GOP needs a summit to decide its own fate
The Republican Party appears to be stuck not in the midst of a presidential nominating process, but in the middle of a messy, protracted and increasingly public divorce.
Tensions within the GOP have existed forever. Many conservatives reviled Dwight Eisenhower. Many moderates thought Barry Goldwater was an unmitigated disaster, foisted upon them by a clueless rabble.
But throughout the post-War era, the big camps within the Republican movement — evangelicals, libertarians, fiscal conservatives, big corporations, and so on — have been held together by outsized leaders (Ronald Reagan) and big ideas (‘No new taxes.’).
There was also a sense that most factions would rally around the standard-bearer who could demonstrate the most viable electability.
But in 2012, that formula isn’t working anymore. There are too many centrifugal forces, too many centers of gravity, too many celebrities and too few leaders.
There’s also a growing sense of real, toxic animus between the different camps.
We saw some of this in the North Country in 2009 when Doug Hoffman’s conservative backers went after Republican moderate Dede Scozzafava. Things got nasty. Scozzafava was accused of bestiality, for Pete’s sake.
We’re seeing the same thing now on the national stage. Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, and Newt Gingrich have so little commonality, so little shared ground that it’s hard to see them as part of the same party.
There’s been talk of a brokered GOP convention this summer. As things stand, it really could look like the Democratic Party’s disastrous melt-down convention in 1968.
Here’s how the New York Times described it:
“If the [Republican] convention becomes as disorderly as the primaries, it will reflect a party consumed by anger and frustration, led around by its most extreme base, and lacking any sense of forward direction.”
Ugly? Sure. But maybe a 1968-style convention is exactly what Republicans need, a cathartic blow-out that clears the air and helps the conservative movement redefined itself.
After ’64, the Democrats got busy moderating their message, shifting to the center, building a big tent that included a lot of true progressives but also included small business owners, working families, people of color, and so on.
This shift to the middle infuriated a lot of hard-core liberals (and yes, a lot of conservatives still think Democrats are socialists) but the end result is a palpably stronger, broader left-of-center movement.
In 2012, Democrats dominate with every growing future-looking demographic in American society, from city-dwellers to Hispanics to women voters and the y0ung.
Republicans, meanwhile, lead in all the shrinking communities, the communities of yesterday: rural whites, small towns, the elderly.
So maybe it’s time at long last for Republicans to have their own big-C Conversation.
Take this moment past the endless punditry and jockeying. Look each other in the eye and decide what their “forward direction” should be.
This process would require a lot of courage and leadership. Rules would have to be changed. Fringe elements of the Republican Party which have absorbed so much power in the last twenty years would have to be confronted.
Party leaders would have to find ways to harness, or at least temper, the outsized influence of all the hangers-on, from the billionaire Koch brothers to the constellation of conservative media titans to the Super PACs and Sarah Palin-esque icons.
That’s a tall order for a Republican Party that is led by Reince Priebus, a clearly competent and thoughtful RNC chairman who nonetheless lacks the heft and national stature that are required in this historic moment.
But ultimately, the Conversation isn’t all that complicated.
GOP leaders need to hang a chart up on the wall that shows the kind of Americans who are already dominating big elections, demographic groups that are growing fast and that currently view the Republican Party with distrust bordering on disdain.
Those leaders have to make it clear to the party’s base — overwhelmingly white, rural, male and high-income — that their embattled tribe simply can’t be the future. The math doesn’t work. The numbers don’t add up.
From these “facts on the ground” all else in this painful discussion must follow.
Another big hurdle, of course, is that many in the core of the conservative movement see modern American politics in apocalyptic terms.
The Glenn-Beckian notion that these could well be the end times for our Republic is widely held in the GOP base, so the idea that it might be time to sit down and think about how to broaden the party’s appeal just may not fly.
But it seems like it’s time for the party’s leaders to give it a shot.
Take the conversation away from pundits (like me). Begin to wrestle with the big questions internally and see what a path forward might look like.
Conservatives have been wringing their hands over Barack Obama, arguing that our democracy might not survive a second term.
I think the real threat to our democracy is the potential unraveling (or radicalization) of one of our two great political parties.
We can survive a bad president or two. History has proved as much.
But the country needs the Party of Lincoln, the party that saved our nation during the Civil War, the movement that gave us Roosevelt and Eisenhower and Reagan.
Maybe it’s time for Republican leaders to stop worrying about Mr. Obama and look to their own house.
Tags: analysis, election12, politics
The Democratic “meltdown” convention was 1968, not ’64 which was the year the GOP self-immolated. Remember John Chancellor “somewhere in custory?”
Corrected – thanks, Fred.
Brian, NCPR
!968 was the meltdown, but 1964 was an interesting precursor. In 1964, there were two Mississippi delegations, the segregationist old-guard establishment Dixiecrats, and the insurgent civil right movement Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. The DNC refused to seat the insurgents, but did allow them to speak at the convention.
Four years later, most of the Dixiecrats had jumped to the Republican Party, a manifestation of Nixon’s successful ‘Southern Strategy’.
“Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, and Newt Gingrich have so little commonality, so little shared ground that it’s hard to see them as part of the same party.”
No way. Ron Paul is the only truly different candidate of the four. The other three all hold fundamentally the same beliefs. Sure, their emphases are different (Romney-economy, Santorum-theocracy, Newt-militarism), but if you look at their actual positions on key issues, they’re mostly the same. It’s personality and emphasis and perception (elitists vs ‘ordinary guy’), not actual substance, that divides them. The whole contest has been about those three trying to see who can be most extreme in pandering to the far right.
too many celebrities and too few leaders.
Amen to that.
Pitiful, isn’t it?
I do have to comment that I wonder what it would look like if the tables were turned and we were witnessing Democrat candidates. Not sure if it would be much different.
For the record Kathy, I gave you a “like.”
With Obama pushing the tent stakes left to the extent he is able, the gap between the far right and the far left is widening.
This is making room for left-center, right center group that currently occupy space either on the right leaning Dems or left leaning GOPs.
Maybe a third party will emerge. It should be a spinoff.
Dede, Mitt, Hillary, Andrew, Colin, and throw in David Brooks for their press secretary.
With the donkeys on the left, and the elephants on the right, they could adapt roadkill as their mascot.
adopt, not adapt
When the Republicans picked up the Dixiecrats, their problems began with their success.
Governments need to operate like businesses and businesses are primarily “what works” entities. They are not concerned with what anyone’s religious beliefs are. As long as you can produce a product on the production side or consume a product are there only concerns.
The same rules should apply for government.
Let the religions worry about social issues. Religions don’t produce anything but they do consume an awful lot of tax free dollars.
JDM, you can keep repeating it all you want but it isn’t a magic spell. Obama (or O’Bama for the holiday) is a solid centrist.
Isn’t what is happening in the Republican Party called Democracy? A long primary race, voting and argument over what really matters to the party, no party bosses basically saying this is what we believe and that is it here is the candidate.
I think it is a healthy thing.
We don’t need a summit; that is more elitism frankly, we need to capture what the conservative movement and voter believe and want to do, from the bottom up.
But if people think the elderly are a voting block of the past they have not looked at our future demographics.
Pundits and frankly Democrats; can’t guide the “Party of Lincoln” to look like they want the Party to look; maybe the future of the party is a very right wing socially conservative party? So what; if that party can’t win any elections it will shrink and go away if it has a major appeal than that appeal needs to be recognized electorally.
I think this is more about the power of independent voters than it is the unraveling of the Republican Party.
I think the worry over the party is way to pre-mature.
Sorry to go on so long. One last thing; we have entire states, entire regions of the country in fact that are politically dominated and very successfully run by very conservative Republicans, the second biggest state in the Union is a very conservative Red state and the people in that state in general are very happy with what is happening.
I don’t see how that is going to change very much very soon?
The biggest thing the Republican Party needs to do to succeed into the future is capture more of the Hispanic vote, but I think they can and will do that.
“…overwhelmingly white, rural, male and high-income — that their embattled tribe simply can’t be the future.”
Maybe they are counting on the golden rule “He who has the gold rules”.