David Brooks, with a perceptive piece on the future of the GOP:
Finally, Traditionalists own the conservative mythology. Members of the conservative Old Guard see themselves as members of a small, heroic movement marching bravely from the Heartland into belly of the liberal elite. In this narrative, anybody who deviates toward the center, who departs from established doctrine, is a coward, and a sellout.
This narrative happens to be mostly bogus at this point. Most professional conservatives are lifelong Washingtonians who live comfortably as organization heads, lobbyists and publicists. Their supposed heroism consists of living inside the large conservative cocoon and telling each other things they already agree with. But this embattled-movement mythology provides a rational for crushing dissent, purging deviationists and enforcing doctrinal purity. It has allowed the old leaders to define who is a true conservative and who is not. It has enabled them to maintain control of (an ever more rigid) movement.
In short, the Republican Party will probably veer right in the years ahead, and suffer more defeats. Then, finally, some new Reformist donors and organizers will emerge. They will build new institutions, new structures and new ideas, and the cycle of conservative ascendance will begin again.
He is absolutely right about the mythology and the cocoon. I was joking with someone the other day that it would not surprise me at all if Norquist and Toomey and the remaining true believers fund primary challenges to anyone who is still deemed to be impure (think what they did to Chafee). As it is, the GOP is now just a regional institution, but it is not far from becoming a fringe party.
*** Update ***
There’s a very powerful wing of the Republican party that’s anti-intellectual, anti-science, and anti-education. Highfalutin book learning is a poor excuse for the common sense of Real Americans like Joe the Plumber. Evolution is just a “theory” perpetuated by egghead scientists and should be presented as just one alternative view alongside the idea that God said “poof” and made Adam and, the next day (from one of Adam’s ribs) Eve. Universities are places where librul professors like Ward Churchill seek to undermine the hard work of parents and turn our kids into America hating Commies.
The Deep South plus Texas is the Electoral College base of the GOP now. Yes, we won most of non-coastal states in the West; unfortunately, they have small populations and, thus, numbers of Electors. And we’re losing the intellectual centers even in Red States. Austin, Athens, Research Triangle, etc. are all Democrat these days. (We held Tuscaloosa, however. Roll Tide!)
Pretty much.
Incertus
I think that he’s right about a period of conservative ascendance as well–political swings are inevitable, after all–but I think that social conservatism in its present form is losing vigor. Prop 8 notwithstanding, same-sex marriage is coming–it’s as inevitable as the new moon. Stem cell research is continuing, no matter how hard the know-nothings try to redefine life as beginning at fertilization. And both women and minorities are moving toward greater equality. There’s no stopping this tide, and the sooner conservatives understand that and decide to fight other battles, the sooner they’ll regain relevance.
Tom65
Brooks is way off base here. The split within the GOP isn’t between the traditionalists and those who move to the center, it’s between the traditionalists (read: fiscal conservatives) and the evangelicals/social conservatives. Palin was the poster girl for the latter, and she’s an obvious threat to the balance of the party; this is why we see party insiders trying to bury her now.
linda
i absolutely loved this sentence in a post from 538:
"The Democrats seem to be on the verge of quarantining the Republicans to a few, relatively electorally dry areas. "
‘quarantining’ …. heh. what a perfect word.
fivethirtyeight.com/2008/11/whistling-past-bubba.html
Bob In Pacifica
How did the song go? "The party on the left is now parting on the right…" At least that’s how I heard it.
So does that leave the Dems to bifurcate?
Tom65
@Bob In Pacifica: We won’t get fooled again
Napoleon
I have waited so long for the Republicans to do this to themselves. I suspect they will have a really long time to spend in the wilderness.
jenniebee
Just read his piece and was hoping you’d pick it up today.
Stopped Clock Brooks may be right, but if he is, it’s very unfortunate. The country needs both liberals, pressing for new buildings, new ideas, new adaptations, and sane conservatives who slow things down a little and work to preserve the good. That’s balance, and it’s wholesome. In an ideal world, you wouldn’t want the Sane Conservatives in charge very often, but you’d want to have to build a coalition with them to get things done. Put it this way: for the ancient Egyptians, the right answer wasn’t no Pyramids, it was just as many Pyramids as they could afford, and aren’t we glad they found room in the budget for a few public works?
The right answer for us isn’t no new (or repaired) bridges or no new highways, the right answer for us is a balance of new public investment in public works for the public good with the preservation of independent wealth. The right answer isn’t the complete dismantling of big corporations, it’s using government to curb the power they have that would allow big business to keep new small businesses from gaining a foothold in the marketplace. The right answer is always about balance: allow the new to grow and flourish without dismantling what was good about the old.
The Traditionalists, as Brooks calls them, aren’t that kind of conservative, or even conservative at all. They’re a bunch of Brave New World loons who seem to think that the capitalist case against feudalism was that noblesse oblige put unnecessary fetters on the system, and that without it (and with a stronger church, donchaknow) the serfs would have been a whole lot better off. They think they’re Burkian, when they’re really just berks.
So it looks like for a little while, it’s going to be up to the liberals to apply their own brakes. Maybe those Reformers could consider taking a look around and rethinking exactly with whom they’d prefer to build a coalition.
Brian J
Is it true that Saul, real American from the Heartland, was really David Brooks?
eric
Brooks’ piece would have been one thousand times more interesting if he had written it BEFORE the election. Plus, to the extent that he is trying to explain a chasm in the republican alliance, it is nothing new to observers on the left who have been waiting for it much as we waited for the inevitable end to the stock and the housing bubbles. "Prescience" in a post-mortem is nothing more than evidence of intellectual cowardice, where the author did not want to say bad things about the losers only to find out that the losers somehow won on election day. Never straying far from the "village" is david brooks and his ilk.
Jennifer
We’ve already seen this beginning. "Operation Leper", anyone?
kth
jennebee, I share some of your concerns about unallayed Democratic rule, but (a) many prominent Dems from Obama on down have already internalized the importance of free enterprise as an engine for prosperity, (b) the seats we picked up were mostly in the middle of the ideological spectrum (or even to the right of it), (c) even talking about one-party rule is way premature.
MattF
Not unreasonable. My main complaint is that where he quotes "writer R. Emmett Tyrrell" it should have been "nutcase R. Emmett Tyrrell."
Atanarjuat
John Cole said:
If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
Keep clapping hard for those ponies, liberals. I just hope you’ll eventually realize that it will be the Great Redistributionist that will take us all for a ride.
Bah. Fringe party, indeed. Seriously, how much more a sore winner do you leftists need to be?
– Country First.
eric
Anyone that thinks this is going to be a "leftist" administration never listened to Obama during the campaign and certainly is not watching or listening now. We still will have to fight for progressive solutions against the staid interests of the DC establishment. The upcoming staffing of the Obama administration will allow for a liberal incrementalism at best.
Incertus
@eric: One of the most mockable moments in the election was when any right-winger would say, with a straight face, that Obama was the most liberal Senator in the body. Bernie Sanders is a Democratic Socialist (and my hero)–if Obama is more liberal than he is, then something is seriously fucked up with our definition of liberal.
ezdidit
Elite American Republicans are in a Mobius loop, living in a fantasy world. There is not much value in having money if your village, your town or your neighborhood is in economic disrepair. If the new barons, the billionaires and an estimated three million millionaires will not come forward to reinvest and rebuild the middle class, we will be a barbaric country. The bailout has just begun, and there’s no transparency.
All that is needed for new capital formation are the right set of national priorities and incentives to attract all the cash that is on the sidelines. But this takes time, and the next two years will be brutal. Obama will be a great capitalist.
The Other Steve
Define liberal.
I believe Obama is going to put forth a bold centrist agenda, to offset the wackjobs we’ve had for so long.
KCinDC
What Tom65 said. There are true believers, but they don’t agree with each other. Grover Norquist is one of the anti-tax true believers, but he may be ostracized by the religious true believers and the war-on-Islamofascism true believers (who aren’t all religious) because of his Muslim wife.
kth
Atanajuruat, I don’t think Euro-style democratic socialism is right for America, and contrary to the fevered hallucinations of the right, there is no reason to suppose that Obama wants it either. But it wouldn’t be the end of the world if our country came to resemble more France or England or Denmark; better those countries than the India or Brazil this country would become if your side were ever in power for long enough.
bago
What, you mean this magical unity pony I’m riding on?
bago
Also, Sarah Palin should never use the word "Articulate".
Oh my sweet jesus. "I don’t know how a campaign works". Seriously. She had planned a concession speech and was suprised at the victory?
SWEET JESUS GODDAMN YOU MATT LAUER!
jenniebee
So clearly Atanarjuat is a member of the "Traditionalist" wing, that is, the wing that believes its own press releases.
kth, I’m not worried at all about Obama getting carried away, and I agree that it’s early to talk about one-party rule, except that on the Federal level, that’s exactly what we’ve got.
Personally, I’m looking forward to Senate Republicans embracing the theory that all-filibusters-all-the-time is the way to win back the hearts and minds of the American voters. 2010 could make 2008 look positively bi-partisan.
Special to Atanarjuat: get over it! move on! stop being a sore loser! elections have consequences!!!
KCinDC
Some of you people are taking Atanarjuat a little too seriously. It’s okay to have fun with the spoofs, but don’t let it affect your blood pressure.
Karmakin
@jenniebee: One thing that moderate reasonable conservative folks like yourself are kinda going to have to come to grips with is that those of us on the "left" side of things just are not the raving loonies or unthinking ideologues that we’re often painted as being.
We LIKE the free market (when it works well)..really. We’re not out to nationalize everything. There are markets that we think have fundamental issues that need to be addressed. (Health care being a big one) But on the whole…it’s simply not that extreme. Even European-style democratic socialism is just not that extreme. Maybe you think it’s a bad idea, and I can understand it. But there’s a difference between thinking is a bad idea and thinking that something is nutzoid crazy….or if you listen to a lot of the rhetoric that comes from the right..evil.
The big thing that the conservative movement needs to do is to recognize the major issues of the day, and to come up with workable conservative solutions to those problems…and pronto. Relying primarily on demonizing liberals and progressives, I think that those days are over.
DRD 1812
My hope is that the Republican Party becomes small enough to drown in a bathtub.
Faux News
People, PLEASE don’t feed the Trolls. Atana-what-his-name is not even a good one! Just go to Redstate for the real thing.
Anyway the R’s are going to just wind the cocoon tighter and tighter until the Palin/nutjob blowout of 2012. Of course Obama will get a second term with about 65 D’s in the Senate and a very clear D majority in the house. The learning curve for the R’s should probably start then. Maybe.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Tom65:
We probably will, you know…
Atanarjuat
jenniebee said:
Right… conservatives should instead take heed of all the leftist pronouncements that the GOP is swirling the drain and inexorably headed to oblivion.
Thanks for the advice, but I think I’ll pass on sipping that Jonestown Juice you liberals clearly love to gargle with.
– Country First.
TheHatOnMyCat
The greatest danger here is to the Democratic Party.
If it becomes entrenched, and lazy, it will go back to being the fat and corrupt Democratic Party of the late 80’s and early 90’s.
Competition is good for the parties, it fuels the ongoing maintenance that is healthy for both machines. If the GOP becomes a fringe party, the level of competition goes down, and the crud creeps in.
The GOP has to go through whatever hideous writhing is necessary for it to regain its footing. Meanwhile the Dems are going to have to work double hard to prevent obesity from turning their party into an arrogant bunch of powermongers.
Barbar
The Daily Show nailed this during the GOP convention.
Convention attendee: Blah blah blah small-town values are what America’s all about hockey mom Joe Sixpack.
Daily Show: And what do you do for a living, sir?
Convention attendee: I’m a lobbyist.
jake 4 that 1
Fxd.
And one can not provide a "rational." It’s R.A.T.I.O.N.A.L.E.
Grrr.
jim
How much further right can the GOP go at this point? Reagan was a "fringe" candidate, & he comes across as downright progressive next to W: pulling troops out of Lebanon, increasing taxes, granting amnesty to illegal immigrants … how do these folks not notice that every time they get into power with a more right-wing platform, they fail worse than ever before?
The GOP gives "conservativism" a bad rep – in fact the Dems are far MORE conservative fiscally, while it’s Republicans that keep massively expanding the role of government.
The right in the US will be spending a long time on the outside looking in – all the more so as they opt to commit political fratricide for the sake of ideological purity … ironically, this imminent purging of dissidents makes them look downright Soviet. If they do a thorough enough job of it, they may even help create a splinter-party that will keep them out of power for a long, long time indeed.
The Republicans can either smarten up & turn to REAL conservative doctrines – or feud their way into their own coffin. If the launching of "Operation Leper" is any indication, their next leadership contest is going to be a gathering of pallbearers.
scarshapedstar
I’m not sure what you meant to.
Napoleon
On a related matter the story in the NY Times on the marginalization of the south after this election is pretty good. They get some great southern wingnut quotes in it.
ed
Finally, Traditionalists own the conservative mythology.
Mythology like Dutch Reagan wasn’t a fuckin idiot who spent a lot of his free time telling unrepeatable jokes about black people (although many "Traditionalists" probly still tell variations of the same jokes), was anti-science, and was the antithesis of a fiscal conservative. He was deeply stupid.
Also, David Brooks is an elitist fuckhead.
Ralph dosser
I mostly agree, but with would say the GOP owns the "Border States" instead of the "Deep South." Deep South traditionally refers to Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina. But the more urban areas there are trending blue – hell, we may still pick up a senate seat in Georgia, and Obama was within single digits there.
If you look at the famous New York Times county-shift map, the areas that trended more red were roughly along an axis from Bluefield, West Virginia to Texarkana. Right through what used to be called the border states. The really deep south – the tidewater of the Carolinas and southern Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi – trended blue.
So the GOP’s "regional dominance" consists of West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Texas. So much for the "solid south."
Phoebe
Apparently, Tuscaloosa proper went for Obama:
andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/11/apologize-to-tu.html
Church Lady
In an earlier thread, I said that the evolution of the downfall of the Republican party can be laid at the feet of the religious right and I stand by that assertion. The religious right changed the meaning of the word "conservative" as it relates to politics. As long as they hold a death grip on the party, the party will remain in the wilderness, and classic Republicanism will remain dead. I think the majority of the American electorate has moved beyond God, guns and gays. These days, once again, it’s the economy, stupid.
p.a.
Ah! But when and how will the self-realization come? Are we seeing it unfold now? Or is this just post-debacle fingerpointing? When they are ready for a ’12-step program’,
will there be a party left? Can it possibly be center-right, or will it be nutjob central?
The next 2 years are going to be bad, no matter what the new admin. does. If we get out of Iraq soon enough, that could help limit the budget hemorrhaging that these bailouts will require. But after 2 years of downdowndown economy
and potentially massive inflationary pressure, who’s to say the loony party won’t be back in force in Congress without going through any kind of reexamination.
In other words, how long will the voting public continue to blame the Republicans for the economy we are likely to have for the foreseeable future?
hoi polloi
Regarding Norquist and Toomey pushing more moderates out of the party. The smaller, the more regional, the more isolated and powerless the party becomes the more vicious will the infighting be.
The intensity of the infighting is in inverse proportion to the size of the organization. As a novelist friend of mine once said: "if you want to see vicious political infighting join the Poetry Society of America."
ksmiami
P.A. – Actually, I am humbling asserting myself here, but in a wierd way, Obama being prez-elect now as things go to the shitter is good for him since he can link it to the Repubs while proposing new infrastructure investment, jobs promotion and the like. The market looks like it has hit bottom and will rebound slowly to 2010. He has a lot of leeway when he comes in and people will not start blaming him for awhile. p.s. I always thought the guy was particularly lucky in his timing.
tonguesofflame
To Ed; I think Reagan’s love of racist jokes was probably what qualified him as the "Great Communicator" of conservative mythology. It’s a private language. God knows, he could barely put together a coherent sentence in standard English. But man, could he ever tell a good nigra story!
While we’re on the topic of boneheaded moronic central southern fascists (re: Ralph’s post): I read that piece. Does it strike anyone else as odd that we’re now describing the inherited fear and loathing of anyone whose melanin content differs significantly from our own as "racial conservatism"? Whatever happened to racism? Or plain ol’ bigotry?
My favorite quote comes at the end of the story:
lovethebomb
A few things everyone here is forgetting is that the Republican machine is the puppet of the corporatocracy, the oligarchy, the plutocrats, hell, the Illuminati. They spend millions every year paying people to come up with clever narratives to convince poor religious people to support the interests of billionaires. Of course Cheney/Bush went too far. They always do. Evil always oversteps. But this is only a setback for them. They will find new narratives and pump it into the dominant corporate media.
You don’t think the media is largely an instrument of the above? You weren’t paying attention during the 2000 election and beyond. Or the entire Clinton presidency. A lot of respect for the office went on there eh? Whitewater, Vince Foster, Travelgate, ect. There was no end to frivilous "scandals" which were headliners every week. Bush? Eh. Big Pass.
Obama will get grilled, as soon as the celebration ends. He will get slowly roasted. The Billionaires club will use him as long as he remains center-right – which his support for the auto bailout indicates is solid. He will not simply hand over the permanent military bases in Iraq. He signaled to the shadow govt that he is willing to play ball. He even caved on the FISA bill. Signed on to the the crisis bailout extortion.
He is Clinton in drag, but he does have a better plan and approach to most things. However, the corporatocracy will still try to bury him because they prefer unalloyed right wing Mammonry if they can get it. They have robbed the store blind, looted the treasury with a century of IOU’s and so there is little left at this point. They will regroup and find new ways to con the low info voter.
All they need is a little dirt or a closeted skeleton on Obama. Just like Clinton, he is all we got between another fascist takeover. That is the silly and dangerous position we find ourselves in. It is all wrapped up in this one man. That is wrong. We need a much bigger hedge and safegaurd against the return of pure corporate rule. For now, we will be satisfied by partial corporate rule. They will come back, in a different sheep costume, but remain the ravenous wolves within.
ed
I know where she’s from. She’s from the modern Republican party (i.e., since Nixon).
Nylund
A few years ago, everyone said the GOP was here to stay and the Dems were dead for the foreseeable future. Now, only a couple years later, the tables have turned.
I suspect that they will turn again, and once again, much quicker than anyone expected. This has happened MANY times in our history (think 64-68).
Such is the nature of politics.
Delia
@lovethebomb:
Yeah, the plutocrats want it all back, of course. Problem is, they’ve really painted themselves into a corner this time. They’ve given so much away to the wild-eyed know-nothings that they’ve got themselves a real problem. They let the Bush-Cheney entourage undercut so much of the US science-engineering-technology edge that all the smart people were fleeing the country. I mean, scorning the reality-based community only gets you so far. You can give it all away to your racist, Dominionist, Rapture-ready base in order to hang onto power while you give all the dough to the bankers, but then when it all collapses and the scientists and engineers have gone to Europe and India, what are you going to do? Sure, it’s gonna be hard to get to hordes back under control, but I guess they’ve gotta eat, too. And I don’t think David Brooks is ready to convert yet.
Doctor Science
I’d say there’s a leftist consensus that there are two main factions in the GOP: the plutocrats (aka "economic conservatives") and the religious right (aka "social conservatives"). Of course there are also libertarians, neo-cons, and others, but those strike lefties as the most important divisions.
Those of you who read extensively in Right Bloglandia, is that how they see *themselves*? Do they see plutocrats versus social-cons as the important conflict? My superficial reading suggests that they don’t generally perceive plutocrats as such: everyone on the Right claims to be 4-square for Capitalism Uber Alles, so I’m not sure they notice where the real capitalists are.
lovethebomb
Delia :
Yes, well, you over-estimate the public. All it takes is a prick in the Obama balloon and then they will pounce. O, sure all you said is right, but the main thing to remember is the they are VERY GOOD at changing the subject. Straw man – lookie here, no there. New narrative. As soon as the bama savior is debunked, the corporate press will go down the line towards a return to pure corporatocracy. Just study the Clinton presidency. They sure bought up all the media after that mistake. Not that Clinton didn’t play ball and enact the most right wing policy that Republicans could only have dreamed of (welfare repeal, NAFTA, ect). They will seek to bring down Obama and it won’t be terribly hard as he is only human. After that, the playbook will be the same.
The shadow govt is alive and well. And it will return. Forget about the fundies and social culture warriors. They are just hired guns to distract. Of course that doesn’t work all the time. They have other plans in the wings. Money wins. Big Money always wins. Look at the "bailout." Who benefits?