The Republican Ship Heads Towards the Rocks

Is the Republican Party on a disastrous course?

Feb 06, 2021

“History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes.” (attributed to Mark Twain)

In the mid-1850s, the Whig Party, one of the young nation’s two major parties, broke into multiple factions, riven by the issues of slavery and westward expansion. By 1860, one of those factions, the anti-slavery Republican Party, gained sufficient purchase among voters in the North to enable its Presidential candidate, Abraham Lincoln, to win a four-party race. The Whig Party was not one of the four and, as the nation itself was swept into the Civil War, it faded away. The Republican Party endured and the system of two major parties was re-established.*

Like its ancestor, the current Republican Party is in danger of coming apart because of the internecine struggles that broke out in the wake of Donald Trump’s loss in last November’s election. Trump may have left the White House but his cult of personality remains firmly in place within the Party. The result is a contentious relationship between Trumpist extremists and establishment conservatives. The lemming-like extremists followed their leader in claiming the election was a fraud, that Trump’s landslide victory was stolen from him. No one was more unhappy with these circumstances than Mitch McConnell, who lost his position as Senate Majority Leader when the Democrats won both of Georgia’s seats in a special election. Although he joined with several other Republicans who declined to acknowledge Biden’s victory until the December 14 vote by the Electoral College, McConnell was prepared to move on from Trump. However, events soon complicated matters.

Trump’s campaign of lying and complaining about his election defeat culminated in early January. On the 5th, Republicans lost Georgia’s two Senate seats and, with them, their Senate majority. The following day, the mob of Trump supporters attacked and occupied the Capitol. The insurrection lasted only 5 hours but left 4 persons dead, and the nation and the world shocked. The goal of preventing Congress from accepting the Electoral College votes was not achieved. Reconvening that evening, the joint session rebuffed objections to the votes of Arizona and Pennsylvania, and the victory of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris was certified. McConnell, understanding the danger to Republicans in blocking a routine Congressional function, had previously warned Republican Senators, led by Josh Hawley and Raphael Cruz, against participating in the attempt to throw out electoral votes, but to no avail. Seven of the 50 Republican Senators and 138 of the 211 of the House members voted to support objections. The rift in the party was out in the open.

Determined to hold Trump accountable for the mob violence, the Democratic House majority moved quickly to impeach him for inciting the insurrection. McConnell signaled his acquiescence with the House’s action, but when the Republicans forced a vote on the constitutionality of trying the out-of-office Trump, he was not one of the 5 Republicans who joined with the 50 Democrats to defeat the measure. In the House, 10 Republicans voted with the Democratic majority to pass a single article of impeachment. Significantly, one of the ten was Liz Cheney of Wyoming, third-ranked in the House GOP leadership and a staunch conservative. Cheney issued a tough statement castigating Trump for the “greatest betrayal” of the Presidency. Outraged Trumpist House members of the caucus demanded Cheney be removed from leadership, but she survived the vote Wednesday by a wide margin.

145: Cheney stays 61: Oust Cheney

Just remember: Only 10 were willing to go on record in public and vote to impeach Donald Trump. 145 voted to *privately on secret ballot * back Liz Cheney after she voted for impeachment
- Kasie Hunt (NBC) on Twitter (@kasie)

This brings us to the Congresswoman from Consprirastan, Majorie Taylor Greene. The attention-seeking freshman from Georgia found herself in the uncomfortable position of having her past online activity outed. Some of it was just loony (“Jewish space lasers"‘) and others threatening (liking a post that suggested removing Speaker Nancy Pelosi from office with “a bullet to the head”). Democrats demanded that Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy remove Greene from her committee assignments as he had done 2 years ago with former Rep. Steve King (Iowa) for racist comments. When McCarthy did not do so, the Democrats brought the issue to the floor and, joined by 11 Republicans, stripped Greene of her assignments. True to form, Greene referred to the Democrats as “morons” and issued a non-apology apology at a press conference on Friday.

What now?

The schism in the Republican Party raises many questions. Can the American tradition of the two-party system, which requires two viable political entities, survive if one of the parties ceases to be competitive? Will the GOP become the anti-democratic party dominated by a white nationalist, nativist cohort? While it was a common assumption that the Democratic coalition, with its mix of centrists, progressives, and leftists, would be more likely to splinter, it is the Republicans who are coming apart. The internal tensions between a party elite of business-centric conservatives and a voting base of nativists were exposed by the failed Presidency of Donald Trump. Trump began his Presidency in 2017 with the GOP controlling both houses of Congress. He left last month with the Republicans having lost the White House and both houses of Congress, and with his approval rating as President having never reached 50 percent. While his populist brand of politics attracted rabid followers, his loutish nature and gross incompetence- on full display in his handling of the pandemic- repelled many of the voters the Republicans needed to maintain an electoral edge. The insurrection on January 6th resulted in major funders curtailing donations. The announced retirements of three Senators will force the Republicans to defend 3 open seats in 2022 as well as the seats of 17 incumbents seeking re-election. (The Democrats will be defending 14 seats.)

Trump, however, was not the cause of these tensions, but the person who exploited them. The conservative quest to build a winning coalition has its modern roots in Nixon’s Southern Strategy, Reagan’s alliance with the Christian Right, and the compassionate conservatism of George W. Bush. Trump, an erstwhile Democrat, capitalized on the racist backlash to the Presidency of Barack Obama, riding the birther movement to political relevancy. Now, more polished but no less cynical politicians- Josh Hawley, Raphael Cruz, Mike Pompeo, Nikki Haley- aspire to the leadership of the populist movement as a springboard to the White House.

For the traditional conservatives, they face a classic dilemma: Pursue policies that accord with the interest of their donor class- businesses and the wealthy- and alienate their populist base, or move to the right, make common cause with the extremists, and risk losing the very voters- middle-class whites, suburban women- crucial to electoral success. To compound this quandary, the Republicans are up against a Biden Administration that seems bent- at least after its first few weeks- at regaining public trust in the institutions of government. They are poised to enact Biden’s $1.9 trillion Covid relief bill into law and have taken an overall approach of going big and going fast. The more successful the Democrats are at governance, the greater the pressure on the Republicans.

Like a dilapidated house that must be razed and replaced, it may very well be that the current Republican Party will, like the Whigs of the 1850s, need to be supplanted by a center-right party more attuned to traditional conservative principles and institutions. In the interim, the possibility remains that the Republicans, still in the thrall of Trump and Trumpism, will exist as an anti-democratic, white nationalist party… Or, at least until it becomes apparent that their electoral appeal is diminished.

In the meantime, perhaps we should ready ourselves for the appearance of “Marjorie Taylor Greene for President 2024” bumper stickers.

*For most of their history, Republicans were a northern, business-oriented party. Because the Republicans had controlled the Federal Government during the Civil War, the recalcitrant post-war South became solidly Democratic. With the end of Reconstruction, the Democrats became the party of segregation and Jim Crow laws. In the 1930s, Franklin Roosevelt fashioned a coalition of northern Democrats- city machines, labor unions, minorities, and intellectuals- and white Southerners, creating a national majority. This New Deal coalition endured from 1932 until the late 1960s. The passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act a year later led to an exodus of white Southern Democrats. Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” in 1968 was aimed at winning disaffected southern Dems over to the GOP. Fifty years later, this white, nativist cohort makes up a large segment of the Republican voting base.

1hundredsixty8

Discussion about this post