage. It started with Ronnie Ray-Gun and ended (hopefully forever) with Frat Boy George.
That, and Michelle's Talk Radio Warlords. They both leave indelible images in my mind.
- desertdog
April 8, 2009 at 11:49am
Rhubs - I must second desertdog's adroit commentary on your commentary.
...that is to say, yeah, 28 years of metal pipe beatings sounds just about right. They really do live up to that old saying, "The beatings will continue until morale improves," don't they?
- janus
April 8, 2009 at 3:01pm
If you guys are going to be posting on each other's accounts you need a saccharine couple-name. How's Michris Corrttle?
- Simon Greenwood
April 8, 2009 at 10:03pm