I have one very conservative friend, who is politically libertarian and personally fundamentalist, who expects and hopes such will happen. (His version is one that he believes would attrack a fair number of independents and disaffected Democrats.) Up until this week I thought his prediction was extremely unlikely. Now I am a bit less sure. The gulf and animosity between the Tea Party contingency and the more establishment GOP seems to reaching towards that level. Traditional conservatives seem to be getting fed up with appeasing the enthusiastic and energetic Tea Partiers among them and seeing untold numbers of future election cycles destroyed as a result.
Not interested in what the result of such would be in this op, just if you think it might occur.
I don’t think it will occur. It might though. I sure hope so. But the Tea Party is functionally it’s own thing now anyway. Yes they are still technically Republicans, but oddly enough, they are Republican in name only, in the sense that they have their own caucuses and really do not listen to the national party at all for any reason.
I guess what I’m saying is, the Tea Party breaking off and officially becoming its own thing really wouldn’t change the situation much from what we have right now. They are effectively their own party already.
But they’re not their own party already, and it would *drastically *change the situation if it happened. If they broke into two, you’d potentially have two presidential candidates from the right, dividing the conservative vote, all but guaranteeing the WH for the Dems. If they broke in two, Nancy Pelosi would be Speaker.
It would take one side getting fed up enough with the other to actually quit the party. The old guard doesn’t have the balls to quit the party they grew up with and love. But they also don’t seem to have the cajones to stand up to the TPers enough to make the TPers want to venture out on their own.
So no, I don’t think it will happen. I think the Tea Party will just continuously shit the party right until it’s exactly how they want it.
I sure hope so. Then the sane Republicans will feel no need to appease the Tea Party, and could form a coalition with the Democrats to marginalize the Tea Party. All it would take is 17 sane Republicans in the house and 6 in the senate for a supermajority. The Republicans would be able to get some concessions to maintain the Coalition, and the Tea Partiers can all gnash their teeth and gouge their eyes out when they don’t get their way.
One is that a political party can be broad enough to hold not just diverging but antithetical opinions. From 1860 to 1968 there two effectively two Democratic parties - the northern wing and the southern wing. They actually ran separate presidential candidates in 1860, 1948, and 1968. They were like parties in a coalition government: they united to form a majority but they had different beliefs and purposes.
The southern Democrats broke away from the rest of the party after Civil Rights and were absorbed by the Republicans. That’s much less a possibility today. The Dems and the Reps overlapped one another considerably, with conservative, moderate, and liberal wings, so there was a coherent party to move to.
That isn’t the case today. The moderate Republicans are not going to join the Democrats. If the party breaks, it breaks into two minority parties. That’s counter to the other historical trend, in which third parties are not stable and don’t last, because the only thing that keeps a political party together in this country is electoral success. Both halves of the former Republicans probably could have local successes, but parties are national and top down.
There is no long-term viability for the Tea Party wing. The demographics are exactly what they are fighting. They are disproportionately older, whiter, and more rural in a country that is trending heavily in the other direction.
If there is a break, it would be temporary. Mainstream Republicans still have the numbers and the power. A break would drive power to the Democrats and that means that the dissidents would fold, because there are never enough purists to fight without rewards. But I don’t really expect a break. The Tea Party is simply too small to go it alone, and the consequences for the rest of the party are too huge to let that happen. Remember, that despite the supposed power of the Tea Party after 2010 I said there was 100% chance of Romney being the nominee, and I said that six months before the first primary. Power is power. The Tea Party is using it right now, but they will get beaten here and the establishment will take every step they possibly can to ensure that they won’t have it again.
It wouldn’t make sense for either side to make their own party, they’d immediately become irrelevant. This won’t happen either, but if a major reorganization were to take place it seems more likely the RINOs would take the hint and actually become Democrats. So there’d be dillusioned libs on the left, a single giant corporate blob party in the middle instead of two, and the remains of the Tea Party on the right still under the Republican banner.
I think we are seeing the high water mark for the Tea Party. The shutdown is not going to end without the utter capitulation of one side or the other. I believe the Republican leadership will blink, and the Tea Party will go ballistic, splitting the GOP into two irrelevant entities. Yes, it is suicide, but that has been the Tea Party end game for some time now. They are irrational, and irrational people do irrational things like commit political suicide.
I don’t think there will be an official “split,” but when this era of government is talked about in the history books (and by GOP leadership) in 100 years, I’m sure “The Tea Party” will be talked about as if it were a separate party that fought against the noble Republicans of the day on gay rights, women’s rights, minority rights, and health care.
Two sets of polls that may inform some on the subject …
The first just demonstrates that overall approval of the GOP has gotten pretty much as low as it gets. 62 to 32% unfavorable to favorable rating. (Mind you the opinion of the Democratic Party has dropped too, but not as low … to 52/43 unfavorable/favorable.)
The other informs about the splits within the party and dates back to July. Two thirds of those who identify as Rebuplican feel the party needs to make major changes but there is no broad agreement on what direction those changes need to go. More (54%) say more conservative than say more moderate positioning (40%). As far as compromising goes (again, before this episode)
As far as the Tea Party goes:
If I was a dogmatic Tea Partier that last bit would give me some reasons to believe that my group would be the one to survive a split. I would believe that my group is the single largest group and the most engaged/active. Half of those who are not “with me” are moderates who hold us back on our messaging and the other half are conservatives who will eventually join us. We (I could get myself to believe) are the strongest and largest group of our party. Compromising what I believe in in hopes of winning is not working. At best I’ll elect someone who I strongly disagree with … a moderate in conservative clothing. Breaking off and putting up someone who is willing to do what I really want may be a long shot of winning but it is better than having no chance of my positions becoming the law of the land that I have working these establishment GOPers … and give us a standard bearer who can really message our worldview and others will come round.
Following that line of thinking I’d look at the Democrats and thinking that loyalty to them isn’t so great either. More than half unfavorable. The youth can be won to a libertarian POV. I could tell myself and as a Tea Partier likely believe that Hispanics don’t vote often enough to matter. Without Obama on the ticket Blacks will stay home too. Surely everyone will see how incompetent HRC has been and how a HRC or a Biden is the past while a Paul is the future!
We’ve now heard statements made in other threads on this board from some conservatives that they’d rather have no GOP than one that compromises too much.
Here’s this take from a hard right perspective in the Washington Times.
Big Business is recognizing that the Tea Party is something that threatens them and that GOP leadership while sympathetic to their positions and interests cannot deliver much in the current environment; the Democrats may be slightly less sympathetic but are at least more reasonable and predictable … lesser of evils and all, they are giving up on the GOP.
Here’s some other talk back from July. A comment after you read the quote.
The splits are deep and the label “conservative” right now means many different things to different people and I am not just in reference to degree. Multiple factions want to patent the phrase “true conservative” and believe that their views are the foundation of the party without which the party cannot stand. And “moderate” being part of that discussion? Pretty much the one thing that the different flavors of conservative can agree on is distaste for them, even though moderate Republicans likely outnumber any single flavor of Conservative.
Any of this get anyone to reconsider thier dismissal of a split actually occurring?
I don’t know how these recent crises will play out but the GOP Presidential primary process will be something to watch and IMHO a third party run by either a Cruz or a Paul, each appealing to a different but overlapping group of “true conservative” is not a possibility to totally discount. A true believer cares more about what they think is right than what makes sense.
People have been suggesting a Republican exodus if the Tea Party do split off, but I would think the opposite possible too. A Republican party minus the Tea Partiers would likely be much more interesting to those conservative Democrats out there; I don’t think they’d *just *take the Tea Partiers with them.
Fiscally conservative. Reduce the dificit and work towards a philosophy that increases in spending must be tied to increasing revenue and if not, then no increase in spending.
Neo-Federalism. Not returning to 1860 states rights but reduction in the abuse of ICC, mandate by pursestrings (SD v Dole), to return more powers to the states.
Who will be a national leader of the party a la Roosevelt and the Progressive Party? How do you get that party accepted in all 50 states? Some states are pretty easy but some states (like California) make it near impossible to start a new party. How do you avoid losing votes because people don’t want to waste votes on a third party?
IF!, and it’s an if that will never happen, a faction of moderate Republicans decided to form a party (nominally still the in Republican like the teabaggers did) and worked to make a new party in their home states. Now they compromise with the Dems to end the shutdown and elect a new SotH from the new party then maybe there would be a new party.
The party won’t split, but they will continue to lose moderate votes to the democrats. Moderates are minority in the republican party now and the democrats are much further right than they used to be.
I’m going to open up a new thread over defining “conservative” in today’s political environment but in the meantime, if the Tea Party splits and what remains brands itself mostly along the lines of the three items listed by Saint Cad (which is where a large fraction of the GOP wants to be and where many who vote Democratic want to be, and not only conservative democrats, many who would call themselves moderate as well), then I could see that being a viable party at least for Senate seats and at the Presidential level. The House seats are so gerrymandered that the Tea Party will keep those for a bit at least.
I’d modify the list to be a least socially middle of the road - accepting of Choice as the law of the land and not aiming to overturn it; for legalizing SSM; state’s rights on marijauna laws; intelligent immigration reform and the rest though as written.
Create a circumstance in which a GOP candidate does not need to pander so hard to the Tea Party segment to get past the primary gauntlet and can mostly position to the general throught the whole process and they have a likely winner at the Presidential level. Unbeholden to the Tea Party their Senate faction though smaller would be the decider on most issues, able to throw support to the larger but not large enough Democratic side or align with the minority TP fluidly. The House though … this current crap would be the order of the day for a while.
A Republican split would not automatically mean Speaker Pelosi. The Speaker is elected by a majority of those voting, not a plurality. In the event of a split, I suppose Pelosi and the Republican rump would make some kind of deal that would result in her becoming speaker, but it’s not guaranteed. A non-partisan Speaker would be a possibility.
It’s not for sure that an independent Tea Party couldn’t survive. The most recent experiment with a near-successful third party was the Reform party, but with a few exceptions like Jesse Ventura this was mostly a vehicle for Ross Perot’s presidential ambitions and there was never an attempt to build a national infrastructure. In the case of the Tea Party, it already has adherents in government at all levels, and in many cases I expect the local/state Republican apparat would simply transform into the Tea Party.
Now, the question is whether the deep-pockets backers of the Tea Party really want a split. I don’t think a Tea Party that is well-represented and the state and local level, but that commands perhaps 100 Representatives and a handful of Senators, is in the best interests of the Koch brothers. Have the money men drunk their own Kool-Aid on this? I’m guessing not, but who really knows what they think.
It would be interesting to see some house seats that are currently “safe” Republican spots suddenly become contested between Tea Party/Republican. That’s the case now in the primary, of course, but moving the contest to the general election changes the math.
When, Tea Partiers, will you be brave enough to form an actual Party, and leave the Republicans to their own fate? And if there will never be a Tea Party, why not just call yourselves Republicans, and stop the charade?