Arkady
President
I've been trying to understand what went wrong with the GOP's ability to function as a successful political party. They were once, by far, the more disciplined of the two major parties. Where Democrats were composed of a rabble of feuding factions, each marching to the beat of a different drummer, the Republicans moved in unison, like an army. So, even with most Americans identifying as Democrat, at the time, and even with Democratic ideas outpolling Republican ones, the Republican legions kept routing the Democratic hordes (holding the presidency for all but four years during the course of a quarter century). But, these days, the Republicans are the party that look like a disorganized rabble. They're giving three separate responses to the State of the Union, for example, thereby diluting their counter-spin. They have fractious primaries that leave their candidates with deep wounds, lousy positioning, and depleted coffers for the general election. Their incumbents live in fear of unknown extremists rising up and defeating them if they step even a little towards the center. How did the change happen?
The change can arguably be dated to the early 1990s. In the two decades prior to that, the GOP's leaders proudly took the conservative label, but were actually surprisingly liberal on a lot of issues. GHW Bush hiked taxes and signed the Americans with Disabilities Act. Reagan pushed through amnesty and disregarded the neoconservative orthodoxy by approaching Gorbachev as a partner for peace and avoiding any major foreign interventions. Nixon normalized relations with communist China and signed off on the endangered species act. They never seemed to worry about an insurrection from the right if they moved towards the center from time to time. But, by the mid-1990s, Republicans were expected to toe the line absolutely. No tax increases, no olive branches to traditional enemies, no meaningful immigration reform, etc. Step out of line at your peril!
You can see the impact of this on Romney and McCain. Both were from the leftward branch of the GOP, but both moved hard right to capture the nomination. In the end, they essentially became clones of GW Bush. Where once they'd had many differences from Bush (pro-choice, pro-healthcare reform, pro-campaign-finance limitations, anti-tax cut, etc.), when they ran, I challenged people to name a single policy area where they were criticizing Bush or where they'd staked out meaningfully different territory for themselves, and they couldn't. Each effectively ran as a third term for Bush -- which, given the fact he's widely regarded as one of the worst presidents in history, had predictably lousy results for each, despite facing off against an opponent who was under-experienced (in 2008) and under-successful (in 2012).
So why did this change come about? Why did the GOP dissolve into an in-fighting rabble? How did it become a party where the big names were afraid to deviate even a little from the established conservative liturgy? How did the know-nothing masses, to whom earlier Republicans merely gave lip service, become wielders of deadly authority within the party?
The change can arguably be dated to the early 1990s. In the two decades prior to that, the GOP's leaders proudly took the conservative label, but were actually surprisingly liberal on a lot of issues. GHW Bush hiked taxes and signed the Americans with Disabilities Act. Reagan pushed through amnesty and disregarded the neoconservative orthodoxy by approaching Gorbachev as a partner for peace and avoiding any major foreign interventions. Nixon normalized relations with communist China and signed off on the endangered species act. They never seemed to worry about an insurrection from the right if they moved towards the center from time to time. But, by the mid-1990s, Republicans were expected to toe the line absolutely. No tax increases, no olive branches to traditional enemies, no meaningful immigration reform, etc. Step out of line at your peril!
You can see the impact of this on Romney and McCain. Both were from the leftward branch of the GOP, but both moved hard right to capture the nomination. In the end, they essentially became clones of GW Bush. Where once they'd had many differences from Bush (pro-choice, pro-healthcare reform, pro-campaign-finance limitations, anti-tax cut, etc.), when they ran, I challenged people to name a single policy area where they were criticizing Bush or where they'd staked out meaningfully different territory for themselves, and they couldn't. Each effectively ran as a third term for Bush -- which, given the fact he's widely regarded as one of the worst presidents in history, had predictably lousy results for each, despite facing off against an opponent who was under-experienced (in 2008) and under-successful (in 2012).
So why did this change come about? Why did the GOP dissolve into an in-fighting rabble? How did it become a party where the big names were afraid to deviate even a little from the established conservative liturgy? How did the know-nothing masses, to whom earlier Republicans merely gave lip service, become wielders of deadly authority within the party?
They destroyed themselves, Arkady. One thing that really hurts them is the fact that thier base is dying off. Older rightwingers aren't being replaced by young people. Whereas young people are attracted to the Democrat's message. This is my opinion.
