Portrait, Robert Reich, 08/16/09. (photo: Perian Flaherty)
19 June 13
t's
as if they didn't learn a thing from the 2012 elections. Republicans
are on the same suicide mission as before - - trying to block
immigration reform (if they can't scuttle it in the Senate, they're
ready to in the House), roll back the clock on abortion rights (they're
pushing federal and state legislation to ban abortions in the first 22
weeks), and stop gay marriage wherever possible.
As almost everyone knows by now, this puts them the
wrong side of history. America is becoming more ethnically diverse,
women are gaining economic and political power, and young people are
more socially libertarian than ever before.
Why can't Republicans learn?
It's no answer to say their "base" - ever older,
whiter, more rural and male - won't budge. The Democratic Party of the
1990s simply ignored its old base and became New Democrats, spearheading
a North American Free Trade Act (to the chagrin of organized labor),
performance standards in classrooms (resisted by teachers' unions) and
welfare reform and crime control (upsetting traditional liberals).
The real answer is the Republican base is far more
entrenched, institutionally, than was the old Democratic base. And its
power is concentrated in certain states - most of the old Confederacy
plus Arizona, Alaska, Indiana, and Wisconsin - which together exert more
of a choke-hold on the Republican national party machinery than the old
Democrats, spread widely but thinly over many states, exerted on the
Democratic Party.
These Republican states are more homogenous and
conspicuously less like the rest of America than the urbanized regions
of the country that are growing more rapidly. Senators and
representatives from these states naturally reflect the dominant views
of their constituents - on immigration, abortion, and gay marriage, as
well as guns, marijuana, race, and dozens of other salient issues. But
these views are increasingly out of step with where most of the nation
is heading.
This state-centered, relatively homogenous GOP
structure effectively prevents the Party from changing its stripes.
Despite all the post-election rhetoric about the necessity for change
emanating from GOP leaders who aspire to the national stage, the
national stage isn't really what the GOP is most interested in or
attuned to. It's directed inward rather than outward, to its state
constituents rather than to the nation.
This structure also blocks any would-be "New
Republicans" such as Chris Christie from gaining the kind of power
inside the party that a New Democrat like Bill Clinton received in 1992.
The only way they'd be able to attract a following inside the Party
would be to commit themselves to policies they'd have to abandon
immediately upon getting nominated, as Mitt Romney did with disastrous
results.
It's true that by 1992 Democrats were far more
desperate to win the presidency - having been in the wilderness for
twelve years - than today's GOP appears to be. Nonetheless it's doubtful
the GOP will be willing to eschew its old base even if it loses the
presidency again in 2016, because without its collection of relatively
homogenous states, there just isn't much of a GOP.
The greater likelihood is a steady eclipse of the
Republican Party at the national level, even as it becomes more
entrenched in particular states. Those states can be expected to become
regressive islands of backwardness within a nation growing steadily more
progressive.
The GOP's national role will be primarily negative -
seeking to block, delay, and filibuster measures that will eventually
become the law of the land in any event, while simultaneously preaching
"states' rights" and praying for conservative majorities on the Supreme
Court.
In other words, more of the same.
No comments:
Post a Comment