Maha notes that the GOP is both leaderless and directionless, but also that the Republicans have been here before and came up with solutions by mythologizing some figure (Ray-Gun, Dubya) into a viable standard bearer. It’s a good point to remember. However, this time, the situation the Republicans find themselves in is particularly dire. I’m not going to do a sweeping historical piece here, but I want to make a few observations.
Many have noted that demographic changes are conspiring to regionalize the Republican Party as a party of the Deep South and Mormon West. What’s less obvious is how the Republican base has been radicalized and how that radicalization has distorted the Republican caucus in Washington. As a simple exercise, think back to all those Palin Rallies during the election where citizen cameras captured rallygoers expressing rage and racism at the prospect of an Obama administration. ‘Go back to Africa’, ‘Terrorist’, ‘Socialist’, Communist’. After the McCain campaign and its surrogates spent months demonizing Barack Obama, they had only succeeded in convincing their most rabid supporters. Is it any wonder that that dementia eventually bled back up and infected members of Congress like Steve King and Michele Bachmann?
Most of us have moved on from the days of William Ayers and Obama-is-a-secret-Muslim, but the consequences of those charges are still resonating where it matters most…among the GOP faithful. President Obama cannot pal around with terrorists one day and be the legitimate president the next. And this leads me to the next disconnect. Barack Obama built a bipartisan cabinet.
In retaining Robert Gates as his Secretary of Defense and in choosing Gen. Jim Jones as his National Security Adviser, President Obama brought the ‘realist school’ of the Republican Party into the Democratic tent. Members of the Realist School, like Richard Lugar and George Voinovich, may remain nominally Republicans (due, mainly, to their positions on social and economic issues) but conservative people (voters) that are primarily interested in foreign policy are increasingly likely to consider themselves Democrats in the future.
President Obama also picked the well-respected moderate Illinois Republican Ray LaHood to be his Secretary of Transportation and Yankee Republican Judd Gregg to be his Secretary of Commerce. These appointments also send a message. The message is to moderate conservatives in New England and the Upper Midwest. The Democratic Party is safe. It can be your new home. The Republicans are a Southern Baptist/Mormom creation that is completely alien to your world and values.
Gallup just completed a party affiliation poll that showed that the Republicans now enjoy an advantage in just seven states (only five outside the margin of error): Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Alaska, Nebraska, Kansas, Alabama. Unsurprisingly, the Republicans hold twelve of the fourteen senate seats from these states. Their hold on the other twenty-nine senate seats they have is getting more and more tenuous. Retirements in Florida, Missouri, Ohio, and (now) New Hampshire threaten to further regionalize the GOP caucus.
The larger theme of Obama’s bipartisanship (and, to a degree, Dean’s 50-state strategy) is that the Democrats are the dominant national party and that they are inclusive of all but the most severe cultural conservatives. Turn on FOX News for fifteen minutes and you’ll see just how frozen in amber the Republican base has become. FOX News coverage isn’t just offensive…it’s facially irrelevant. It’s impertinent. And being beside the point is the legacy Rovism/Palinism bestowed on the Republican Party.
There is no obvious way back from what Nate Silver called this death spiral. While Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly and Michael Steele and John Boehner and Mitch McConnell circle the bowl, President Obama picks off what is left of ‘reasonableness’ from their party and makes it his own.
The spectacle is impressive to watch, although it doesn’t come without a degree of heartburn for the partisan Democrat. Republican outreach comes at the expense of our hardfought spoils. It muddies the message and takes the ideological edge off the Democratic Party. But it also builds a formidable and seemingly stable governing majority that believes in science, in government, in multilateralism, in sane fiscal policy, and in civil rights. I would do things differently, but it’s hard to not like where this is going.
Can we just stop pretending that Obama knows what he’s doing at this point?
I think you are pulling out a strategy from random, unconnected events, and frankly, i dont think Obama has regained his footing.
The Daschle appointment is a complete fiasco.
The stimulus bill is being watered down for the sake of “bipartisanship” where “bipartisanship” apparently means letting the Republicans take as many free shots as they want.
Come on now. He’s off balance.
I think he will be fine in the long run, but he is totally out of it at this point.
considering the position of the GOP, your opinion is laughable.
I don’t think that the Daschle thing was a complete disaster is laughable. Maybe he got some credit in terms of “honesty” for Daschle withdrawing, but the optics of the thing are wretched.
Two weeks from now, or maybe sooner, no one will remember Tom Daschle.
I hope so, and I think that’s probably right, which I why I said that I thought Obama would be OK in the long run.
However, this past week has been pretty shitty and there is no secret plan behind this and we should just admit that.
The reality is that Barack has been given a huge shitplie and his task is to somehow turn that shitpile into ice cream.
He’s not helping himself by picking Judd Greg for no apparent reason. I just don’t see the rationale.
He is making it up as he goes along right now.
I think it will settle down and he will be OK in a bit, and I also think he’s doing better than Clinton did, but he’s certainly not doing WELL.
the gregg appointment, to my mind, is very problematic.
if, as it’s rumoured, a RATpublican is appointed to fill his seat in order to stymie a filibuster-proof senate…assuming franken gets seated…is going to be a significant failure and prima facie evidence that the phrase: meet the new boss, same as the old boss is fully operational.
we shall see, but at this juncture, l’m very skeptical.
“…but it’s hard to like where this is going.”
There. Fixed it for you!
Seriously though, all this bipartisanship means jack if we keep getting rolled on the actual policy stuff. On the biggest issue of the day, he’s failing and failing big. Americans and scared and worried about the economy and he’s given us Tim Geithner and tax cuts. Oh, and bonuses are OK as long as there are strong words attached. Please. These are terrible policy choices. Out here in flyover country we see money continuing to flow to the bankers who got us into this mess. Change? Where? I sure don’t see it where it counts.
Any efforts to save the financial sector short of nationalization are going to suffer from these issues of waste and I think will ultimately fail.
But the point of this essay is that the GOP is being whittled down to almost nothing. And that has many long-term upsides.
I think it’s more than issues like waste. It is more the fundamental direction we are going to go. Tax cuts and Tim Geithner are what got us into this mess, and here we are with more of the same.
While I’m more than happy to see the GOP rotting, I’m not willing to do it at the expense of our country. We are in crisis RIGHT NOW. Obama is making flat out wrong policy choices.
To directly address your point, my concern is that he is sacrificing immediate good policy in pursuant of very sketchy long term success. I want FDR, not Jimmy Carter.
Addressing the collapse of the financial sector is a work in progress. I think, but am not sure, that the Obama administration will eventually be forced to give up on saving shareholder value. But they aren’t going there without an effort to save what we’ve come to know as capitalism. I wouldn’t worry about the tax cuts in the stimulus. Half of them are for payroll taxes, and the corporate cuts are not going to be harmful beyond, perhaps, a degree of inefficiency. In other words, the money could be better spent, but it isn’t counterproductive.
Yes, but if “shareholder value” is nil or nearly so, why bother with the herculean effort to save it?
Look, we have to be efficient and equitable here. we’re looking at some serious, serious problems; if the Obama administration is going to spend 90 percent of their time helping the wealthy class and the warmongers (the surge in Afghanistan) then they are going to quickly lose credibility with the voters who put them in office.
Crowing about the repuglican’s credibility problem is premature, particularly if the democrats can’t get anything significant done. whining about repuglican obstinance is also useless. politics is about horse trading, making deals. the democrats have to figure out how to make the deals.
As the Repubs fading on the right I hope there is a Labor Party emerging on the left.
i was just about to say, the utter demise of the GOP is not something to celebrate. one party rule, no matter who the party in power may be, sucks (and not in the good way).
So yes, I’d sure like to see the rise of a lefty opposition, especially in place of a righty opposition.
What’s hard to take about this is, if you got all your info from traditional media, you’d think the Republicans were still in the catbird seat.
The single most important transformation — and the most difficult one, too, probably — will be flushing or replacing the old media.
After reading a whole morning of “the sky is falling” and “a failed Obama presidency,” I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to read something that incorporates some big picture sanity. Thank you!!!
For some reason I’m reminded of an infomercial I saw years ago for a product that changed the scent of your bowel movements to something more pleasant.
How the hell does this coalition believe in sane fiscal policy? Obama’s advisers and his republican allies believe in saying “fuck you” to everyone who does not get a Wall Street bonus. Economic policy cannot also be estranged from foreign policy.
I don’t think this will fail. I think it will be insufficient to ensure the human race’s survival past the next 100 years.
Here’s what the Dems need to do to deflate every Republican tax cut proposal:
First, show how tax cuts don’t work.
Second, when they keep screaming about tax cuts, don’t play the percentage game. A five percent tax cut for Donald Trump does not equal a five percent tax cut for me. So if the Republicans want a $300 billion dollar tax cut, just divide it up by the number of citizens by the amount of the tax cut and send each of us a thousand bucks. I’m sure Donald will spend his wisely.
Thanks Booman for the fresh perspective and it is hard to not get cynical with all the crap partisans D have had to swallow since winning the election. 2 hours of Olberman and Maddow per day can only cure so much of the media’s constant reciting of republican talking points too.
For a team that was so good at media management and messaging during the campaign, their allowance of Republican free-for-all over the stimulus package is appalling.
I get what you’re saying about long-term effects, Boo, but the short term effort is severely lacking.
Seems to me, in this early going, that Obama is doing everything he can to resuscitate the corpse of the Republican Party. Three Republicans in the cabinet. Tax breaks for corporations in the stimulus package, designed to appease the Republican minority. It’s as if the zombie has more power than the pissed off peasants and their chosen tribunes. Obama & the Democrats were given a mandate for change. So far, I’m not seeing change on the horizon (though I’m still hopeful for the future).
To those who are disappointed that there hasn’t been a total purge of Republicans from the government, don’t worry, it’s coming, Obama’s Republican appointments notwithstanding. Those Republicans, as Booman notes, are on their way to becoming former Republicans.
I don’t think anyone is going to much care for the way it’s likely to play out, though.
The GOP is now an crucible for lunatics, with religious fanaticism working the bellows of the forge. I can’t speak to the Mormon half of the equation, but I grew up surrounded by Southern Baptists and have lived most of my adult life up to my neck in their population centers, and they are much scarier than outsiders realize. They are paranoid, bloodthirsty, authoritarian, impervious to reality, and a perfect field in which to sow the seeds of mob violence.
Whether it’s a repeat of the right-wing terror campaigns of the 50’s and 60’s, or the militia movements of the 80’s and 90’s, or the sort of armed uprisings we last saw in the 19th century, these people will boil over sooner or later. The guy who sits next to me at work — the one that performs exorcisms in his spare time and constantly cracks Obama assassination “jokes” — is pretty typical of the breed, and he and his local circle of nutjobs are convinced that Obama is the Antichrist.
There’s a limit to how far out of hand it can get. After all, for all of their 2nd Amendment militia fantasies, it’s been over a hundred years since all you needed to field an army was a bunch of guns and willing bodies; nowadays, you need shit like airpower, armor, and satellites. It will be put down, of course, but it will be ugly.
Then you’ll get your purge of Republicans. But we’ll all wish it could have happened some other way.