It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Ramesh Ponnuru is feeling a little bitter that his advice was not taken prior to the midterm elections and that now the Republican Party finds itself in a pickle with nothing to show in Congress and an electorate that seems hellbent on nominating a reality-show star.
You probably won’t be surprised to learn that Ponnuru rejects the claim that the Republicans’ only two options were “trying to prove they could govern with Obama or engaging in an endless series of showdowns with him.” They had a third option, which was was to listen to the Reformicons.
A third alternative would have been to advance a governing agenda of their own, ideally during the midterm campaign, on issues such health care, taxes and higher education. That strategy wouldn’t have resulted in the enactment of a lot of Republican bills, since Democrats could still have filibustered them. But Republicans would have been standing for something more attractive than they are today — not a high bar — and making Senate Democrats pay some price for obstruction.
And maybe the party’s own voters wouldn’t be quite so heartily sick of them.
On that last point, that the rise of Donald Trump is best explained by the party base’s disenchantment with the party establishment, it’s a theme I began hitting on as soon as Trump began to really catch on. It’s nice to see it gaining currency. Yesterday, it was Joshua Green and today it is Ponnuru:
Republicans are in a funk on the eve of the first presidential-primary debate. The party’s popularity has dipped, largely because Republican voters are souring on it. Their lack of confidence in their party surely has something to do with Donald Trump’s rise in the polls. Bitterness between conservative groups and the Senate Republican leadership is at a peak, with the former saying the latter are too devoted to keeping corporate welfare programs like the Export-Import Bank alive and insufficiently committed to defunding Planned Parenthood.
It took a while for it to sink in, but people are beginning to realize that the Republicans did this to themselves by poisoning the minds of their supporters with hyped threats, easy (yet unrealizable) solutions, and a bunch of false promises. At some points, they haven’t been able to deliver even when they go so far as to shut down the government and cause a downgrade in our nation’s credit rating. At other points, they haven’t even tried. And then there’s the really damaging stuff:
Conservatives and swing voters who are paying attention have seen the Republican Congress act on business priorities: advancing a highway bill and getting a Trade Promotion Authority signed by the president. They have also seen them fret for months about the possibility that the Supreme Court would force them to do something about Obamacare, something Republican voters actually want, and then breathe sighs of relief that it didn’t.
They didn’t really advance a highway bill, unless you consider another short-term extension an advancement of some kind. But they did at least fund our transportation system unlike virtually any other area of our government. And I don’t think their ability to advance some business priorities is really all that damaging to them since this is what they’re primarily known for in any case. But letting on that they’re relieved that the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare?
That’s a learning moment for the folks who actually noticed. And that’s why they’re looking for a candidate who will call the Washington Republicans on their duplicity and double-dealing. I mean, how many times has the Republican leadership in Congress held votes to repeal Obamacare?
And it was ALL bullshit?
A person might have some scales fall from their eyes on a thing like that.
Which is basically why Ponnuru is saying that the GOP deserves Trump. They’ve earned him.
Tonight, they get their first real taste of the consequences of their actions.
Of course, there will always be a Chuck Todd to say things like “[Trump’s candidacy is] not fair to what is the strongest Republican party presidential field in 36 years.”
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2015/06/17/chuck_todd_the_problem_with_trump_is_he_doesnt_pla
y_by_a_set_of_rules.html
In a nutshell, I think what we have here is frustration amongst a largely racist base that the white guys they keep sending to Washington keep getting beat by the darkie in the White House. (Of course, I’m being polite by using “darkie” in this context. They would use a word I decline to quote in most cases.)
But I also see another component: The Republican share of the electorate keeps shrinking largely as a result of their endless purity tests. The more they keep shrinking the definition of “conservative,” the more their far right gains leverage within a coalition now bereft of moderates. Trump couldn’t amass the same percentages of support in a larger party that permitted the occasional use of reason and lucidity. They’re pretty much down to the loony bin now, and these are the predictable results.
At least as far as health care goes, Republicans have yet to offer an Obamacare alternative in all these years, even after all the repeal votes. Why would that change now?
It would be easy to direct DEMs/liberals to remember CA 2003 when a cartoon movie action “hero” took out an incumbent Democratic Governor that had been re-elected in 2002. But DEMs/liberals would point out that Davis was too Gray and the CA DEM party was in disarray (as the party was nationally) that year. True, except the CA GOP was by then well on its way to becoming a rump party through its rigid extremism.
Perhaps it’s better to recall the 1966 ordinary gubernatorial election and not a special recall and election. When a generally popular and competent governor was unseated by a fading B movie actor and political novice. The background to the election was the ’64-65 Berkeley FSM and ’65 Watts’ riots. ’66 was relatively calm — the anti-Vietnam War movement and emergence of the DFHs weren’t yet in the public consciousness. Yet, sometimes a general sense of calmness and low level of dissatisfaction is experienced as boring and in turn “time for a change” sets in.
Trump, as ridiculous as he is, is tickling all the right piano keys when too many of the external “right” conditions may exist. Also recall that Reagan’s original voter base was the Goldwaterites and they were as angry and mobilized in 1966 as the teabaggers are today.
The difference between then and now is demographics. Not to say that demographics makes the Democratic Party unstoppable because the bulge isn’t large enough to make us immune to recessions and scandals — along with the fact that off-Presidential voting is very lopsided — but the paranoia over the next Ronald Reagan lurking around the corner is completely unfounded.
Any analysis or warning that goes ‘but what if, like in 1988, we get blindsided by some Nixonian-Reagan nutjob?’ that doesn’t acknowledge the sea change in demographics is suspect. Remember, folks, giving the exit polling margins Dukakis would’ve won with 2008 Obama’s demographics and 2008 Obama would’ve lost with Dukakis’s demographics. Obama won by a 4% popular vote with 8% unemployment.
The country has changed from when Nixon smashed the New Deal Coalition into a million pieces, people. Time to come out from under the 1972 McGovern campaign signs and take stock of the new battlefield.
All I referenced were two seemingly improbable, politically inexperienced GOP candidates for governor of CA that began their campaigns with high name recognition. That treating them like jokes didn’t work out so well.
Demographics have always been changing — and yet somehow against the tide the GOP has been winning in more election cycles than they’ve lost since 1964. If we include local, state, and congressional elections, which I do. Demographics and the electoral college gives Democrats and advantage at the Presidential level, but that sure didn’t flow to down-ticket races in 2012.
Seems to me that you’re the one that’s being complacent waving a demographic change flag. Tossing out Time to come out from under the 1972 McGovern campaign signs and take stock of the new battlefield. would be insulting if it weren’t so weird and inapplicable.
Modern voter turnout in midterms has been pathetic:
and is seemingly structural, i.e., just the way things is. One reason Democratic candidates ‘run to the right’ is because of the lack of turnout in midterms by Democratic Party demographic: blacks, youngs, etc. By ‘running to the right’ the nominees ensure they do not advocate policies that appeal to black, young, etc. making a nice little positive feedback loop, ensuring the situation will continue. A good example is the 2012 Kentucky Senate Race where the Democratic candidate “couldn’t remember” if she voted for Obama in 2012. The kind of political pusillanimity guaranteed to ensure apathy-to-hostility in Obama voters.
Good evidence that a DINO can’t defeat an incumbent GOP Senator in a mid-term election. However, wrt to demographic changes, that wasn’t a factor in the KY 2014 Senate race. Where it should have materialized last year and didn’t was in Colorado where an incumbent DEM ran one of the most lackluster, mushy campaigns of the cycle.
That said, I’m not in the agreement with those Democrats that assume significantly higher mid-term turnout results in Democratic gains. Potential voters in either party may stay home if all indications are that they’ll lose and they aren’t inspired with the candidates running in their preferred party.
There’s a number of 2012 election results which push back against this claim:
“Demographics and the electoral college gives Democrats and advantage at the Presidential level, but that sure didn’t flow to down-ticket races in 2012.”
https:/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections,_2012
“Although Democratic candidates received a nationwide plurality of more than 1.4 million votes (1.2%) in all House elections, the Republican Party won a 33-seat advantage in the state-apportioned totals, thus retaining its House majority by 17 seats.”
https:
/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_elections,_2012
“The Democrats had 21 seats up for election, plus two independents who caucused with the Democrats, while the Republicans had only ten seats up for election. The Democrats gained a net of two seats, leaving them with a total of 53 seats…This was the first time since 1964 in which either party had to defend more than two-thirds of the Senate seats up for grabs, but managed to make net gains.”
http://www.governing.com/gov-data/politics/2012-state-legislature-elections-map.html
Democratic Legislative candidates won more elections and more control in more States.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/07/state-legislative-elections-democrats_n_2090082.html
“Democrats are celebrating gains in state legislatures around the country — including capturing control of eight chambers — two years after a Republican wave swept many of them out…Republicans did win three chambers, including wrestling back control of the Wisconsin state Senate, which they lost in the June recall election.”
Gubenatorial elections were essentially a wash, with the GOP gaining one net State Executive seat. I’d call those good, not great, down-ticket results, in a year where the economy was still recovering from a near-depression and the public was still suffering from their continual burial in nonstop false propaganda about the Affordable Care Act.
Matt Taibbi has released The Official GOP Debate Drinking Game Rules. Highly recommended game for Republicans, conservatives, and rightwing nutjobs.
Liberals need to retain and preserve their wits and livers too much to participate in this won. How about 25 penny-ante betting pools. (Pennies because there would be 25 freaking pools.)
Well over at Redstate
A bit of knowledge from Eric Ericson
I don’t think the culture war is over, primarily because the people who appear to be the victors right now are the least likely to procreate. So we will eventually breed them out of existence demographically. So the culture war continues, and will continue.
Yes, EErickson apparently didn’t see the film “Idiocracy” as satire….
Since won’t know who won the debate until we know what JEB! said and we won’t know that until he has to chance to correct his mis-statements.
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