2008 “Why the G.O.P. must die”
posted by on July 7 at 21:54 PM
Ok, Anthony, I’ll bite.
The July 2008 Harper’s (“Lamar, where’s my Harpers?”) has one of the more honest—and therefore both terrifying and fascinating—discussions on the state of governance and politics in the US today.
The entire article is premised on reality: Decades of Republican and conservative rule have left the country—and by extension much of the world—in abject disaster. No energy policy. Endless imperial war. Economic, social, environmental and cultural decline.
Some choice passages:
SCHALLER: What’s interesting to me about the way Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama present themselves to Democrats is that Obama talks about building a governing majority, and Hillary Clinton talks about how you need a knife fighter—somebody who knows how things work, who can win bureaucratic politics. She starts from the premise that we are stuck forever in this kind of 49–49 America. He starts from the premise that Democrats can get to 54 percent or 55 percent, in which case they don’t need to be knife fighters…BAKER: That could just be a matter of self-fulfilling prophecy. The very essence of this duopoly is that neither side has much of an interest in breaking it. Karl Rove sought a “permanent Republican majority,” but only just that. He was perfectly happy to govern with a 50.1 percent majority.
MITCHELL: That suggests that there will be no change in the general drift of things, which is good news for people who like the ways things are drifting but bad news for people who want change. Is there a way to break the deadlock?
BAKER: Well, as the economists say, positive change requires creative destruction. Just beating the Republicans will be a huge help in the short term. It is necessary. But real change in the long term is going to require some kind of knock-out blow.
This exchange is one of the most insightful in the entire piece:
MCCONNELL: The problem is that Democrats have become a party in which liberal social attitudes are required in leadership positions while support for liberal economic policies is entirely optional.BAKER: In fact, Democrats seem to have come to the point where they run on economic issues and win on economic issues, and then after coming into office they tell the electorate, “Well, you were being awfully childish about this—of course you aren’t going to get those things.”
MCCONNELL: Yes, and reversing that order of priority might drive a wedge into the G.O.P. The Republicans have come so close to failure that Democrats could achieve a sort of counter-alignment simply by becoming more diverse on cultural issues. They still march in lockstep over abortion, for instance, and if the party were more welcoming to working-class voters who are pro-life or culturally conservative, such voters might be more inclined to vote their economic interests, which are almost certainly Democratic.
And before we beat up on the Democrats too much:
PHILLIPS: A major Republican weakness that doesn’t get noticed is their inability, despite all their macho muscle-flexing, to bring foreign wars to a successful finish. Our whole involvement in the Middle East, from the 1970s through the 2020s or however long it goes on, is going to do for the United States what two world wars did for Britain. It is a disaster. But it never gets examined this way.
And finally despair:
MITCHELL: All right. Say the Democrats blow it for the third time in a row. I imagine many voters see them as at least being a check on Republicans. And if Democrats fail even in that limited role, it seems like they won’t really have much justification left for existing. Would Republicans be able to force them into some kind of realignment?BAKER: Republicans won’t have much to work with. They have been engaged in the headlong pursuit of disaster in so many areas—foreign policy, trade, the environment, the economy, etc.—that the entire bloated framework of modern American life is at risk. Really their only shot is to lose the White House and then blame Democrats for every single one of their own errors.
PHILLIPS: Certainly if Democrats take office without having prepared the way for making hard legislative choices, it is likely they are not going to be terribly successful. And if they’re not terribly successful, Republicans will have a chance to get out from under Bush, who is just deadweight at this point. If Republicans have two years of Democratic ineptness to run against in the 2010 midterms, they’ll have a shot.
And finally some mixed hope:
SCHALLER: It may take a crisis for a realignment to occur—environmental collapse, economic collapse, imperial overextension, whatever.MITCHELL: And yet this war, one of the most epically colossal failures in our history, doesn’t seem to be doing the trick.
MCCONNELL: I’m a little surprised that there are so few visible signs of social unrest or protest anywhere, peaceful or non-peaceful.
PHILLIPS: Generally speaking, there has been an unwillingness among the former world economic powers to understand what was happening, so they basically pretended that all was well. The political history of those economic powers as they peaked and declined was that they couldn’t mobilize a new coalition to implement serious reforms.
MITCHELL: Tom mentioned the amazing number of small contributions going to Democrats. That may be throwing good money after bad, but it certainly is an expression of desire for change.
You should read the entire exchange—the single best summation of now I’ve read and none too kind to the G.O.P.
This is fabulous. Thank you!
Why are you pointing to a link that requires a paid subscription? Also, "none TOO kind", please.
Organ Leroy--
Thanks for the correction.
And why link to an article that requires a paid subscription? It's awesome. That's why.
A long time ago, people were paid to write--particularly if their writing was interesting, carefully researched and insightful. Harper's Magazine is anachronistic in this sense--respecting the contributors by requesting readers pay. A year subscription can be had for about ten dollars.
Decades of Republican and conservative rule have left the country—and by extension much of the world—in abject disaster.
This is the kind of bitter, hallucinatory, negative thinking that makes the left lose elections. This is the best time in the history of the world to be alive. And things are probably going to get better and better, but all the left has to offer is hoping for a "crisis of realignment".
This "insightful" piece is one of the most boneheaded things I've ever read.
Good grief. Please, go with the fuzzy-wuzzy Obama "hope" and "change" stuff instead of this hysterical garbage.
jmr--
I've just returned from Detroit. I respectfully disagree on your "things are probably going to get better and better" statement.
"Decades of Republican and conservative rule"? Except that the Democrats didn't lose complete control of Congress until... 1994! If you think the Dems haven't been complicit in neoliberalism, or in warmaking, or anything else that has made this country an "abject disaster", then you're missing something.
As for McConnell's idea, which you highlighted in bold, that the Dems should just drop abortion rights (and presumably gay rights and other things that keep the Party from being "culturally conservative") in order to save the planet, that's crap too. The Dems don't represent working class voters- neither party does. And much of what passes for cultural conservatism isn't going to change that. Cultural conservatism in the US is predominantly bootstraps evangelism, not social gospel Christianity. It meshes far more closely with a theocracy than with a welfare state.
Oh, Jonathan- I'd totally do you if you dressed up in that man drag outfit again; Something about you being so liberal and yet owning that raw masculinity... It's so tragic that you're also so... straight.
Next time you feel like owning your machismo and knowing another liberal man, I'm game!
Thanks Jonathan, that's what I'm talking about.. BIG PICTURE.
To me, the most shocking thing about the GOP versus the Democrats is the gross fiscal irresponsibility of the former, set against the surprising restraint shown by the latter. This has been going on for thirty years now, so it's not a blip; it's the way they operate. Reagan was the most fiscally radical president we've ever had, and Bush II the most irresponsible, while Clinton is the only president we've had in decades who could control the budget. Now McCain's proposing -- that word "proposing" should be in quotation marks, because he's doing it so casually, even accidentally -- to DOUBLE the yearly federal deficit. There isn't a serious economist in the world who can support McCain's radical and out-of-control ideas. He would have us spending half our budget in debt servicing, and the minute China, who is buying most of this debt, gets nervous, which would be the day McCain got elected, we are all in serious, serious trouble.
To me, that's it. It's not the size of the deficit; it's the total lack of seriousness the Republicans have on the subject -- on all subjects, really. You've got the social conservatives who just cannot bring themselves to admit that the sky is blue, and I understand that, sort of; but I absolutely do not understand the casual recklessness of the Bush/Cheney regime. And that's exactly the part of Bush's policies that McCain is proposing to continue. His "well, I don't really know anything about this stuff, but I'm sure we'll be fine if we just slash taxes some more, and buy fewer paperclips" attitude is profoundly unserious and profoundly unhealthy. I'd say it's un-American as well, but history says I'm wrong; irresponsibility IS the American way. But we can't afford it anymore.
Oh. My. God.
There are people who believe you don't need a knife fighter if you have 55% (or for that matter, 100%)?
And there are people who think people like this are brilliant???
I've got a ba-a-ad feeling about this.
Let’s enumerate Jonathan’s rather adolescent and sweeping generalizations.
Economic decline? -- Really? More Americans than ever own their own homes. More minorities than ever graduate from college. Despite periodic recessions and a huge deficit, the stock market and other investments continue upward. Even now with high gas prices, there hasn’t been one quarter of negative growth and the economy is remarkably resilient and adaptive and America is the most philanthropic country on the planet.
So Jonathan, your punditry would be so much elevated is you think before you type.
Meanwhile, Canada has a budget surplus, has had gay marriage for a long time, has gays in the military serving openly, and is investing in real energy and transportation projects ...
Yeah, we're not doing that well.
What fnarf@9 said.
if the party were more welcoming to working-class voters who are pro-life or culturally conservative, such voters might be more inclined to vote their economic interests, which are almost certainly Democratic.
You mean like they used to before Johnson got all civil rights on them? Yeah...I suppose. I love the way "social conservative" is used as a euphemism for bigot these days. Jesse Helms was a social conservative from what I hear in the news media lately.
Krugman said some time ago, the working class has not turned away from the democratic party. Southern whites have turned away from the democratic party. But if you read Nixonland you see that wasn't just a southern white thing. The republicans were in tatters after Goldwater's defeat. Then came the Voting Rights Act and anti-discrimination law in housing and employment and a lot of white solidly democratic enclaves in places like Chicago suddenly started voting republicans into office. The only way they're coming back, that generation of them anyway, is if the party became something Jesse would have wanted to come back to.
The issues they yap about these days, like abortion and gay rights and national security and the war, are fungible. They're voting their tribe now, not the issues. That's how they can essentially vote to kick themselves in the teeth economically year after year. They're voting their tribe.
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