American political parties are vessels. They can take on passengers and they can discharge them. There is no necessary reason why conservatives should be Republicans. Nor is there any necessary reason that environmentalists should be Democrats. If you care more about the environment than you do about the Democratic Party, then you will welcome Republicans who support the environment and may well vote for them over a Democrat.
What’s going on now is that the Republican Party needs a new set of passengers. To attract those new passengers they will have to get some people off the vessel. It’s not that they don’t have enough room for them. They can accommodate all the passengers who want to get on and ride. The reason they have to push some passengers off is because those passengers are so unpleasant to be around that no one wants ride with them. Those unpleasant passengers are the extreme conservatives. They have to be purged.
This is how I think people should think about the so-called schism between Republicans who want to win and Republicans who want conservative purity. If you oppose gay rights, you oppose gay rights. You don’t care that the issue is hurting a political party. Same for abortion rights or gun control or immigration reform or any issue that serves as the prime motivator for political behavior.
In our system, with winner-take-all elections, the job of a party is to cobble together a plurality of the votes in any way possible. There are no unshakable principles for a party. They may remain stable or they may completely flip sides relative to the other party. Fifty years ago, the Democrats were a southern party with union and urban support in the North. Fifty years ago, the Republicans usually didn’t even bother to run candidates in the South.
So, what we’re seeing now is really a debate between people who believe things and people who want to win. As a party, the Republicans will need to win votes from young people who support gay rights. They will need to win a greater share of the minority vote. They cannot do that if they continue voter suppression campaigns and efforts at boosting their share of the white vote through racial polarization. They can’t behave like conservatives and win, so they will have to stop being so conservative. The natural response will be for conservatives to leave the party.
But they currently control the party. So, this will be a process.
I am curious where the stone-cold racists and homophobes will go once the GOP starts to purge them in earnest. Will they just start sitting out elections once neither party caters to them? My understanding is that historically evangelicals weren’t very involved in politics at all – not until the 60’s and 70’s, Moral Majority, and especially Roe v. Wade really activated them as a voting bloc. Will they start sitting out elections again?
A vote is a vote. But if you truly hate browns and gays and the GOP just gives up on those issues, would you bother to vote at all? Perhaps those voters will realize how dumb they’re being and soften their politics a bit. One can hope, anyway.
Good questions. I think it’s important to recall the racial/political context in which white evangelicals became a political force—namely, in the wake of the civil rights movement, the abandonment of white supremacy by the national Democratic party, and the “Southern strategy” that carried Richard Nixon to the White House (and won five southern states for Goldwater in ’64).
This will not be a simple or easy process. It’s going to take years and most likely some more big losses before it really gets going. Right now, there are many Republicans with a huge vested interest in keeping things as they are. Those folks are not going to just stand by while the party moderates for the sake of other people’s elections. Republicans will make efforts to have it both ways until it becomes crystal clear they cannot. After that, I’m not sure what happens.
I agree. The leadership of the party is not going to have an epiphany any time soon which results in throwing the extremists overboard. It is going to take profound election losses over several cycles before anyone will become emboldened enough to broach the topic of purges. As of now, any time someones deigns to even consider stepping outside the severe conservative orthodoxy, they are quick bull-whipped back in to line.
I also expect that the GOP will continue to work at threading the needle to keep this coalition cobbled together. At least until election results make it untenable to continue with the status quo.
When I see someone like Rob Portman, as committed a Republican as one will ever see, absolutely skewered by the people pulling the levers of his party, you can’t help but think there is a massive confrontation looming somewhere down the road.
I think what happens is the reactionaries gradually lose power as they age and die off.
That, combined with the institutional incentives (e.g., the electoral college) in American politics for a two-party system, would produce a Republican party that’s still conservative, but accepts (however grudgingly) same-sex marriage (and other civil rights for gays and lesbians), and a more racially diverse nation.
Some pretty cool new national monuments. Getting some stuff done, at least.
Very cool. My office looks out on the San Juans. I wonder what impact this designation will have.
It’s worth noting that the U.S. and Britain came perilously close to war over the San Juans and pig.
http://www.thesanjuans.com/sanjuan-general/san-juan-island-pig-war.shtml
If you just want to win and have no ideology, why do you want to win? I can only think of two answers, one is that the politician is just a control freak and would be just as happy serving in the Reichstag or the Politburo as say the US Senate as long as they had power and adulation. The other is to want the power so that access can be sold and other forms of graft. Neither is very appealing. I have more respect for the racists and religious nutjobs who at least are trying to make the country better according to their own (admittedly warped) view.
Imagine if we had proportional representation, where the extreme conservatives could have their own party (or parties) and what remains of the Republican Party becomes a center-right party occupying a position analogous to Likud in Israel.
Unlike other countries where a coalition of different parties works together to govern. Finding enough folks who share their skewed worldview will become an increasingly difficult task.
In Europe, you fight the election, then form the coalition, then govern.
In the US, you form the coalition, then fight the election, then govern.
Both US parties are coalitions. We have five, six parties, but only two labels.
Either they will splinter off into a third party, or that 20% of the population will have to remain the base: bigoted religious extremists and the hateful greedy people who don’t seem to mind the bigots so much.