With the shredded corpse of the old Republican themes and coalitions having been body bagged and covered with lime, what’s next for the Republicans? What are the next big themes and ideas to define what it means to be a Republican? So far in facing up to Obama all I’ve seen is a lit of confusion, and lots of (on my local political level) puerile pettiness.
I’m a registered Republican who was so repulsed by Bush in the end I voted for Obama, so I’m not really sure where the party stands at this juncture. There really don’t seem to be any stars to guide by at this point.
I would love to see the emergence of a Republican party committed to fiscal conservatism and personal liberty, but realistically, I’m afraid that’s a pipe dream. I think they are terrified that if they abandon their base of traditional social conservatives they will continue to lose, perhaps even bigger than they lost in 2006 and 2008. So they will continue to pander to the religious right, and they will continue to break the bank on defense. Of course, what do I know? I’m a lefty, so maybe I don’t have much intuition into the mind of the Republican leadership.
“Still?” It’s been what, a couple of months? I think the OP may be underestimating the amount of work the Republican party has to do to get its goals and message in line with where people are. This is likely to take them a few years at least.
So far, and this is based only on what I hear on TV, it sounds like the Republicans saying the party needs to get with the new program are being shouted down by those who are saying they need to get back to their old basics. That’ll change and I’m not taking those statements on their own as proof the party is lost. Right now some prominent Republicans seem to think the country will be happy to vote for more Reagan-era rhetoric if it’s coming out of Sarah Palin’s mouth, and I think that’s way off. They need more than cosmetic changes. While the Democrats have already made some screwups in the last few months, the Republicans aren’t in a great position in the 2010 federal elections. 2012 is even farther away and frankly, three days into Obama’s term I don’t even want to think about it.
I’m mystified whenever I see questions like this raised, be it Democrat or Republican. When you look at history, is it more often the case that parties take a hard look at themselves to adjust their policies to the people, or do they simply wait for the political pendulum to swing their way again? I think it’s usually the latter, though they may add shiny new packaging so that consumers think it isn’t their grandfather’s conservatism/liberalism/whatever.
It has been over ten weeks now since the election and I think we have the answers about the direction of the Republican Party.
There will be no big reform. There will be be no new direction. There will be no facing of the demographic nightmare that the party of the Vanishing White Man faces over the next few decades.
Sure, Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota and one or two others have suggested such things… but the overwhelming majority of Republican office holders most decidely DO NOT want to change the Party that helped give them their daily bread and power. They are doing so all right and cannot see beyond that narrow goal of self preservation.
Remember, the Whigs once elected Presidents.
The majoritarian Republican view seems to be down to this:
RONALD REAGAN
Only problem is that it is not Morning in America anymore. If the 1980’s ever come around again, we could tell by the white disco outfits and really bad music. Until that happens, Reagan is not going to save anyone.
Somebody prominent on the right needs to (a) forcefully condemn the Bush Administration, and then (b) see political success as a result. There have been some tentative mutterings on (a) in the lower-middle ranks, but no strong and direct comments in the higher tiers, because nobody wants to suffer the opposite of (b).
In politics, you need a good ass kicking twice before you can learn anything. Midterms aren’t really ferocious, prominent ass kickings, so really, the GOP needs a good ass kicking in 2012. And they’ll get it.
This is a natural process in politics. After a serious but non-catastrophic defeat, you have a party left that’s licking its wounds but still has party stalwarts in office and in high position. The natural initial reaction is to assume one’s own rightness even in defeat, which means that the electorate failed, not that your party failed. The electorate did not vote for the right party. Therefore, they must not have been suitably informed of the truth. So, the answer is to hit them with the truth even louder.
It’s only when THAT fails that a party can do two things. One is that they’ll start shedding the old guard that lost the first time around; the other is that serious strategic decisions can be made. With new blood and new ideas the party can find a message that will appeal to enough voters to win.
Both parties have gone through this in our lifetimes but the Republicans are looking at a very bad time for a few years. My prediction is that in 2012 they will still be going the wrong way, convinced the American people were just wrong in 2008, and will run a really, really bad candidate, someone who appeals to the Republican core, like Mike Huckabee, but who isn’t taken seriously by anyone else, and he’ll have no realistic chance and Obama will win the election easily; since the Democrats are near-certain to carry both houses through 2010, 2012 will likely be another wipeout for the GOP.
But after that there is a chance the GOP could smarten up and move in a different direction. With a long string of losses, the people making up their brain trusts in 2015-2016 will not be the same people running the party today; the current crop will have lost their jobs or retired or moved on, and people in touch with the American electorate might have a chance to steer the party. The GOP needs a David Plouffe and a Howard Dean, but they will not be able to crack through to the top jobs until defeat in 2012 makes it necessary.
I don’t think condemning the Bush Administration is going to be very risky, especially not if you do it from the right. As far as economic policy goes, I’d guess they’re going to be waiting to see if the recovery happens. If it does, then not revising the economic policy platform will be disastrous.
Changing social policy and the policy towards immigrants is going to be more interesting to watch.
I think some people are waiting to see what happens when Sarah Palin reaches the trees at the end of the runway: whether she manages to boot-strap a new definition and direction for the party and becomes a front-runner and candidate, or by crashing and burning spectacularly enough that somebody else can rise from the ashes and say “okay, that’s not gonna work; here’s what we’re gonna do…”
The Bush Error saw the destruction of many things, and one of them was the Republican Party, aka The GOP. The base loved that he never compromised, and he still has approval from that base. Never mind it was the most fiscally irresponsible administration in the history of the nation, Bush was a culture warrior that the righties loved and still love. But the more moderate members of the party have now seen the light. As good a guy as McCain appeared to be by comparison to the righties, they will never again have someone as close to their fascist hearts as Bush.
The Republican Party will not itself die, but hang on to its organizational structure and continue to fight for the rich and powerful, and the media will continue to help it do so. I do not think that there will be soul searching among Republicans staying with the party. I think that Obama will attract a lot of registered Republicans to the Democratic Party and to becoming swing voters.
I think there may be a long period of Democratic Party dominance similar to what the Great Depression did to the two parties.
Bush was a much, much, much worse President than Hoover, Coolidge or Harding.
I don’t know about this. McCain got accepted because he knuckled under to the true right by picking Palin. And I think there are plenty of candidates they would love as much as Bush, perhaps Huckabee. He’s got religion, he’s a true believer in their extreme economic idiocy, but he has the ability to look like a kinder, gentler Republican.
When Harding was president there wasn’t that much to break. Who knows how he would have done in the face of a crisis?
When parties move, it’s in elections. So I don’t think that we can meaningfully answer the question “Is the Republican Party going anywhere?” or “Where is it going?” until 2010 at the earliest. And it may well be 2012 or 2014 before we see an interesting answer to either question.
Hey guys - here’s a crazy idea that the rest of the democratic world has been running with for a while: why not have more than two parties? Seriously, your political process is analogous to flipping a coin.
It’s an old-school notion that central planners get together and decide, “Well; what are we going to stand for?” and that that message then somehow becomes the (new) Core Themes for the Party.
It doesn’t happen that way.
Two things drive enough of a unified direction to get a Party moving.
First: How is the Opposition making out? Say the Dems spend billions Fighting AGW, billions more Creating Jobs and also establish a New Policy to End Naughty Interrogation of Terrorists. If we barely escape burning up, Get the Country Moving Again and stay safe, it don’t matter what the Republicans do. But if global temperatures take a nosedive while CO2 production soars, a new bunch of underemployed lazy bastards live off the public dole and we get bit in the a$$ by a bunch of terrorist attacks, Behold the Republican Platform.
Second: a charismatic leader. And it’s probably not Mrs Palin. Mr Bush’s reign was a gift to the Democrats. They may end up doing well with it, or (if history is a guide) re-gift it eventually.
The last time 3rd party won the White House was in 1860. It was the Republicans. Our electoral system does not favor 3rd parties. Indeed having 3 or more candidates winning electoral votes on a regular basis would result in nobody getting an electoral majority and the House of Representatives picking the President (under an arcane procedure were each state delegation get’s one vote regardless of size).