It may be premature to claim to be hearing the Death Knell for the Republican Party, but unless they pull off some miracles soon we may see a long steady decline that will run for decades. I make this claim not as an exercise in over-confident liberal thinking (which Democratic bloggers are notorious for) but as a thesis based on a what I believe is a particularly nasty House of Cards they have built.
Specifically, I claim that the Republican Party has paid a dear price for their totalitarian control of government over the last 10-15 years. For the Republicans, maintaining control of government has become not only the means but the end as well. Some examples:
Catering to Christian Fundamentalists
The famous Karl Rove strategy that got Bush to win the 2000 primary against John McCain was embracing the base—the radical right—at the alienation of the moderates. Bush turned to this strategy (successfully) to re-win the election in 2004, completely dumping his original moniker of “Compassionate Conservative” forever. The Congress followed this lead with an obsession with divisive issues like the Terry Schiavo case.
Although “the base” became a reliable army capable of mobilizing voters, it has eroded support of moderate Republicans as evidenced by the extreme losses in the Northeast and Midwest states. Places like Upstate New York and New England were famous for being able to sustain amicable coexistence between regional Democrats and Republicans, but those moderate Republicans are starting to find their ideals and their party (what it has become) unreconcilable. The result: the Republican Party is rapidly become the Party of the South.
Embracing K Street Lobbyists and Big Government Spending
DeLay had a brilliant (short-term) strategy of completely coupling Washington D.C.’s “K Street” of lobbyists with the Republican Party, allowing a massive influx of money to support Republican candidates in elections. The cost, however, has been a revolting explosion of spending and ever-present “earmarks” that is giving any fiscal conservative an ulcer.
If the U.S. Government approaches bankruptcy in the near future (10-20 years) it will be impossible for Republicans to blame it on “Tax and Spend Democrats”. And again, fiscal conservatives will find it harder and harder to recognize a party they once loved. Reagan Republicans will be tempted to embrace the Clintonian moderate branch of the Democratic Party.
Alienating Hispanics
In what might be the greatest bone-headed move this year, desperate Republicans hoped a quick-fix of demonizing hispanic immigrants to rally the bigot-base would minimize their political bleeding. The result, they lost the House and Senate anyway and at the same time threw away the future of the most rapidly-growing segment of the population. It would take a miraculous course correction to get Hispanics to identify with the Republicans.
Demonizing Gays
Okay, I’ll admit that there have been some short-term gains mobilizing social conservatives at the polls by passing so many statewide anti-gay-marriage initiatives. I’m surprised by the success of this initiative, and I’ll admit that the Democrats have suffered electorally for standing by their rainbow contingency. But I think this early pain by the Democrats can be looked at as an investment in the future.
One thing that is irrefutable: younger generations are overwhelmingly supportive of gays and lesbians. If you look at demographic breakdowns of the support of gay-issues, there’s a radical difference between older and younger Americans. The Republicans have cemented their anti-gay identity so hard that it will take decades to erase that identity. And as anti-gay sentiment becomes as outdated as racism is today (Who still admits to being opposed to mix-race marriages?) there will be all these embarrassing really-hard-to-remove state amendments lingering for a long time.
The Republican Party still has a racist overtones today despite their attempt to promote black politicians in local elections, and that’s due to Nixon’s Southern Strategy. Imagine if the Republicans of the 1960’s had also enacted 30-40 anti-mixed-marriage state amendments as well?
Sacrificing Local Elections
By straining their moderate contingency and leaning heavily on gerrymandered protection of their Congress, Republican leaders have allowed Howard Dean to do mortal damage with his “50-State Strategy”. I don’t know if you’ve been following carefully, but a lot of powerful Democrats have been furious with Howard Dean for focusing so much of the party’s money on state legislative elections. They argue that the Democrats could have picked up as much as 10 more U.S. House seats if it weren’t for his strategy.
But what we’ve observed last week was not only the taking of the House and Senate, but overwhelming shifts of state legislators and governor seats to the Democrats. Why is this important? Because in 2010 all the voting district lines will once again get redrawn. Note, the Republicans have lost the House despite the fact that they mostly got to draw the voting district lines in 2000 and were able to produce an artificial majority. Unless the Democrats become suddenly unpopular in the next four years, the 2010 census will create a huge additional disadvantage to the Republicans.
So what does this spell out in the grand timeline? Let me provide a single scenario, that although not certain, is extremely possible:
Iraq continues to deteriorate, destabilizing the entire Middle East. The Bush Administration, despite new (and possibly even competent) blood, is unable to turn this around. Radical fundamentalist muslims take the advantage and with one or two successes create a lasting impression that Republicans are in fact not better at dealing with terrorism. The economy slows or evens falls into another recession, whether caused by inflation, a crashing housing market, or rising gas prices (very likely with a destabilized Middle East) and Republicans are seen as losers on almost all fronts.
Even in the best of circumstances, this leads to either slight or even heavy losses in overall Republican popularity. Democrats control many more state governments and they get to redraw the district lines that Republicans had drawn in 2000. The 2010 census allows Democrats everywhere, emboldened by DeLay’s Machiavellian gerrymandering example, to viciously cement an additional 20-40 incontestable seats in the House. Such a loss would suppress the Republicans (if the last census is an indication) for an additional 5-10 years.
But wait! Around 2020 we will start seeing some remarkable demographic shifts. There will be substantially more Hispanics and more gay-tollerant or even gay-friendly young voters who will still react to the anti-gay, white-bigot overtones that the Republicans have so effectively cemented into history.
Conclusion
My conclusion is not that the Republican Party is dead, or even that it is going to die. All things shift. The Democrats built a huge wave of resentment in the country that led to their stinging defeat in 1994. Both parties are corruptible, and if unchecked can go from popular to unpopular in a surprisingly short amount of time.
The Republicans have one opportunity for partial reconciliation, and that would be if John McCain won the 2008 election. He is such a dedicated spending hawk that he, along with a cooperative Democratic congress, could reverse much of the Bush/DeLay stupid spending spree. Democrats would be forced cooperate because they hate the Republican earmarks as much as McCain does, but the President would generally receive all the recognition. Americans, hungry for a Clintonian-style economic stewardship, would deliver a lot of much-needed forgiveness to the Republicans just for that. Republicans might even be able to recapture the (misleading) title of fiscal conservatism.
If however the Democrats win the Presidency and then proceed to exercise restraint and responsibility (a huge ‘if’, and probably even a pipe dream) they may enjoy political dominance for decades to come. Their job won’t be easy, for Bush has created a fiscal, environmental and foreign-policy mess of incredible (let’s hope not insurmountable) proportions. Also, if they are in stewardship of the country when the unavoidable issue of a bankrupt Social Security system hits—something Bush has accelerated by spending Clinton’s hard-earned surpluses and adding a hemorrhaging Medicaid drug benefit—they will get the blame for reversing much of the classic New Deal entitlements that FDR had created. That would be an ironic legacy.