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The Republican party has a big problem right now and doesn’t know how to solve it.
Actually, there are a whole series of problems, but picking a potential nominee for president is the biggest pressing one of the moment. The dilemma is in the form of the tea party groups. They are the “insurgent force” within the Republicans, but how strong are they and how much influence will they likely have during the next election?
A lot of the confusion revolves around the fact that the tea party insurgency was able to propel the Republicans into a majority in the House, win seats in the Senate and turn over governorships to the Republicans. This looks like pretty powerful stuff and any smart, rising politician would want to get in on the action, right? Pleasing the tea part activists, radicals or not, would seem to be a good plan for Republicans, but there is much more to it than that. There are serious questions about whether the tea party efforts are a flash in the tea pot, a momentary reaction to recession and a Democrat in the White House.
Those who are paying close attention know that the 2010 elections were greatly influenced by outside campaign money poured in by the hundreds of millions of dollars. 200 to 500 million, according to reliable estimates, was spent by the US Chamber of Commerce, the Koch Brothers and others to undermine the Democrats. This spending included a concerted effort to discourage Democrats in Congress from running for re-election. In one famous incident, a “cameraman” followed around a Democratic House Member asking embarrassing questions until the House member got so irritated that he pushed the fake reporter/cameraman out of the way. Thus, an “incident” was created.
So, is the tea pot movement real or is something that was juiced up for the moment by massive spending? Is it the future of the Republican party or just a large blip on the radar screen? Did the Republicans succeed because they have a message that will work with the voters or mainly because of the anger generated by the Great Recession and Obama’s attempts to reform and expand the government’s role in medical care?
No one knows the complete answer to these questions, but the probability is that the Republicans will pick someone who leans far in the direction of the tea party groups and will lose any chance to win back the White House next year. If there were a candidate who could straddle all of these competing forces and still appeal to independents and moderates, he or she could surely have a great chance of winning. There appears to be no one running who could manage that balancing act.
Those who are “manning the barricades” in Congress, taking absolutist and radical positions think the tea party groups are the future of the Republican party. They see an opportunity for one of those historic realignments that occurs once in a generation or so in American politics. They are over confident and full of dreams of total victory which, continuing in the same direction, they will turn into defeat or a pull back from the brink. There are few reasons to think that such a major redirection in America is what the public wants.
By taking adamant stands, the Republican party is winning many supporters, but they will likely lose more than they gain. For the last several decades, Republican candidates, especially for president, have taken vague rather than specific stands on many major issues. The first George Bush statement, “Read my lips, no new taxes,” was intended to apply only to his time in office and he wound up compromising that pledge away. The second George Bush ran as a compassionate conservative and then left the compassion behind as soon as he took the oath of office. Reagan ran as a true conservative, but, with the longer sight of history, we now understand that he governed with considerable moderation.
There has never been an election in nearly a hundred years in America where the mass of voters said, without a doubt, they want to jump in some new, radical direction. (There are always small groups willing to support major disruption.) Instead, we vote for vague concepts like “change” and a new direction, letting those who win office fill in the details. Even in time of great stresses, like now, most voters will pick something close to what they’ve known in the past.
People who constantly complain about the compromises in American politics and government don’t stop to consider how difficult it is to manage the needs and aspirations of people scattered across fifty different states. While public opinion polls might not fully reflect it, the Republicans truly scared a lot of Americans with their threat to disrupt America over the issue of the national debt and the response of the stock market in the weeks since the settlement should give serious pause if public reaction did not. .
There seem to be only two main possibilities ahead for the Republicans: a massive defeat across the board next year (likely) or a large enough victory so that they will have to give careful consideration to how far they really want to go in risking the economy and America’s standing as a world leader. If Obama were to be defeated and the Republican gain a majority in the Senate while keeping the House, we could be in for four years of even deeper and broader conflict over the course of the country. It is much more likely, however, that American voters, being offered the chance to hold hands and jump off a cliff, will decide not to.
Doug Terry
8.18.11
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