Jon Chait explains it all: Why 2012 Is the Republicans Last Chance — New York Magazine.
“America is approaching a ‘tipping point’ beyond which the Nation will be unable to change course,” announces the dark, old-timey preamble to Paul Ryan’s “The Roadmap Plan,” a statement of fiscal principles that shaped the budget outline approved last spring by 98 percent of the House Republican caucus. Rick Santorum warns his audiences, “We are reaching a tipping point, folks, when those who pay are the minority and those who receive are the majority.” Even such a sober figure as Mitt Romney regularly says things like “We are only inches away from no longer being a free economy,” and that this election “could be our last chance.”
The Republican Party is in the grips of many fever dreams. But this is not one of them. To be sure, the apocalyptic ideological analysis—that “freedom” is incompatible with Clinton-era tax rates and Massachusetts-style health care—is pure crazy. But the panicked strategic analysis, and the sense of urgency it gives rise to, is actually quite sound. The modern GOP—the party of Nixon, Reagan, and both Bushes—is staring down its own demographic extinction. Right-wing warnings of impending tyranny express, in hyperbolic form, well-grounded dread: that conservative America will soon come to be dominated, in a semi-permanent fashion, by an ascendant Democratic coalition hostile to its outlook and interests. And this impending doom has colored the party’s frantic, fearful response to the Obama presidency.
It’s a really excellent article that explains a lot of things well – basically through the lens of identity politics, i.e. psychology, not ideology or interests. The fulcrum point is essentially this: That due to long-term demographic change, the older, whiter GOP identity is threatened. President Obama is a perfect symbol of this. And rather than adapt to the new reality, the GOP has doubled down on defiance.
It didn’t have to be this way: The GOP could have helped pass George W. Bush and John McCain’s immigration reform, coalescing a willing Latino vote in the process; or worked with President Obama on economic recovery, health care, and climate, with ideas Republicans themselves had formerly espoused. The country would be better off, and the GOP would have shared in the credit. What could have been …
And as Chait points out, it’s a suicide mission with some interesting and psychologically apt precedents. Sometimes the pilot doesn’t pull out of the dive … simply because he doesn’t want to.
In the meantime, I look forward to a Rick Santorum candidacy. 😀
I am shocked at how cult-like and fanatical Republicans have become.
I find it amazing that since the “education is a bad thing” has entered the Republican groupthink, that I constantly hear people repeating the claim that we don’t need education, that a college education is just liberal indoctrination, and that the very goal of being educated is nothing more than a liberal plot.
I also find it amazing as to how many people – mostly men – have signed onto the “birth control is evil” bandwagon.
One only has to realize the absurdity of it all with the argument that by not doing a single thing to restrict firearms, Obama is signalling that he wants to take everyone’s guns away.
Are people really this delusional?
must be almost entirely comprised of guys who aren’t getting any. Just say’n.
You asked “Are people really this delusional”. My own response is “The GOP hopes so”.
One of the more offensive things about commercial pornography is the insultingly repulsive assumptions it makes about its audience. It’s producers make it what it is because they believe (whether or not it’s true) that their audience likes the misogynistic garbage they produce.
I think the same is true of today’s GOP. These memes — “education is a bad thing”, “birth control is evil”, and so on, reflect the assumptions these campaigns make about the voters they seek.
Perhaps American voters are not as revolting as the GOP believes.
since the Mondale campaign. It has been a decade away for 30 years.
The notion that this means that a widespread embrace of a “broad Democratic coalition” is fallacy. When the polity votes for X it is not an embrace of X, but a rejection of Y.
Further expansion of the New Deal has already been rejected by the polity; likewise whatever the GOP policy is has been rejected. Hence the series of landslides and counter-landslide elections, each a reaction to the party in power’s decision to pursue its own rejected, unpopular programs.
… the difference here is that, as Chait points out, it is the GOP who are now sounding that alarm. I’m not a big fan, in general, of Chait, but he here explicates well the desperation and fear the GOP themselves are fearing…
So, whether it is true or no, the GOP certainly believes it.
As I have been reading about the imminent demise of the GOP for decades, so have I been reading about how this NEXT election is the MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION IN THE HISTORY OF ALL ELECTIONS.
Democrats said the same kind of things in 2000, and in 2004. The next president will appoint the Supreme Court appointment that settles the abortion issue for all time. The next president is the only one who will ever again have the opportunity to deal effectively with global warming. The next President is the most important because he alone will determine whether we become vassals of the Soviet Union by closing the missile gap. If my guy loses, I’m moving to Canada, because my view of an ideal American society will have been sullied beyond redemption. Etc.
… If the Democrats once did something even remotely similar then I guess it’s all of an inconsequential piece. Carry on then.
[ Columbo walks away, cigar in hand… pause… Head scratch. Turns.]
Oh, one more thing… If you, ah, don’t mind? Do you think that there is a difference between the pundits/democrats/etc predicting the demise of the the GOP…?
… and the ACTUAL GOP predicting the demise of THE GOP
There really isn’t any difference. Indeed, pundits probably have more credibility than politicians. The foregoing is not intended to be a compliment to pundits.
It is election season hoohah and nothing more. It is exactly the same thing that the Democrats do when not in power: If Al Gore doesn’t win, it will be the end. The end, I say!
What are they supposed to say, “If we lose this election then nothing will really happen because we control the Senate and lets be honest the government doesn’t really have that great an influence on the daily lives of most people, or the economy, anyway”?
Politicians, pundits, and activists all seem to assume that as things are, so they shall ever be. If the GOP gets creamed, then it will go through a few more years of internal strife while it redefines itself, and then it will be a new ballgame. Likewise for Dems if Obama gets bounced.
That was kind of a severely consequential election, wasn’t it? In the ways of the country’s long-term finances, for instance?
I mean, what’s your point?
You wrote (emphasis mine):
According to US Election Atlas, here are the results of the Presidential elections since 1984 (winner/loser winner %/loser % delta%):
1984: 54,455,472/37,577,352 58.77%/40.56% 18.21%
1988: 48,886,597/41,809,476 53.37%/45.75% 7.62%
1992: 44,909,806/39,104,550 43.01%/37.45% 5.56%
1996: 47,400,125/39,198,755 49.23%/40.72% 8.51%
2000: 50,460,110/51,003,926 47.87%/48.38% -0.51% (!)
2004: 62,040,610/59,028,439 50.73%/48.27% 2.46%
2008: 69,499,428/59,950,323 52.87%/45.60% 7.27%
I’ll grant you that Ronald Reagan’s 1984 win merits characterization as a “landslide”; I don’t see any others, and I certainly don’t see a “series of landslides and counter-landslide elections”. George W. Bush was anointed President in 2000 after losing the popular vote.
Was George H. Bush’s victory in 1988 a rejection of the Reagan policies? Was Bill Clinton’s 1996 victory in 1996 a rejection of his administration’s policies? Are you arguing that “the polity” did anything other than embrace the GOP agenda in 1984 and 1988? Or that it did anything other than vote FOR the agenda of Bill Clinton in 1996? Didn’t the polity vote FOR the George W. Bush agenda in 2004?
The Oval Office changed party hands in 1992, 2000, and 2008. Those margins were 5.56%, -0.51%, 7.27% — none of them “landslides” or “counter-landslide[s]” in comparison to the GOP wins of 1988 and 1972.
The cynicism in your comment is disturbing enough, and made worse by its total disconnect with the reality of what actually happened in the presidential elections since 1984.
The landslides were in 1984 and 1972.
Neither involved a change in parties, neither was a rejection of “the party in power”.
…is that they’re between a rock and a hard place:
He goes on to describe a third option of a brokered convention savior – but that’s not likely to work for a variety of reasons.
get-out-the-popcorn moment, that I relish the mere idea of it. Whew, boy!
if they nominate Romney, who will the sidekick they saddle him with be? Is there a statuesque conservative woman, a la Kerry Healey, who will be good for photo ops alongside Mitt, or will it be a Sarah Palin type candidate who can appease the far right?
Gives him tea-party cred, among other things.
I guess that “identity politics” is polite New York Magazine way of saying “pandering to racism, sexism, bigotry, and xenophobia”.
that it’s not even funny. Immigration really is the best example of it, though.
It was amazing to watch the GOP jump off the ledge over immigration reform a few years ago. Before their right-right-right-wing threw a hissy fit over the once-imminent passage of it, immigration was as close to bipartisan-y as possible, with people in both parties pro and con and no real clear winners on the issue from a party perspective.
Now, it’s become a very partisan issue and as the GOP has run from it, more democrats have been elected who wisely see the desperate need our country has for a sensible reform on immigration, one that recognizes reality, at the least.
Had the smarter elements of the GOP prevailed, the immigration bill would have passed and we’d have a much different electoral dynamic. Instead, Democrats will be able to benefit from having (non-Cuban) latinos on our side for a generation, even as their percentage of the population continues to explode.
The trick now will be able to seal the deal and make good on their trust in our party, by getting immigration reform done… and by ensuring equal opportunity for all.
demise of the Republican Party?
We’re certainly witnessing the one of the worst slates of GOP presidential candidates in memory. We’re seeing a party that refuses to compromise. We’re seeing a party that’s increasingly holds positions at odds with the average American. We’re seeing a party that cares more about its hold on power than it does about the country. Personally, I think there are qualitative differences between Democrats and Republicans, but be in complete denial not to see differences in degree.
But demise? A party dies when it’s no longer united. A party dies when its candidates can no longer get elected. There are some fissures in the party–libertarian vs. social conservatives–but there’s no evidence of a fracture. The South and a handful of other states will keep supporting the Republican Party. And as long as they can deliver, big money will keep buying them.
The article picks up the demographic argument that the GOP is on the way out. And rather than appealing to Hispanic voters, the only growing demographic they had any chance of bringing in, they have focused on alienating them.
that the primary reason Romney is having trouble is because he can’t finish anyone off. He can’t finish Gingrich or Paul or Santorum off because they have plenty of funds to keep on fighting, thanks to their respective SuperPACs.
It is an irony that a big beneficiary of the Citizens United decision turns out to be President Obama.
But recognize that the primary reason that a long primary battle seems to be a Republican problem is because they aren’t the incumbent party.
… anyone off because there are enough funds to keep ‘not-Romney’ a viable alternative among GOP doners. Simply put, his popularity ceiling is indicative not just of the limits of his own popularity, but the popularity of being against him. It is unsurprising that this is also reflected in how the big backers are behaving.
Because he’s not conservative enough for the base, but wait until the general when he pulls votes from the center and moderates. At that point the extreme far-righters will have nowhere else to go so they’ll climb aboard…just as the far-left did when President Obama became the nominee of his party.
… is hurting him with regard to independents.
You guys wouldn’t recognize the far left if it hit you in the mouth.
Who…CMD and me?
I read about it in a history book.
About the only well-known people who qualify as “far-left” these days are Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein. Probably Alexander Coburn, but I doubt that many people pay attention to him.
I’m a card-carrying reader of The Nation, which I’d say is solidly on beyond the center-left, but even there, it’s rare I see anyone equivalent to the Far Right. And within the Democratic Party, we have no one of influence who is even remotely as crazy the people who ran for the GOP nomination this year.
I was just put off by your assumptions about where I fall in the spectrum. I’m the guy who voted for John Anderson, remember him? I recognize craziness on both sides and am not at all impressed by it. If you want pigeon-hole me, place me with Teddy Roosevelt, Nelson Rockefeller, a little Bill Weld, and a touch of Ron Paul. I lean conservative, I lean libertarian, I prefer pragmatism over partisanship. Above all I respect those whose opinions differ with my own….when they deserve respect. I place you in that category so please don’t assume I’m something I’m not. One example, I’ve donated to Ryan’s website although his opinions are certainly not like mine.
The reference to CMD was out of respect too, but in his case, it’s because his opinions are most often those with which I share.
you who mention the Far Left. Sorry, to lump you in with others.
I get sick of the Far Left canard–when the Far Left doesn’t exist–and it’s a frequent statement by the Right.
In previous cycles, neither Gingrich nor Santorum would have oxygen at this point. Republicans get in line once the outcome is clear. So by now, or certainly no later than Super Wednesday, Romney would begin his pivot and the general election would commence. It isn’t a function of his popularity; rather it is a function of the existence of a viable alternative– and the p r o l o n g e d primary season.
This cycle, the existence of two individuals willing to keep Gingrich and Santorum alive means that a viable alternative still exists, and the outcome isn’t clear. The problem for Romney is that he must still prove his right wing cred every day in every way, which will harm him in November with independents. Romney isn’t capable of shifting positions with grace under the best of circumstances.
I don’t think that it is fair to say that the Republcians have always agreed on who their nominee should be, but rather that they get on board with the nominee once there is one. The conservatives were sour on their incumbent in 1992, but still got behind him in November, indeed in July or earlier— Bush didn’t lose because of his right wing insurgency but because a crazy guy with charts showed up and spoiled him in the general. If Buchanan could have dragged Bush out the way Romney is being dragged out, Clinton would not have needed the assist from Perot.