Long, detailed, enjoyable (for Democrats) report by Tom Edsall at the NYTImes:
If the Republican Party were a profit-seeking corporation, the current management would be tossed.
A post-election study conducted Dec. 12 by Resurgent Republic, a conservative think tank, concluded that the market for right-wing ideologues is just not there anymore:
Republicans have run out of persuadable white voters. For the fifth time in the past six presidential elections, Republicans lost the popular vote. Trying to win a national election by gaining a larger and larger share of a smaller and smaller portion of the electorate is a losing political proposition.…
The monied wing of the Republican Party suffers from what political scientists call a “resource curse” — the same “paradox of plenty” that blocks the advancement of oil-rich countries in the Middle East and elsewhere. Too much cash flowing from big donors to super PACs and tax-exempt organizations is the Republican curse.
In the 2012 election, major Republican-leaning independent expenditure committees, including Restore Our Future and American Crossroads, spent $579 million, more than three times the $168 million spent by pro-Democratic groups like Priorities USA and the Service Employees International Union.
Despite losing, a network of favored Republican consultants and contractors emerged from the election richer than before: Mentzer Media Services, Inc. collected fees of $141 million; Crossroads Media LLC, $90.8 million; Target Enterprises, $15.2 million; Arena Communications, $12.8 million. For the Republican operatives running these companies, 2012 was hardly a defeat. It was a business bonanza….
The problem that faces business leaders pressing for reform is not just the normal reluctance of a political party to change. Instead, it is the fact that much of the Republican electorate, as presently constructed, is profoundly committed — morally and ideologically — to “traditional values.” You’re asking groups of people to change who were brought together by their resistance to change. Their opposition to change is why they are Republicans.
The right coalition includes a subset of conservatives determined to preserve white hegemony. Add to that social conservatives who oppose both the women’s rights and gay rights movements, and the religiously observant who are dead set against burgeoning secularism and what they see as the erosion of faith in public life….
So: A cadre of corporatist plutocrats with more money than sense allowed themselves to be persuaded, by their pet grifters, that making common cause with various far-right cultists and authoritarians was the sure bet for a Permanent Republican Majority. And for quite a few years, it even worked! But now the “business leaders” (a/k/a David Frum’s ‘sane moderates’) have to persuade the shrinking pool of crazy old white people to embrace change, or at least learn to lie about having done so. Yeah… good luck with that, guys. I’d say I wished you the best, but mostly I wish you’d all get into a heated argument over the virtues of Objectivism versus Prosperity Christianity. In a room full of Second-Amendment-blessed high-calibre self-defense implements. At one of your country-club retreats, safely out of range of the rest of us.
Apart from watching the Republican strategy-superbowl and praying for injuries, what’s on the agenda for the end of the work week?
Early Morning Open Thread: Can Republicans Change?Post + Comments (137)