The death of the GOP

The defection of Senator Arlen Specter to the Democrats completes a political collapse of a swiftness for which there is little precedent: whereas in 2006 the Republicans controlled both chambers of Congress and the White House, barely two years later the Republicans control none of the above, and don’t even have the ability to mount a filibuster in the Senate. Moreover, whatever the missteps or the unpopularity of the policies of the Obama administration, there is little indication of any approaching halt in the decline of Republican fortunes.

How did this happen?

It is is a question that has been bandied around of late, with no real agreement on the answer. While the collapse of the economy last fall certainly played a role, even that could not explain the depth of the fall of the GOP.

But I will offer my own hypothesis to the mix. The fall of the GOP, as I see it, has three rrot causes, two of which might be termed tactical and one philosophical, but all of which overlap to an extent.

In no particular order of importance, and with a major effort on my part to avoid writing a book here, they are the following:

Corruption – It should be pointed out that both parties have their own issues of corruption. The Republicans have Randy “Duke” Cunningham and Ted Stevens (and while the Stevens case was rightfully overturned because of prosecutorial misconduct, few doubt that Stevens was actually guilty of the charges), the Democrats have William Jefferson.

But the seminal moment here was when the Justice Department attempted to investigate the, um, “frozen funds” of Jefferson by going into his House office, House Speaker Dennis Hastert intervened on the side of Jefferson to assert a privilege under separation of powers. In other words, Hastert was arguing that that a member of Congress could commit a crime, hide the evidence in their congressional offices, and there wouldn’t be a damn thing anyone could do about it.

This argument was so patently ridiculous that anyone could see through it. And when the Republican leader in Congress is actually trying to protect a member of the opposition party – and a particularly useless member at that – then it caused many to wonder what the Republicans were hiding.

“Looking out for themselves” became the meme.

Cowardice – The GOP could have done a lot of great things during its time in the White House and in control of Congress, but as Bernard Goldberg highlighted in his book Crazies to the Left of Me, Wimps to the Right: How One Side Lost Its Mind and the Other Lost Its Nerve, they shied away from major fights for policies that would have done the most good, with one category of very obvious exceptions to be discussed in a moment.

Whether it was drilling for much needed oil in ANWR or off the coasts, or appointment of conservative judges to an out-of-touch federal judiciary, or extension of the very necessary Bush tax cuts, the GOP again and again, turned away from a fight with the Democrats, unable to overcome the filibuster or use rhetorical pressure to make the liberals pay a political price for their obstructionism. For example, there was never a coordinated effort to increase drilling in the US, or to (justifiably) portray the Democrats as intent on bringing higher energy costs to Americans. The most effective campaign for doing so was done by exactly one senator; unfortunately, that senator was Larry Craig.

To use another example, for all the Democrats’ whining about Halliburton and Rupert Murdoch every other minute, there was never a countereffort to discredit the arrogant and insane Al Gore or expose the villainous Marxist financier George Soros, even though the latter is believed by many analysts to bear significant responsibility for the spike in gas prices last summer and the collapse of the stock market last fall.

This lack of stomach for a fight had the effect of branding the GOP as ineffective in governance, without ideas for which they were willing to fight, and made the few GOP victories fleeting and temporary, to be undone, say, by the new administration.

Those factors notwithstanding, a far more devastating element was a philosophical one – the effective abandonment of two-thirds of the conservative coalition that had formed the basis for GOP political power since 1980. More specifically, and contrary to the opinion of a few commentators as of late, the Republicans sacrificed the security conservatives and fiscal conservatives to promote the agenda of the social conservatives. It was in advance of this agenda that the Republicans displayed their only real backbone – but it was in defense of an agenda that most Americans do not support, creating an image of the Republican Party that large swaths of the electorate find extremely unappealing.

Let’s break it down a bit, with a few definitions tossed in for support.

Security conservatism: the main agenda of security conservatives (like myself) is to keep the country safe from external and internal threats. Internal threats come in the form of crime, which is not entirely a federal issue but suffered from the lack of movement on conservative judges.

But in the realm of defense and foreign policy, Bush had very few successes. Missile defense was an unqualified success. A qualified success was the support for Georgia in its dealings with Russia. Iraq? We’ll get to that.

But the failures of the Bush administration, failures bordering on catastrophic, far outweigh its successes. Bush never did anything about the nuclear weapons program of the Iranian mullahocracy; the mullahs have never paid a price for either that program or their three-decade long covert war against the US. Nor was any action taken against Syria, either for its support of the insurgency in Iraq or its harassment of Lebanon and Israel. Turkey continued its slide toward Islamism. Hugo Chavez continued to be a menace throughout the Western hemisphere. The UN became a patently anti-American organization, with no fight from the Bush administration to put the effective John Bolton in the UN ambassadorship. China and Russia continued to undercut US security efforts throughout the world. Bush was either unable or unwilling to make the case for the superiority of Western civilization to the barbarity offered by the Islamists. And, last but certainly not least, Bush adamantly refused to secure our southern border with Mexico.

The big issues were obviously Afghanistan/Pakistan and Iraq. The latter stands as a success, but only in spite of incompetent management of the conflict by the Bush administration before “the surge.” The root of that incompetent management? A patent refusal by Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, against all evidence and common sense, to increase the size of the military to deal with the war. This left the US military stretched too thin with Iraq and Afghanistan to deal with Iran, Syria, China or other threats. A potentially catastrophic and utterly inexcusable decision.

As for Afghanistan and Pakistan, the lack of sufficient military resources hampered those efforts as well, along with the delicate politics of Pakistan. But a major factor in creating what is rapidly becoming a failure is the insistence of the Bush administration on fighting the drug war in Afghanistan, where approximately 90% of the world’s poppy, the essential ingredient in opium, is grown. This decision helped alienate the local farmers and helped drive them back into the arms of the Taliban, who, despite their allegedly strict adherence to Islam, often use drug sales to finance their war efforts.

Security issues are usually the bread and butter of the GOP. Yet Bush has left a legacy of ineffectiveness and incompetence. How can they expect to get support based on this performance?

Fiscal conservatism: Defined most narrowly, fiscal conservatism involves a philosophical limiting of government spending. Defined more broadly, it involves an opposition to “big government,” which usually but not always involves what may be considered unnecessary government spending, regulation and involvement. “What is good for business” often falls under this heading.

Fiscal conservatism has never had mass appeal. At least the way it has been presented, fiscal conservatism seems to oppose government spending for programs that are popular and necessary. Imposed most ruthlessly, fiscal conservatism even prevents government spending to clear roads of snow during the winter. (Don’t laugh; it happens with some regularity, including in some communities close to home).

People are willing to spend tax money for services like police, fire, schools, roads and sewers. They are not willing to pay for a high school dropout to have seven children by six different men, or for a starving artist to create an image of a crucifix in urine or for an empty John Murtha Airport in Johnstown, PA. The position of the electorate seems to be that government spending in and of itself is not bad. It’s how much it spends and on what that is the issue. But fiscal conservatism often has trouble making that distinction, at least in its public presentations.

The GOP clearly failed even on fiscal conservatism. The prescription drug program, No Chile Left Behind and the Troubled Asset Relief Program are often cited as the biggest examples of Bush’s profligate spending. While the federal budget deficits did increase because of the war, as previously discussed, that money was not spent where it should have been – on defense. Bush killed both security conservatism and fiscal conservatism with one stone.

Social conservatism: This is an often amorphous term that usually encompasses “family values” issues – abortion, drugs, gay marriage, euthanasia, drinking (remember the 21-year old drinking age was put in place by Ronald Reagan), etc. – the popularity and priority of which are generally restricted to the Republican base.

This was the one area where the Republicans since 2000 showed a willingness to fight, albeit ineffectively. It was also the area that would gain them the least in terms of popularity.

Their position can be encapsulated by the amount of time and effort spent on the Terri Schiavo situation. While her fate was indeed unfortunate and somewhat suspicious, more disturbing was the amount of effort by Congress and the Bush administration over one person in what was most definitely a state issue. And on an issue that, whatever one’s opinion thereon, is not in the forefront of most people’s minds.

And issues like this came up again and again. The constant argument over abortion. Continual attempts to outlaw gay marriage. The ban on offshore internet gambling, which angered many centrist Republicans. The continued prosecution of the Drug War, even against our own interests in Afghanistan. The ban on federal funding of so-called embryonic stem cell research (they’re not really embryos), which has the potential if not yet the realization of breakthrough medical treatments.

When fighting the Taliban and al Qaida in Afghanistan becomes secondary to the Drug War, you wonder if the GOP’s priorities have become skewed. These issues, while of some importance, do not have nearly the importance to the electorate that they seem to have with the GOP. For instance, the typical voter is more likely to support a tough on security but pro-choice Rudy Giuliani than a pro-life but wimpy on security Mike Huckabee. But the typical voter is not voting in the Republican primary.

And while certain elements of social conservatism may win some battles here and there, such as the surprising victory of a ban on gay marriage in California, a ban which most political observers expect to be repealed by popular referendum within six years, the image presented by the positions of social conservatism in toto is one of telling people how to live their lives.

So when Republicans complain about Democrats telling people how to live their lives, through environmental restrictions and whatnot, the difference is not a philosophical one, but only in whose ox is being gored.

While Arlen Specter’s complaint about the GOP having moved further to the right during his tenure was indeed disingenuous, it was nevertheless accurate. It can be said that few are conservatives on all three issues, but the GOP right now seems to only care about one of them, leaving the other two out in the wilderness.

Unfortunately for Republicans, there is little sign of it changing anytime soon. The cowardice of the GOP since 2000 continues to manifest itself in the lack of opposition to such detestable Obama nominees as Tim Feighner, Eric Holder and Harold Koh. The weakened GOP security credentials took another hit with the lack of a fight to save the F-22 Raptor or funding for missile defense.

Will they ever get it?