Rip it up and start again?

I would very much like to believe in Brad DeLong’s prediction — and the impending decline and possible end of the Republican Party. I do, however, find this idea premature for three reasons:

1) The GOP is currently built on an extremely potent coalition of religious conservatives and voters concerned about security issues — the latter being this generation’s version of the “bloody shirt,” by the way. I am personally very skeptical about the religious right leaving the tent and issuing a third-party challenge.

2) Republicans are hoping to cash in on increasingly strident rhetoric on immigration, as this morning’s Washington Post article, among others, shows.

3) The makeup of the Senate and the electoral college, institutions that give a disproportionate amount of weight to the South and rural state, will keep the said religious right powerful and, therefore, the GOP competitive for a long time.

A new, sane center-right party? It would be nice, but why change what could very well remain a winning team for years and years to come?

I think we have a sane center-right party; it’s called the Democratic party. What we’re missing is a center-left party.

My guess is that there will be a political re-alignment in the next 10 years; whether the formal names change or not, here are the coalitions I’m betting on.

1) The centralized cosmopolitan coalition. Basically, today’s Democrats, minus blacks, plus many white professionals. Permissive on sexual matters, strongly secular, strongly in favor of the central government.

2) The local traditions coalition. Today’s Republicans, plus blacks, minus many urban white profesisonals. Strongly in favor of more local control of pretty much everything. It ends up as a coalition of local majorities that are national minorities. I can easily see Dean Baker and Andrew Sullivan both in this party, along with today’s religious right, msot libertarians, etc.

While it wouldn’t make me sad to see the Republicans go, I think it’s structurally impossible. It’s telling that the best example Brad can reach for is a hundred and fifty years old. The two existing parties are now so thoroughly engineered into the institutions of politics that I can’t imagine any scenario in which one of them (either one) could be supplanted and destroyed à la the Whigs. I think the best that could be hoped for is a stretch of minority status so profound that it incites radical internal change.

(Besides, with all this talk of coalitions, you have to start by asking where the _existing_ coalition goes. We’re talking about people who are voting their fears in very specific ways which make it very unlikely that the Democrats can woo them–meaning that short of changing the entire cleavage structure of American politics or some kind of mass die-off, their views are always going to be present.)

The Republican Party becomes a semi-loony minority party as the centrist leave.
The Democratic party first grows then is divided in 2 factions/parties: one left of center, one right of center. They can be called Social-Democrat and Liberal-Christian-Democrat.

Another problem for the Republican Party is, if you want to reduce the power of the federal government relative to the States, how do you vote? Most of the action was the great revolution that was the Warren Court, not anything done or not done by legislatures.

I think the possibility of an eventual split is real; after all, there are essentially two groups in the party, the 25%ers and the suits.

The 25%ers are violently nationalistic, Christianist, and conservative. They are opposed to “welfare” and other codewords for black people, but they have no real commitment to rightwing economics or philosophy; they are the Tancredo party.

The suits are a group under pressure; they are quite strongly committed to small government, free trade, and individual liberty, and it is this that distinguishes them from the Democrats.

Insofar as they are the party of big business, different big businesses support the two groups; Halliburton for the 25%ers, Sun Microsystems for the Suits. To provide a more generalised and rules-based version, companies that lean to the 25%ers are generally in the nontradable sector, and often sell primarily to the government; exporters are more likely to support the Suits.

The Suits want to feel the adults are in charge, the economy to be stable, and foreign relations to be sufficiently calm so as not to affect trade. The 25%ers want to feel that ass gets kicked; they don’t give a fuck.

I suspect that a Democratic pitch for them based on things like infrastructure, education, trade, and normality would be highly convincing, whilst simultaneously calling forth highly dramatic and helpful demonstrations of craziness from the 25%ers.

Alex: “The suits are a group under pressure; they are quite strongly committed to small government, free trade, and individual liberty, and it is this that distinguishes them from the Democrats.”

Wow. The suits have actually been doing well. BTW, they aren’t committed to small government, they just don’t like money that doesn’t go into or stay in their own pockets. Free trade might or might not be good; they can squabble over the particulars. Individual liberty doesn’t seem to be of interest to them, until the violations start affecting rich white guys.

I think the possibility of an eventual split is real; after all, there are essentially two groups in the party, the 25%ers and the suits.

And that’s been the case for at least 25 years, if not longer. I remember periodic hissy fits and bouts of passionate foot-stamping from the religious right way back in the Reagan years, complete with threats to take their ball and go start their own party. It didn’t happen, and it won’t happen.

I stopped waiting for the Republican Party to collapse under the weight of its inherent contradictions a long time ago.

“In another 50 years, the Republican Party may be a Christian Democratic party or it may be a big-business libertarian party (though I would bet strongly against the latter). It is indeed unsustainable in its present form.”

The theory of a strong American form of Christian Democracy would be more believable if the Church would put its money where its mouth is — and fight as vigorously for social justice as it does for outlawing abortion, as opposed to just calling for the former in various encyclicals and papal speeches.

A year ago, at a reception following the ordination of a priest friend of mine, one of the guests told me poverty is regrettable, but Catholics have to accept there will always be some socio-economic inequality. By contrast, he said, believers have a strong duty to fight against abortion, gay marriage and the like.

Am I wrong to think the gentleman is very representative of his community — meaning many American Catholics rank social justice a distant second to cultural wedge issues?

Here’s how I see the crackup/realignment of the GOP.

1) Some member of the GOP coalition has to get really sick of the other side—this is already almost there.
2) This group has to have someone else plausible to vote for—which probably means that “the Dems” or “some Dems” will try to expand the tent to include them.

At this point either:

a) The new group joins the Dem tent and the remaining GOP becomes a permanent-minority party, or
b) a member of the current Dem coalition feels alienated by the new tent, and aligns themselves with the remaining GOP fragment.
c) A member of the current Dem coalition feels alienated by the new tent, and bails out to form a third party.

There are plenty of small groups that you can imagine bailing out of the GOP. The hard question is, who could possibly want to leave the Dems and re-ally with the remainder? On what point of agreement, common goal, common fear, etc., could any currently-Dem-leaning constituency line up with Alex’s “25%ers”? I can’t think of anything plausible. Maybe, having lost business owners, the GOP can become the Economic Protectionist Party and unite xenophobes with underemployed college grads. Maybe they can become the Cheap Energy party, uniting exurban commuters, heavy industry, and coal states and playing to the invade-Saudi-Arabia instincts of the 25%ers.

Samchevre beat me to it–this “The blacks are going to wake up and realize the Dems don’t represent them” meme has been going strong on the right for quite awhile now, and it’s almost always raised in relation to the issue of same-sex marriage.

Mind you, I don’t buy it. First, there’s little to no actual data to indicate that this shift is taking place. Second, those making this prediction generally don’t acknowledge that fear of the homo menace isn’t likely to overcome the reality of the Republican “southern strategy” for many black voters.

Not to mention the fact that it’s more than a little condescending; isn’t it awfully…Marxist to accuse black Americans of false consciousness?

But anyway, that’s what’s being said.

Uncle Kvetch,

Do you read a black newspaper? I’m always a little startled, reading our local paper (Richmond Free Press), how religious the black community is.

I think same-sex marriage is the fuse, not the bomb. The bomb is the increasingly vocal secularism of the Democrats.

Or perhaps the Republicans will continue in the same direction, with the continually increasing use of wartime powers and of the Patriot Act, and the Democrats will be replaced by …. nothing.

Yup, there’s the problem. Democrats have put a LOT of work into making Republicans a racist bogeyman in the eyes of blacks.

Damn that Trent Lott. All those years, he was working for the other side!

Oh, and Brett: this is the part where you start going “ROBERT BYRD! ROBERT BYRD!”

You’re welcome.

OK. How many Democrats are actively in favor of allowing student-organized, student-led prayer at non-mandatory school events? How many are strongly opposed?

In all honesty, I have no idea. I’m not a pollster. But let’s stick with the issue at hand, shall we? What evidence do you have that the Democrats’ aversion to “allowing student-organized, student-led prayer at non-mandatory school events” is costing them votes in among African-Americans?

You’re only reinforcing my point. We’ve been hearing this chorus of “The blacks are going to realize that their true home is in the Republican Party” for quite some time now. And it still isn’t happening. This is quite an extraordinary bomb…it’s managed to keep ticking for years. At what point does it actually, you know, go off?

Meanwhile, in the real world…

I don’t know; I’m just betting that it will, eventually. Just as I’m betting that secular, educated Republicans who work for wages will eventually end up in the Democratic Party.

A better question would be, “How many blacks blame taking religion out of the schools for the state of inner city public schools?”

None.
Black people have a good Occam’s Razor.

OK, I have to go home. My thinking is heavily influenced by Timothy Burke’s “The Road to Victory”, which you can find here.

It’s an archive page; go to the November 4, 2004 entry.

Well, assuming both parties have racists. It’d be fairly simple for the republicans to appeal directly to blacks and attack democrat actions/proposals/policies/attitudes as racist.

so why don’t they do it ?

I’ve always assumed its because its a lot easier to not see racism when you’re a little racist yourself. That’s my explanation of why some people think african-americans should start voting republican.

It’s always entertaining — if not very edifying — to see people who are unalterably hostile to a party talk about what it needs to do to become more successful. But this thread is worth reading if only for Uncle Kvetch’s apparently unironic link to a HuffPo piece with the words “in the real world”.

BTW, seems relevant.

You’re dishonet and stupid about racism in the Republican Party compared to the Democratic Party, Brett, and you always will be.

But I’m supposed to be ignoring your lying stupidity. (And you’re NOT A REPUBLICAN!!1!!1!!, I know).

Le Bellmore @27:

Democrats have put a LOT of work into making Republicans a racist bogeyman in the eyes of blacks. And successfully, too

Aww, Brett, you’re too kind.

You might well be right that Democrats have put a lot of work into painting Republicans as racist thugs. Surely, though, the feckless ineffectual Dems would never have succeeded in this venture were it not for the tightly focussed, supremely competent help the Republicans have been giving them for decades now.

Actually, there’s an ongoing uproar within the Evangelical community, many of whom think there are more important things to do than obsess over the sex lives of others and the outcome thereof.

There are ten commandments and not one of them starts with “thou shalt not allow.”

Anyway, back to the questions posed.

Might the US be ready…

I think the electorate might be ready, but politics is so heavily regulated these days, in a deliberate effort to stifle 3rd parties, that it’s just not going to happen. The Democratic and Republican parties have conspired together to write their dominance into law.

What truly frightens me is that, having written the law to give two parties perpetual advantage over all challengers, if one of those two should for any length of time achieve the supermajority necessary to legislate without any cooperation from the other, they will take the next obvious step, and write one party rule into the law.

Before the Civil Rights act, racists were probably more likely to be Democrats than Republicans. There was a realignment in 1968 (the Southern Strategy) and most of the racist Democrats (e.g. Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms, but there were hundreds of them over the decades) switched the the Republican Party. Byrd, whom we hear about all the time, did not switch. Whether he was never a racist, whether he changed, or whether he decided that racism wasn’t as important as other things, he was willing to stay in the black people’s party.

Racism is a structural part of the Republican Party’s strategy. Even though there are plenty of racists in the Democratic Party too, racial inclusiveness is a structural part of the Democratic strategy. Voters for whom racism is the most important issue are Republicans or third party supporters, and the immigration bill may drive some of them out of the party — something they have good reason to worry about.

Bret is a stupid liar and will always be a stupid liar. He’s wrong and he probably knows he’s wrong, but he’ll never change his soundbites. His talk about reasonableness is a stupid lie too.

Tomorrow he’ll be saying exactky what he was saying yesterday, because he’s a stupid liar.

It might be worth considering whether something like the current Republican party is a feature and not a bug. A product of the constitution and its executive presidency — a temptation to personality cults like the one now. The electoral college voting system, in which the marginal value of regional strategies like the southern strategy is extremely high. The same for the Senate, since 2 senators from Alabama count the same as 2 senators from California. It may be that centrist-based politics is not a stable solution in a large and diverse country where the constitutional structure invites very selective appeals. And selective appeals work especially well when 50 percent of the electorate doesn’t vote.

I’d like to apologize to the Crooked Timber community for the unduly temperate nature of my above remarks about Brett. The God of Love has instructed me that I have to be nice. From here on out I’m aiming for comity and kumbayah and will avoid invective.

It’s cool, J.E., I’d hardly hang out at this site if I was easily offended by being called a stupid liar for noticing that racial quotas were racist. ;)

Henry can’t you ban Brett and give abb1 a single comment a day? Whatever your personal view of abb1’s factual statements, at least occasionally he is funny.

At the national level, the party that wins tends to be the party that manages to take more of the center without alienating the more extreme elements of their base. That tends to be the party that has been out of power for a while because the extreme elements are more willing to compromise after suffering under the administration of the other party. Face it, there’s more difference between Clinton and Kucinich than between Clinton and Giuliani.

With regard to the “Southern Strategy”: I think most people here overstate the importance of race in the demise of the “Solid South”. If you look at the voting trends, especially at the state and local level, where the real civil rights battles took place, you will find that the traditional populations remained strongly Democrat.

I grew up in a rural community in Texas during the 1970s and early 80s where the voter base and the state and local governments were dominated by Democrats. The few Republicans who lived in the area tended to be those who moved out from the slowly encroaching urban, cosmopolitan areas. The division tended to be more aligned with culture and class. Race was only one element and it was more associated with the traditional population than with the newcomers, but by the mid-1970s most of the civil rights legislation enacted at the national level was accepted as the law of the land and the unreformed, old-school racists that I knew personally tended to be so completely alienated by politics that they did not vote.

Wouldn’t the religious African-American community have already switched? I mean, in 2004 the Democrats were reputed to be gayer than a “Dancing With The Stars” costume and it didn’t make any difference.

I also accuse this thread of East Coast bias. Think “California Republican Party” and “Prop. 187.” Latinos were also supposed to be the next big Republican constituency.

I myself, having read about the election of 1928 (and 1960), wonder why any Catholic gets in bed with these Evangelicals, no matter how much they may hate hippies and homos.

It’s not entirely unsurprising that the party that discovered opportunity in the spurned racists of the south is now the proud exponent of torture, or that they retain the “economic royalists” Roosevelt warned us about.

Is it just stinginess that holds them together? The racists who can’t bear to think that one cent of their taxes might benefit the wrong person, and the greedy who can’t bear one cent of taxes?

BTW, I certainly don’t think anyone should be waiting for them to collapse under the weight of internal contradictions; instead all should be out there with hammers and wedges and crowbars and dynamite trying to prise the fuckers apart.

I can think of maybe four policies that have a clear progressive line, could be presented so as to get the suits on-side, and would make the 25%ers get their crazy on publicly and undeniably. It is clearly true that the spectacle of the 25%ers going ape is helpful, just like ANSWER, Alexander Cockburn and Co are helpful to the other side.

1) Immigration; earned regularisation. Being nicer to really poor people is good, the suits want them some immigrants, and the 25%ers will come over all Terri Schiavo.
2) Healthcare; a lot of big business is suffering with healthcare costs, like the auto makers, so this is an opportunity. The only people who really object are the 25%ers.
3) Energy; you can’t be a suit without electricity, and it’s an issue we love. Further, the 25%ers will be foxed, not knowing whether to give up hating the Muslims or denying climate change.
4) Science education; industry doesn’t want Patric k Henry grads, ya know. And the Christianist 25%ers will reliably go ape.

Sounds like a plan.

I’m really creeped out by the “big-business/libertarian” party idea, considering how unlibertarian big business has been and continues to be.

2) Healthcare; a lot of big business is suffering with healthcare costs, like the auto makers, so this is an opportunity. The only people who really object are the 25%ers.

and insurance companies aren’t suits ?
doctors aren’t suits ?
pharmacetical companies aren’t suits ?

I’m truly sorry to say this, but from our side of the Pond, your country looks in danger of becoming something like a new Soviet Union.

Sorry Brett Bellmore got restricted, ‘cuz I feel (almost) bad about calling him out on yet another point he (maybe) can’t respond to — which is:

Why is it that so many right-wing blog-commenters seem so absolutely unable to comprehend that even in a long-standing two-party system such as we have in the US, party ideologies/identifications/appeals might change over time (and have)? I mean, Brett, from all the posts of his I’ve read at various blogs, seems just marginally honest enough to eschew the lame old “Party of Lincoln vs. Party of Slavery” trope – but just barely.

It seems sometimes that virtually every discussion of the partisan/electoral/racial balances in the US as they exist in 2007, has to contain some inapt historical reference to “traditional” voting blocs, as if the Jim Crow mentality was/is utterly unable to change (D) to -R) in its organizational affiliation, and that “racism” is merely some quaint relic of the forgotten past.

For abb1 and engels, I’ll put my guess in Marxist terms.

I think that long-term, the coalitions will be the lumpenproletariat (government dependents), the intelligentsia, and the rentiers(people whose wealth is inherited–trust-funders), vs the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.

I could see a regional realignment, with Republicans essentially disappearing in the c.2000 blue states and being replaced by “Connecticut for Lieberman for Freedom for America for Democracy and a Pony” (© The Editors) and/or possibly a regional party to the left of the Democrats.

1. A two party system in a country as diverse as ours means that BOTH the Republicans and the Dems are loose coalitions of natural enemies kept together (barely) into a precarious armistice by the imperative to raise money and manage the electoral process. The Republicans consist of different tribes (evangelicals, business, libertarian, nativists, security hawks, etc) as do the Dems (you go on and name them for me). Both parties are fractured, yet neither is going to disappear anytime soon, wishful thinking and temporary electoral setbacks notwithstanding.

2. The balance of power within both parties is dynamic, and the identified national leadership may not follow the base that elected them, despite having used their energy in the campaign. Witness the impotent rage of the antiwar base at the Dem leadership inability / unwillingness to cut funds for Iraq or to bork Mukasey (sp?). Or see how the lip service top Republicans paid for the marriage amendment — which they probably knew is unrealistic and had no intention to pursue, once they got elected.

3. The sliver of the country between San Francisco and New York, overlooked as it is by our academic and journalistic lights, may not be aware that in liberal echo chambers the demise of the R party is felt to be imminent. Such is the tragedy of the left-wing intellectuals; they want to lead but the people are not following. The revolution started by Goldwater, arching through the Reagan years and completed in the Clinton era (welfare reform: yeah, baby!!) has been extraordinarily successful by any measure. American conservativism is different from the European version and neither ‘conservative’ nor ‘liberal’ mean the same when you cross the Atlantic. But fundamentally ours is a conservative nation and the coastal intellectuals (and the euro lefties with whom they commune) are divorced from this simple realization.

4. The best thing that can happen to the Republican party in the long run is to lose the 2008 pres election.
First, the Dems can get a fresh approach and will quickly get a taste of responsibility in a world that is quite different from the Clinton and Carter years. The Euro press the UN bureaucrats and other foreign standards that our liberal intelligentsia hold infallible will savage Hillary (or whomever) with the same invectives (and schadenfreude) they used on Bush (and Reagan before him). My observation is that for our foreign partners / rivals / enemies it makes no REAL difference who is in the WH. The partners will deal with us when it suits them, while the enemies hate us for who we are and what we stand for regardless of who the Pres is.

Second the Republicans can retreat to the think tanks and hopefully create a new set of policies and allow new leaders to emerge. Surely the Republicans have recently strayed from their bedrock small government, low taxes mythology; have not communicated well enough (and have mismanaged aspects of) the need to engage the world in a new, multi-decade, sustained but low footprint way (they tried but I don’t think they were effective); the optimistic message of Reagan is nowhere to be found.

Nevertheless, the need for a forward leaning security posture, managing globalization (and whithin it our main state-to-state relation, that with China), continuing to preserve free markets and the cultural optimism which is one of America’s most attractive soft powers are just some of the challenges that are here to stay. The Republicans will be back.

Wha…?

Oh c’mon, bi, spare me the befuddled act. “Engaging the world in a new, multi-decade, sustained but low footprint way” means the US spends the next 40 or 50 years invading and occupying other countries and killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people, while endlessly congratulating itself on being the Earth’s last best hope for fundamental human decency.

And you claim to be knowledgeable about American politics. Sheesh.

semi-godless shmibertarian party a la Ron Paul,

nothing shmibertarian about Ron Paul, he’s the real thing.

The Republican Party is viewed negatively in the area of race / black outreach due to its twin positions of 1) being against affirmative action and 2) for the reduction of welfare. These are cornerstone positions for Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson. Both these individuals are viewed in the media as African American Political Leaders. In response to this (perhaps correct) negative view, the Republican party has done the following. 1) Gone directly to the religious leaders in the black community, 2) been the party that has placed African Americans in the highest positions of political office. 3) Attempted to move legislation from race themed, to race neutral poverty themed. Outside of these items, the wedge issue available to the Republican Party is Vouchers. Vouchers are significantly favored by poor inner city voters of all races but seen negatively by the Democratic Party stronghold that is the Teachers Unions.