If you consider the true implications of what Paul Waldman is saying, the GOP as a governing entity is functionally dead. And, while he doesn’t mention it, it’s not just some future hypothetical Republican president who will never be able to satisfy the GOP base, it’s any future Republican presidential candidate.
I mean, it’s possible to run for president without advocating any positive government action on any issue, and it may even be possible to win the nomination on a platform of widespread nullification and promises to strip the federal government down to the studs, but it’s a recipe for an electoral defeat that would make Barry Goldwater, George McGovern, and Walter Mondale blush.
I think he nailed it, but this might be a good place to point out that there is a contingent of Democrats who have a similar attitude. Power itself is deeply suspect. So the paradox is that a guy who has never been in power, Ralph Nader, is a hero, whereas the minute Barack Obama became president he became a traitor to the cause.
There is a difference of course. Tea partiers love power, destructive power, and if they don’t get it they wallow in victimhood. Firedoggers love victimhood, they want to destroy any possibility of power (not that they actually can, except in the pettiest ways), but they derive an unacknowledged sense of power from playing the victim.
There is a certain S & M kind of compatibility here that, I think, explains whatever firedoggy collaboration there has been between right & left in recent years, and interestingly enough Nader has written a book about this.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/book-review-unstoppable-by-ralph-nader-on-building-a-left-rig
ht-alliance/2014/05/30/08587b08-e11e-11e3-8dcc-d6b7fede081a_story.html
Of course there is a strong reality behind all of this. The anti-establishmentarians on both sides hate a lot of the same things.
The thing is that most Tea Partiers are fairly typical Republicans in their beliefs. In other words, the Tea Party movement is incoherent, it is at odds with itself, and this is what we are really seeing and will be seeing more and more. So yes, they are eating their own.
I think you have a solid assessment here, and I agree with your final conclusion. The questions no one seems to be able to answer though are a) how the republic manages to get through conservatives’ supernova of rage and derp without incurring permanent damage and b) relatedly, if that is even doable how long will it take? By 2016? A decade? A generation? It seems as if there is no end in sight, especially if the GOP has the House locked down for years to come. That is what’s so distressing about our current situation.
Considering that every country that modeled their government on our system has failed due to its inherent inability to handle high levels of polarization, you pretty much are left with only one conclusion. We’re pretty much screwed.
Spink
I’m not the world’s supreme expert on this, but I’m trying to think of another country that has modeled its governmental system on that of the United States, and I just can’t. Please enlighten me.
Wikipedia, “Politics of the United States” :
“There are major differences between the political system of the United States and that of most other developed democracies. These include greater power in the upper house of the legislature, a wider scope of power held by the Supreme Court, the separation of powers between the legislature and the executive, and the dominance of only two main parties. Third parties have less political influence in the United States than in other developed country democracies.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_the_United_States
A number of third world countries, especially in Latin America, have tried to use the US “checks and balances” system. They basically all failed for exactly the reasons we’re seeing now – at some point the government gets split between bitter enemies, and the government becomes profoundly dysfunctional.
I’ve heard it said we’re turning into a banana republic. When I was a kid we lesrned that our government system was the best in the world. That was the McCarthy period.
The idea that we weren’t a banana republic when we had Jim Crow but we are nowadays is the vain providence of the privileged.
which? give examples so we can discuss
Not decades.
The GOP gained control of the House using gerrymandering to the nth degree. Mathematically that works for a couple of elections and then starts to work against them because their base is dying (literally.)
To illustrate the dynamic:
Assume 100 voters in a gerrymandered district: 49 Dems, 51 GOP. The GOP wins. Let’s say one GOP voter dies and one Dem becomes a voter so: 50 D, 50 GOP for a tie. Now one GOP dies and one Dem is added: 51 D to 49 R and the Dems flip the seat. To regain the seat the GOP has to find 3 voters: one to replace the one that died, one to break even, and one to win.
This is greatly simplified but that is, fairly closely, what happened in the last Virginia state elections. Over the previous four years old white men died and young black women became voters and were the Democratic Party Margin-of-Victory.
The best metaphor for gerrymandering I’ve seen is a highly-leveraged investment. As long as their electoral margins (the “market”) stay up, it’s great. But if their margins slip just a little, they can get wiped out.
I feel that the GOP is no longer concerned with doing elections. They are focusing a;; of their political energy in inciting people to armed revolution to over through the Federal Government. Look at the facts any legislation to limit or make getting either ammo or guns has been repeatedly blocked now for years.
Also numerous GOP Representatives all over America have numerous times have supported those that have been confrontational with the Federal Government. All of this would strongly suggest that the GOP is working on other means to gain power, not voting.
That’s true of the GOP rump otherwise known as the tea party. I think it’s large enough to cause gridlock but not large enough to legislate its own policies. In this case it matters not for the tea party has no policies. It lives to incite revolution.
“It lives to
incite revolutionextract Benjamins from gullible rubes.”FIFY
What is going to be hilarious is watching Republicans in state governments falling over themselves to eat their own and prove that only they are trueConservativesTM.
“Things can always change, but if this sentiment endures, it’ll be interesting to see what happens the next time a Republican is elected president. Because whoever that president is, he will never be able to satisfy this base; indeed, by the very act of taking office and beginning to govern he will have assured them that betrayal is on its way. Their rage will endure. But maybe that’s just how they like it.”
ZOINKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
To pacify the insane and rabid base, a Republican President would have to out ‘you know who’ that Godwin’s Law forbids mentioning!
At which point, like my moniker – I’ll ‘see you in the GULag!”
I’ll try to save you all a lower birth…
I already have low birth, c u n d gulag. But I could use a lower berth.
I hate auto spell checkers, too.
WHOOOOOPS!
And here I thought that the racist film, “Berth of a Nation,” wasn’t about our Founding Fathers schtupping, but sleeping. 😉
Sounds like both sides really do do it, at least in this one instance. If MyDD and Corrente and Naked Capitalism and Avedon Carol qualify as “this base” that is…
Actually, there are two issues on which they do want positive government action:
And that’s even worse for winning elections.
And those are related and not separate issues for them.
That’s right, I’ve seen those arguments. If it wasn’t for the abortion holocaust we’d have X million more people, so there wouldn’t be any jobs for illegal immigrants. As far as I can tell, there are people who really believe that.
Not just abortion any longer. They’ve set their sites on Griswold, not just Roe v. Wade, and would very much like to har the right to ptivacy of any kind. That includes banning contraception and pretty much any sexytime that’s not a male-initiated missionary position for the sole purpose of procreation.
I don’t see that being a winning electoral strategy, either. Quite the opposite. Even the people who want government between bedroom sheets want it between other people’s sheets, not their own.
“Griswold” has always been on their agenda. Not a new effort at all. It was just a bigger nut than they could tackle as long as “Roe” remained the law of the land. Unfortunately for them the “Griswold” ship sailed some years ago and it’s not coming back.
Normally I’m with ya, Marie, but I’m not as sanguine on that one. We have four USSC justices already either on record as wanting to repeal Griswold, or who have track records that strongly point to that as their preference.
As we’ve seen, just because an idea is nuts doesn’t mean conservative justices won’t embrace it. Heck, just yesterday Paul Clement – a Dubya appointee who’s the go-to Teahadist lawyer for dismantling government, and who headed the ACA lawsuit that everyone thought was preposterous until the USSC nearly agreed with him – just helped file a suit challenging Seattle’s new $15/hr minimum wage law. Among other things, he’s alleging that governments don’t have any constitutional authority to regulate wages, and by extension most everything else.
These people aren’t just challenging settled law from the 20th Century, but from the 19th as well. It’s why the right wing has been so aggressive opposing Obama’s judicial nominations – you’ve got a generation’s worth of Republican-nominated lifetime appointees under Reagan and the Bushes, and a fairly high percentage of them are reactionary loons. It’s a problem.
I should have been more precise — access to birth control is overwhelmingly accepted by the public. Scalia-Thomas-Alito may be “chomping at the bit” to overturn Griswold and Kennedy could be iffy, but IMHO Roberts is too much of a corporatist and cares too much about his legacy to go there. I reserve the right to change my assessment after the court issues its decision in the Hobby Lobby suit — not that it touches on Griswold at all and it’s messy enough that the decision could also be messy.
Judging by past performance, if the GOTP wins the WH, their base will go into rabid attack dog mode against all critics – just like they did during W’s Reign of Errors.
The agenda that the authoritarian fundies and the Establishment share would coalesce around the Unitary Executive that, thanks to the Shrub, now has a historical anchor. Neither the base nor the GOTP Establishment is interested in governing. They crave the power to implement their selfish agendas. For the GOP-E that’s the unfettered ability to extract as much as they can from the Treasury, our natural resources, and the consumers. And for the fundie base it’s the ability to punish those who aren’t like them (racially and sexually) and who don’t believe that science and modernity are evil.
As currently constituted the GOTP should never be allowed anywhere near the levers of national power. Hitler is too much on their minds. Look at the policy preferences expressed by Boehner’s House or the Kansas, Louisiana and Florida legislatures.
Oh. Great.
How will the Big Fix work if there are no longer two parties?
Oh. I know.
They’ll invent another party. Kill two birds with one stone. Alla them right wing and left wing malcontents? You know…the ones that the Paulists are courting as a coalition? The ones who just screwed Cantor’s pooch? The ones Ralph Nader is covering in his latest book? The ones who elected deBlasio mayor in NYC? They’ll all fall right into line and the fix can continue until they get wise. That’s another coupla decades, right there. By that time there’ll be nothing left to loot here.
Great.
Yore freind,
Emily Litella
Didn’t the GOP play taps for the Democratic Party in late 2004? Doesn’t the GOP still control the House and appears poised to continue doing so through the midterm elections?
Inchoate and authoritarian rage is hardly a new phenomenon in US politics. Over the past forty years it has ebbed when a Republican is in the WH for the simple reason that it’s the GOP that stokes and feeds religio-narcissistic-bigotry. Many of these folks are single or dual issue voters. How that issue is articulated does vary over time. Right-to-life and Moral Majority in 1980 to anti-Obamacare and anti-immigrant in 2014 (there’s a logical and rational through line from 1980 to today on those two). These are faith-based people that believe government not only had nothing to do with their wealth and well-being, but it also prevented them from being wealthier. From Nixon to Reagan to Newt to GWB and the amorphous Tea Party, a new savior appears when their anger flows.
You forgot their inalienable right to leave assault rifles laying around so disturbed teens can kill their classmates with them.
Notice that the rate of these incidents has gone up with the passage of Obamacare? Didn’t have so many “disturbed teens” before Obamacare.
Copycats
Actually the ratio of mass shootings to crime in general has been rising since the September 11th attacks, not Obamacare.
I don’t believe the data supports there are actually many more mass shootings, but thanks to anti lead policies most other types of violent crime has been significantly reduced.
Adjust your snark detection meter.
I think there’s a very good chance the GOP will be frozen out of the White House for the foreseeable future. What we’ll have is the inverse of the mid-20th Century, in which Democrats controlled Congress and the GOP was competitive, even advantaged, in presidential races. Their goal will remain, as it is now, to stop all forms of progress and change. They lack the power to turn the clock back but they’ll do their best to prevent it from moving forward.
You can already tell that the Republicans know that all they have left are the courts on the Federal side, which is why they’re hitting the state governments so hard.
What progressives/liberals need to do is get progressives and liberals into state offices, too. We shouldn’t get overly focused on the Federal government.
It doesnt matter if they can block change and they can do that for a long time yet. Feel good if you want but being prevented from dealing with problems tends to make them worse.
With the news out of Iraq this week, and the surprise pushback by Shep Smith against ‘the liars who took us to Iraq’; Ari Fleisher’s stupid date screwup; McCain’s stumblings pointed out by Chris Hayes, Obama’s choices may all be bad but the discussion is killing the Rep’s right now on the airwaves.
As the old hacks are brought to the airwaves, the sausage making of their policies is re-exposed…in just a short time before the Fall elections. Foreign policy just skwoozed its way onto the table and there’s a whole bunch of Rep’s who aren’t prepared to talk about foreign policy.
If TV “news” played just the 2/21/03 McCain/Hannity clip included in the Chris Hayes segment with Barney Frank —MSNBC video included in dKos diary — half as many times at they played the Dean “scream,” not many people would continue to listen to them.
yes, and i’ve been wondering how this was going to help them prep for running Jeb
Great news and now if we could only begin undermining all those state legislatures that have been outsourced to ALEC and the Kochs…
Well, the titled owners of the GOP have a clear agenda – of course with basically no overlap with what the base wants – and they are very good at getting it passed.
Even now, occasionally bills are passed through both houses with wide majorities and signed into law by Obama with no publicity that take car of the powers that be. Little extensions of funding, or tax break provisions, or renewals of laws that benefit the ultra wealthy. The GOP in the house takes breaks between their repeals of Obamacare and grandstanding to sneak these through, and the GOP in the Senate works with Reid to streamline these through the Senate legal labyrinth sometimes sneaking between many other delayed and filibustered bills.
When I saw a number of these I realized that all the other bullshit is for show. Arthur is closer to describing reality than any of us would care to admit – especially to ourselves.
How many Democrats and liberals that were completely outrage (if not consumed) with the imapeachment and in early 1999 the Senate trial of Clinton were even aware of Gramm-Leach-Bliley as it made its way through Congress in 1999? While a terrible precedent, convicting Clinton wouldn’t have had the significant and negative impact on the lives of ordinary Americans that Gramm-Leach-Bliley has had.
(Yes, in real time I did oppose it. Not that my opposition or support for anything is of any value.)