“The Debate Between The Two Sides Got Lost”: What Happened To The Battle For The Soul Of The Republican Party?
Remember when the 2016 presidential primary on the GOP side was going to be a “battle for the soul of the Republican Party”? At the conclusion of a period of frustration and tumult, with Barack Obama’s reign coming to its end, they were going to have a passionate debate over the party’s identity. What does it mean to be a Republican at this moment, and what do they want to achieve? Who does their coalition include? How do they appeal not just to the voters they have now, but to those they want to win over in the future?
The problem is that a party’s ability to have that kind of debate in a primary depends on both the people running for president and its voters themselves. Both have to be willing to have the debate—to explore the possibilities, advocate for different approaches, and come to a conclusion. But with the Iowa caucuses just days away, that’s not how it turned out.
Even the battle between the “establishment” and the “insurgents” has been far less than it was cracked up to be, because the insurgents won before it even started. Every candidate agreed from the outset that the establishment was vile and loathsome, and they wanted nothing to do with it. The closest thing to an establishment candidate, Jeb Bush, turned out to be a pathetic failure. Even the candidates who were supposed to unite the two camps—first Scott Walker, then Marco Rubio—failed to convince too many voters of their merit (though obviously Rubio might still gain strength).
In the process, the debate between the two sides got lost. Right now the two leading Democratic candidates are having a spirited argument about whether their voters should seek the kind of revolutionary, dramatic change represented by Bernie Sanders, or the more pragmatic approach of Hillary Clinton. As Paul Krugman wrote, “Mr. Sanders is the heir to candidate Obama, but Mrs. Clinton is the heir to President Obama,” one focusing on lofty ideas and fundamental ideals, while the other understands the hard slog of governing and the necessity of accepting half a loaf when you can get it. But Republicans aren’t talking nearly as much about their varying approaches to governing. Indeed, it’s hard to tell if most of them have even thought about it, beyond the notion that they’ll deliver everything conservatives want and make America great again.
Which brings us to perhaps the biggest reason Republicans haven’t been able to fight it out over their party’s soul: Donald Trump. At the moment, we see two things happening simultaneously. First, as Dana Milbank noted, everyone from The Wall Street Journal editorial page to the likes of Bob Dole “are acquiescing to the once inconceivable: that a xenophobic and bigoted showman is now the face of the Republican Party and of American conservatism.” Part of that comes from terror at the prospect of Ted Cruz leading them to electoral disaster, but it’s also a simple acknowledgement that Trump could be their nominee, and the party elite is a practical group.
But at the same time, other members of that elite are making last-ditch panicky pleas to the voters to come to their senses. The National Review just published a package of articles under the headline “Against Trump,” where movement figures from Ed Meese to Glenn Beck made the case that a Trump nomination would be a betrayal of everything they all stand for.
And on that at least, they’re probably right. Trump isn’t a “real” Republican in that he has little history with the party, but more importantly, there’s no reason to believe he has any commitment to conservative ideology. Everything he’s doing now is to appeal to the particular electorate he’s courting, and it’s hard to imagine even his supporters thinking he’s genuinely a huge advocate of the Second Amendment, or a huge opponent of abortion, or a huge fan of the Bible. Everyone laughed about him quoting “Two Corinthians” at Liberty University, but what’s more telling is that after quoting it he said, “Is that the one, is that the one you like? I think that’s the one you like.” The man who proclaims his brave willingness to say what’s “politically incorrect” is actually the most deeply cynical politician running this year, and if he wins the GOP nomination, I promise you he’ll become markedly less conservative as soon as he starts trying to appeal to a wider set of voters.
Contrast that with someone like Mitt Romney, who also had his conservative bona fides questioned. Had Romney won, he would have governed like exactly the hard-right conservative he ran as. He was a creature of his party, and had made commitments that couldn’t be revoked. Republicans would have gotten no unpleasant surprises from him. But Trump? He’d be completely unpredictable.
So while a year ago everyone assumed that there would be some insurgent candidate getting support from the unruly and angry voters and then everyone else would coalesce around an establishment-blessed alternative, now conservatives face the horror of a race being fought out between an insurgent they can’t stand and a demagogue they can’t trust.
In the process, they’ve lost the chance to define today’s Republican conservatism for the voters and for themselves. Imagine that they lose in November, as is looking increasingly likely. What would the GOP that emerges from this election look like? How will it remake itself to win back the White House? If anyone knows, they can’t be heard over the din coming from Iowa and New Hampshire.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect, January 26, 2016
“Not The America Of The Future”: GOP A Bridge To 1960, When 90 Percent Of The Population Was White
It’s hardly news to observe that partisan polarization in this country is reinforced by sharp divisions in the demographic composition of the two major parties. But National Journal‘s Ron Brownstein offers one bit of data that dramatizes the issue as well as any I’ve seen:
In 2012, whites accounted for about 90 percent of both the ballots cast in the Republican presidential primaries and the votes Mitt Romney received in the general election. The last time whites represented 90 percent of the total American population was 1960.
Think about that. If the Republican Party were a country, it would racially resemble the America of 1960, 55 years ago. Brownstein goes on to argue that Democrats are also out of alignment with today’s demographics — but it most resembles an America of the future, and the not-too-distant future at that.
Ethnic groups now equal just over 37 percent of Americans. But voters of color accounted for nearly 45 percent of President Obama’s votes in 2012. Ethnic minorities likely won’t equal that much of the total population for about another 15 years.
If one party (whose average age of about 52 means that a sizable minority can actually remember the America of 1960) is composed of people who are both aware of their once-dominant position and of how quickly it is slipping away, is there any reason to be surprised that party is strongly influenced by feelings that the country has taken a wrong turn that must be resisted? And should anyone be shocked that reaction to cultural and demographic change might well begin to compete with free-market economics or universalistic values in shaping the party’s positions and leadership?
I don’t think so. When in response to Bill Clinton’s promise to “build a bridge to the 21st century,” 1996 GOP nominee Bob Dole — first elected to Congress in 1960 — described his Republican presidential campaign as “a bridge to an America that only the unknowing call myth,” he ironically hit on his party’s future message.
By: Ed Kilgore, Daily Intelligencer, New York Magazine, January 22, 2016
“The Christian Candidate”: The Republican Formula To Snag Christian Votes Is Unraveling
Mike Huckabee is not happy.
Once a rising star in the Republican Party who successfully leveraged his background as a pastor for political advantage, Huckabee’s 2016 presidential run has proved a disappointing sequel to his respectable third place showing in 2008. With underwhelming fundraising numbers and a bump to the kiddy table after the third GOP debate, most voters are no longer paying attention to the former governor’s campaign.
But perhaps the cruelest blow is that many conservative evangelical leaders and organizations have jumped ship, ignoring Huckabee in favor of contenders like Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.
Asked about this betrayal in a radio interview, Huckabee struck back. “A lot of them, quite frankly, I think they’re scared to death that if a guy like me got elected, I would actually do what I said I would do,” he alleged — and that would be bad for business.
“A lot of these organizations wouldn’t have the ability to do urgent fundraising because if we slay the dragon, what dragon do they continue to fight?” Huckabee continued, “And so, for many of them, [my victory] could be a real detriment to their organization’s abilities to gin up their supporters and raise the contributions.”
Huckabee pressed on to the final blow: Conservative evangelicals who don’t support him must be motivated by “secular” concerns like personal gain, because if they were truly acting in faith and prayer, they’d support him over their current candidates of choice.
In other words, if they weren’t so sinful, they’d listen to God and vote Huck.
Huckabee’s expression of his frustration is uncivil and theologically suspect, but from a political perspective the frustration is reasonable. After all, the formula to be the GOP’s “Christian candidate” used to be pretty straightforward: Give special attention to culture war issues like gay marriage, school prayer, and abortion; invoke God and scripture regularly; and tell your faith story in a compelling manner. This worked for Huckabee in 2008, just as it worked in 2012 for another 2016 also-ran, Rick Santorum.
But these days there are a lot of candidates trying to capture the GOP evangelical vote. And their success doesn’t seem to have much to do with their actual faith. Witness Cruz, for example, who quotes liberally from the Bible on the stump. His campaign asks supporters to join his national prayer team so there’s a “direct line of communication between our campaign and the thousands of Americans who are lifting us up before the Lord.” (The sign-up form also includes a box you can tick if you “publicly endorse Senator Ted Cruz for President!”)
While the Cruz camp insists there’s no “political or tactical angle” to joining the prayer team, their candidate’s public prayer requests all but equate his own electoral victory with divine salvation for America. Cruz even has the audacity to call his candidacy a “revival” and “awakening” — as in, the Great Awakenings — and many Christian audiences are eating it up.
Marco Rubio is trying to follow the formula too. In a recent campaign ad, for example, Rubio recites a string of Christian catchphrases and biblical allusions so generic that they offer zero insight into his personal faith.
And then there’s Donald Trump, who is interested in the evangelical vote formula exactly insofar as it helps him be the best, hugest, most successful candidate ever — and no farther. Trump knows he needs to say some Christian stuff, but he’s doing the absolute minimum to pass this test.
I know this because that’s what he word-vomited at a rally in Iowa the last week in December. “I even brought my Bible — the evangelicals, OK?” Trump said. “We love the evangelicals and we’re polling so well.”
In case the point of waving around the Bible wasn’t perfectly clear, he added one more time: “I really want to win Iowa — and again, the evangelicals, the Tea Party — we’re doing unbelievably, and I think I’m going to win Iowa.”
Trump’s transparent pandering has been controversial among conservative evangelicals but oddly successful. To be sure, many Christians, including yours truly, have questioned or criticized Trump’s candidacy on moral grounds. Writing at The New York Times, for instance, Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore argued that for evangelical Christians to support Trump means “we’ve decided to join the other side of the culture war, that image and celebrity and money and power and social Darwinist ‘winning’ trump the conservation of moral principles and a just society. To back Mr. Trump,” Moore summarized, “[evangelical] voters must repudiate everything they believe.”
But polls consistently find Trump at or near the top of evangelical Republicans’ list, so his pandering seems to work.
Huckabee’s outburst and Trump’s farce are two sides of the same phenomenon: the inevitable unraveling of an election dynamic that has become too absurd a caricature to continue. While Cruz seems on track to execute a classic fulfillment of the “Christian candidate” formula, his performance may well be one of the last of its kind. Huckabee might be right: The best GOP candidate for conservative Christians’ political goals may not be the best actual Christian.
That may seem like a frightening prospect for a post-Obama Republican Party searching for its identity as it loses demographic ground. But however the next few elections shake out, disintegration of the GOP’s wrong-headed obsession with the “Christian candidate” is much overdue.
By: Bonnie Kristian, The Week, January 18, 2016
“Is GOP ‘Feeling The Bern’?”: Does The Republican Party Want Bernie Sanders To Win Democratic Nomination?
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has attracted unexpected support from millions of Americans, but one endorsement may be more surprising than any other. The Republican Party (yes, that one) seems to be “feeling the Bern,” if its press releases and publicly available “research” are any indication of the party leadership’s preferences.
While not openly admitting their purpose, party strategists apparently hope a Sanders ticket will galvanize their own voters to prevent his election and ensure Republican victory. With Hillary Clinton out of the race, a democratic socialist could also alienate conservative Democrats, who might either turn to the Republicans or simply stay home on Election Day.
The Republican National Committee has repeatedly, and quite surprisingly, propped up Bernie Sanders against both Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee. In fact, recent noises from the RNC sound almost like dyed-in-the-wool-ultraliberal Democrats. “With only six sanctioned debates, the DNC is providing new opportunities for voters to get to know the candidates and see where they stand on the issues,” said a post by Team GOP in the run up to the second Democratic debate in Des Moines, Iowa.
Michael Short, the Rapid Response Director for the RNC, published an aggregated list claiming that Sanders performed better among focus groups and online polls than Hillary Clinton, who still remains the leading Democratic aspirant. “Hillary Clinton may be the stronger debater on stage — she was in 2008 too — but like Barack Obama in 2007 and 2008 it was Bernie Sanders that won the hearts and interest of Democrat voters,” wrote Short. Quite a glowing review for the candidate most likely to debate “the merits of socialism over capitalism.”
To the naive voters, Republican support for Sanders might seem contradictory. After all, most Republicans dislike any notion of wealth redistribution, public healthcare, and other socially progressive policies designed to help poorer voters, preferring “trickle-down economics” and tax cuts for the super-rich. So if Republican spokespersons are backing a democratic socialist against the “practical progressive” candidate, it’s because they hope moderate and conservative Democrats will so disagree with his platform that they will deprive their own party of a crucial voting bloc. Together self-identified moderates and conservatives still constitute just over half of all Democrats, although Democrats who identify with the liberal wing have grown to become the single largest voting bloc in the party.
The GOP clearly hopes to portray Democrats as led by a bunch of socialists and even communists (as Donald Trump puts it) who chose Sanders. Electing a socialist will mean “unending layovers of senseless government bureaucracy.” Or maybe it will mean “rich and decadent government spending.” (Some media intern probably got a pat on the back for that timely “The 5 flavors of Bernie Sanders” listicle.) Either way, Sanders’ election will result in bigger government, a cause the Republicans have vowed to fight in perpetuity.
Currently, however, there are reputable polls that show Sanders beating every leading Republican candidate in a general election. Trump loses. Cruz loses. Carson isn’t even competitive among Republican candidates, a decline that began soon after disclosing he believed the Pyramids were used for agriculture in the Egyptian desert. Sanders, on the other hand, has increased his support since launching his campaign in April.
Perhaps those clever Republican strategists should be careful what they wish for.
By: Saif Alnuweiri, The National Memo, January 19, 2016
“The Last Stage Of Grief”: From ‘Panic’ To ‘Acceptance’ On Trump?
For much of 2015, one of the most commonly uttered words in Republican circles was “panic,” as in, “irritation is giving way to panic” among GOP insiders “as it becomes increasingly plausible” that Donald Trump might win the Republicans’ presidential nomination.
But NBC News raised an interesting point this morning about the stages of grief.
[H]ave we finally reached the last stage, acceptance? Now none of this means that Trump is going to win the GOP presidential nomination. But it does mean that he’s become much more acceptable to Republicans than we ever thought possible; that he’s indelibly shaped the GOP contest in his own image; and that he’s in firm control of this GOP race.
I feel like this is the first week of the entire cycle in which I’ve seen and heard a growing number of Republicans reach this point. National Review’s Rich Lowry noted this week, for example, that from his conversations, the GOP establishment’s mood on Trump is “moving from fear/loathing to resignation/rationalization.” (MSNBC’s Chris Hayes added soon after that he’s heard the same thing.)
Jon Chait flagged examples of others making similar comments. The Daily Caller’s Matt Lewis quoted a Republican source saying, “On the ground? Everyone literally is getting resigned to Trump as nominee.” Ari Fleischer, the former press secretary in the Bush/Cheney White House, said he now gives Trump a 60% chance of winning the party’s nomination.
Slate’s Jamelle Bouie added this morning, “[I]nstead of brushing Trump aside, Republican elites are learning to love the Donald and accept him as a potential nominee, or at least a candidate they can work with.”
Try to imagine commentary like this from, say, August. It would have been almost unfathomable.
This is not, by the way, a prediction saying I think Trump will be the nominee. A grand total of zero votes have been cast – the Iowa caucuses, which Trump may very well lose, is still 16 days away – and there are all kinds of questions we don’t know the answer to, not the least of which is whether the frontrunner’s backers will actually show up when it counts.
My point, however, is that we appear to have entered a very different, largely unexpected stage in the race: one in which Republicans stop obsessing over when Trump will collapse and start accepting the idea that maybe, just maybe, he won’t.
The “stages of grief” framework is admittedly a bit of a cliche, but NBC’s First Read may be onto something here. Republicans were initially in denial (“Come Labor Day, Trump will be an unpleasant memory”), which led to anger (“This guy is going to tear the party apart and hand Congress to Democrats!”). Soon after, there was some bargaining (“What can we do to elevate someone from the establishment ‘lane’?”), followed by plenty of depression (“I’ve seen the latest polls and I need another drink.”)
The fifth stage is acceptance. Watch this space.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, January 15, 22016
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