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define itself?
Certainly, between the corruption, the free-for-all spend-a-thon,
the indictments, the war, and the lethargic hurricane response
this realization is not lost on the Republicans themselves. During
a recent party conclave, there were some shocking admissions.
“We’re not going to win by being Democrats,” said Sen. Lindsey
Graham, of South Carolina. “Conservatism sells.”
Perhaps so. But who suggested being a Democrat was a winning
strategy, I can’t fathom. But here indeed is the oddness of the
GOP circa 2006. Its generally Democrats who have to reassure
themselves like dejected marketing execs doing a post-mortem
on a bad product roll out. It’s also usually Democrats that have to
sit around forming circular firing squads and conducting
introspective wrestling matches to determine who they are and
whether they’d be better off being somebody else. Can we win by
pretending to be Democrats? Not traditionally a question
Republicans have felt any great need to pose, even in the form of
a denial. And given the Dems’ electoral track record, it’s a bit like
asking whether joking about “Allah’s righteous wrath” in the
airport security line will get you a better seat on the plane.
Clearly, this is not your father’s Republican Party.
But Republicans these days may not really know who they are.
Graham himself came under not-so-friendly fire during the
filibuster debate from religious conservatives for the unforgivable
crime of consorting with Senate colleagues. Then there was the
immigration debate, the Miers nomination and the ports deal.
Even going back to Iraq, some right-wing isolationists were not
happy about the Bush administration’s interesting, new ”invade-
first-and-ask-questions-later” foreign policy.
Indeed, conservatism may sell but what exactly is a conservative?
That’s a real quandary for a party filled with neocons,
Buchananites, country clubbers, NRA gun fondlers, New Right
Robertsonians, anti-government libertarians and people who still
haven’t taken down their bomb shelters because they aren’t
convinced that Gorbachev and glastnost aren’t some really, really
long-term Soviet plot. The Republican Party is a remarkably
cohesive affair for an organization whose only common strands
are a love of tax cuts and a hatred for Democrats. Listen to Sean
Hannity and Rush Limbaugh talking about the Dubai ports mess
and you’d be hard pressed to believe they were inhabitants of the
same planet, let alone the same party.
On one level, this is not surprising. With the president’s poll
numbers nosediving south of 40% once again, some intra-party
cognitive dissonance is to be expected. But does it run deeper
than that? What interests, after all do Protestant farmers in
Nebraska, Catholic suburbanites in Cincinnati and millionaires
anywhere else have to bind their fate - or their votes - together?
This, I think, accounts for some of the increasingly negative tone
found in the party’s ideological echo chambers. A movement that
more and more is unable to tell you what it is, can at least assure
you as to what it is not. It is not liberal - whatever that is.
Here, the Republicans may in some sense be a victim of their own
good fortune. Perhaps they suffer from - to borrow a White House
term - “a catastrophic success.” All American politics is coalitional
by nature. Pitch the bigger tent and you get the bigger draw and
the GOP has definitely upped the size of the grandstand. But the
larger the crowd, the better the show has to be to please
everyone. This problem is not unheard of. In the 1930’s FDR built
a coalition that included … included … well, to judge by the
electoral returns, included pretty much everyone. But with that
success came a test, one the Democrats were destined to fail.
The Republican coalition may not be a Rooseveltian juggernaut
but the test is the same. You have a coalition. What do you do
with it? It’s a point to ponder as the 2006 midterms approach. To
be frank, I don’t know the answer.
But increasingly, an awful lot of Republicans seem to know the
question.
and tell me
what you
think
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