Mark Schmitt, who as Gentle Readers will recall is the utter cat’s pyjamas in the eyes of YHB, has an article in The American Prospect called Can Identity Politics Save the Right? It’s a fascinating piece, largely because Mr. Schmitt’s understanding of the history of American party politics is broad enough to keep him from getting too much caught up in the moment-to-moment vagaries. He can take his eye off the Presidential race and look at the condition of the national parties, which means the conditions of the state parties, and then look back to the Presidential race in that light. And he points out that the reason why the Republicans are so unpopular right now is because of all their failures. You know how I like to see that.
I do, however, wonder whether Mr. Schmitt is overstating the Republican Party’s problem. I think his point about the handful of successful “moderate” Republican governors with Democratic legislatures is interesting, and may possibly constitute a pattern, but really, there aren’t that many of them. And, of course, the obvious pattern for that is Mitt Romney, who Mr. Schmitt dismisses. I think Gov. Romney has got to be considered the favorite for the 2012 nomination, no? Whether or not Sen. McCain puts him on the ticket this year.
Mr. Schmitt also states that “Future governors, members of Congress, and policy initiatives will emerge from state legislatures…” I wonder how true this is. Y’all know that I like my Governors and Senators to have state legislative experience, but I wonder whether the trend toward statewide nominees from the business world, as well as state Attorneys General, prominent mayors and other non-legislative figures will mean that Republicans (perhaps particularly Republicans) will have other options available to them. For a long time, the state legislatures were seen as a farm team, but now… I really should do the research on that, and look at the last four or six years of nominees for Senator and Governor, seeing if they have legislative experience. See if there’s a difference between the two parties, as well. The information is all available, I just need to, you know, set down and do it. Maybe next week, right? Meanwhile, in the absence of relevant facts, I will opine that the trend is the way I sense it is, and if you don’t like it, do your own damn research, Pomeranz.
Anyway, perhaps it’s just my natural skepticism. Perhaps I am, as Mr. Schmitt accurately describes my Party, a trifle too risk-averse, a trifle too “easily spooked by the confident swagger of the Republicans”. I am inclined, when my observations and Mr. Schmitt’s observations differ, to yield to his.
I will say this, though. Mr. Schmitt quotes David Frum, in Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again, as saying that Democrats are “people who identify with the ‘pluribus’ in the nation’s motto, ‘e pluribus unum.’” Oh, yeah. That seems like another way to say the thing I’ve been saying for a long time, you know, about people being different, one to another, and that’s what makes the world interesting and fun? And how my Party is the Party that believes that, and that the Republican Party seems to believe that people being different, one to another, makes the world scary and dangerous. Well, my Party is the Party that identifies with the pluribus, that thinks that the pluribus is the important part. The Republican Party is focused on the unum. Now, different people will have different takes on the motto (for instance, I think that the motto should refer to a constant process of becoming rather than a past-perfect state of became), but I think that if you were to ask people which Party was the pluribus and which the unum, they wouldn’t have much difficulty choosing. The question Mr. Schmitt asks, and I think it’s a good one, is whether being the unum, in the absence of any conspicuous policy success, is enough to win elections.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.
I do, however, wonder whether Mr. Schmitt is overstating the Republican Party’s problem.
In a word, no.
I’d put the matter another way. Republicans are unpopular because of all of their failures, and their ideological commitments preclude them from formulating policies that could actually work, where “work” means “help a lot of American citizens or solve problems the American electorate recognizes as pressing.” The Republicans have long concealed their failures by a) hiding them by secrecy and fraud, b) blaming them on everyone but themselves, c) persuading people that the alternatives would be worse, d) suppressing the votes of those who oppose them, and e) cultivating a climate of irrational anger and fear. A meaningful minority of Americans are still captive to one or another of these tactics, but the number is diminishing, so the Republican party can no longer use its well-honed political tools in place of policy tools, and its policy toolbox is empty. Having no policies that the majority can take seriously is a serious problem.
The problem is worse than that, however. What kind of politicians gravitate towards a party which succeeds on the basis of an unsavory battery of political strategies (including the artificial strength of a lock-step approach to legislative battles) while advancing failed policies? Not, for the most part, the alert, empathetic, creative ones. The Republican Congressional delegations have few members, as far as I can tell, who are good for much besides following orders and spouting party lines. The real political leaders of the conservative movement and the Republican party have all been around since the early 1970s, when they hatched their long-term schemes to grab power out of resentment against the success of the Civil Rights movement, the anti-war movement, and Watergate. Rove, Cheney, Norquist, Black, etc. date to this era. Who are their successors? These men have not cultivated political leaders in bringing politicians into federal politics: they have cultivated Ronald-Reagan knock-offs who serve as the swaggering, charismatic front-men for the secretive cabal of cronies who actually run things. George W. Bush is the tattered exemplar of this political type, and his unpopularity shows how the type has become outmoded. Mitt Romney’s finish is not yet cracked and peeling the way Our Only President’s is, but his handsome demeanor is at best the lipstick on the pig that is conservative policy. He is not someone with the political or the policy ideas to revitalize the conservative movement and the Republican party.
In all likelihood, we will see the rise of politicians who will revitalize both these entities, but I don’t believe that these politicians are now on the national stage. I agree with Mr. Schmitt that The Republican party will need to redefine itself in order to find success on the national level, and there is no visible sign of what that redefinition will look like or that there are any Republican leaders who are capable of envisioning or effecting such a redefinition. Those alert to the dangers of the conservative movement’s attacks on democracy will do well to watch closely for signs of such a redefinition’s emergence, of course. Much would depend on how a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress joined with a Democratic President in the White House (and I fervently hope we will see both after this next election) choose to govern, and how the factions of the Big Tent Party get along with one another.
Perhaps I should add that I think people who revolutionize politics (like FDR, the Republican cabal, and [I think] Barack Obama) are people who have devoted their lives and their considerable intellects to the practice of politics. Business-people brought in by a party to run for political office are not those sorts of people, so I don’t see Republican recruitment from outside the political sphere helping them solve their problems, since the party needs radical change.
I also note that, at present, their recruitment efforts are not being particularly successful, anyway. It is not clear to me, given the failed fiscal and economic non-policies of the Republican party, their recent trend of electoral failure, and their problems with fundraising, why even an egotistical, narcissistic rich-and-successful businessperson would find it attractive to be recruited to run for office (presumably spending a lot of his or her own money to do so) as a Republican candidate. Becoming a centrist Democrat or just staying in business seem more promising angles.