One former-Republican's view.
Introduction.
The following is intended as a dispassionate point of view regarding the Republican party's political health. I've tried to forego moral arguments for more purely, practical ones. I do outline some of my past judgements and opinions in an effort to be as transparent as possible about who is expressing this opinion.
While I suspect my journey and perspective are not unique, I thought it might be helpful for a “civilian” (ie - not a politician or columnist or professional opinion-giver) to capture how so many of us see this. And selfishly, to get my thoughts down for posterity.
You can skip this next section if you want to jump to the part that really maps to the headline of this piece, the section that follows it.
My political journey and voting record
I first came of age politically in the time of Ronald Reagan. From Vietnam, through Nixon and on to Carter, my formative years were spent with the cloud of American failure hanging over us. It was that ambient malaise that opened my young heart and mind to the idea of Reagan and a return to the “Shining City on the Hill”.
I remember involuntarily feeling the thrill of the 1980 election outcome as it seemed like there was a chance for the country I was born into to be winners again. As I soon afterward began to read news and then treatises like Marx’s The Communist Manifesto and Wealth and Poverty by George Gilder in high school and college, I formed my own opinion that while the notion of a utopian socialist society sounded great, it was impractical and ran against human nature as I understood it. Gilder’s supply-side arguments made sense to me and I hadn’t yet done any kind of sophisticated examination of my own privileged place as a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant male and how that might inure me to some of his more ham-handed moralism.
In any case, the point is I was once an enthusiastic Republican. I was probably always what party leaders today would pejoratively call a RINO (Republican In Name Only) in that I was a classic fiscal conservative, social liberal. I believed in trickle down economics and “meritocracy”, I believed in a strong defense and a proactive international stand. I believed it was important to be strong and immovable in fighting the Cold War and felt validated when we won it. Meanwhile, I didn’t think too deeply about a woman’s right to legal abortion or pay equity or LGBTQ rights or the plight of people of color, but mainly had a live-and-let attitude toward social issues - people should be free to do as they please as long as they’re not hurting or hindering anyone else (easy for me to say, right?).
My journey from an enthusiastic Reaganite to the progressive I am today included lots of ebbs and flows. I’d voted for Reagan’s second term and for his VP four years later, but felt George H. W. Bush didn’t understand how difficult the economy really was in 1992 and figured I’d try Bill Clinton. Within months of that decision I was disillusioned by Clinton’s sleaziness and petty lying and vowed to never vote Democrat again (conflating the person with the Party) and so wasted a vote on Bob Dole in 1996. I was hopeful in 2000 that George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” would be the perfect balance of my own sense of realism around economic and foreign policy, but altruism around social issues and the disenfranchised. In 2004 I didn’t think it that far-fetched that a homicidal madman like Sadaam Hussein might collaborate with Al Qaeda and that his refusal to allow nuclear inspection was a tacit admission of guilt. It all felt very existential and therefore I believed the continuity of a strong, aggressive administration was important for our, and the world’s, safety (that election happened before it became clear Cheney, Rumsfeld et al had sold us a bill of goods).
By 2008 I’d had enough of cowboy Republicans and their embrace of torture and undisciplined warring to know I was likely to lean Democrat in this one to make the point to Republicans and the rest of the world that enough was enough. I found John McCain intriguing enough to keep me somewhat engaged, but when he picked Sarah Palin it felt like such an insult to my intelligence that it finalized my choice for Barack Obama. Recognizing the junior senator was very inexperienced and being handed about the biggest pile of shit any president could inherit, I was nervous about my choice, but loved his intelligence and apparent character. It’s hard for me to really remember what I was thinking and feeling during his first four years as I was starting an intense and exciting new job, helping parent two young children, and beginning to take care of my aged and widowed father, but I remember thinking that while I appreciated his integrity and that he’d saved us from the abyss, his inexperience and aloofness were showing. His misguided “red line” to Syria was an example of that inexperience for me. By then, I was also pretty much done with the Republican Party. They had become obstructionist and far too steeped in the culture wars that Newt Gingrich had re-ignited in the ‘90s for my taste. I thought Mitt Romney was also a man of good character, but boring and aligned with the wrong party. So in 2012, I did what I think a lot of people did in 2016 - I threw a protest vote. I knew my vote in my state wouldn’t impact the election, so at the last minute, I picked the Libertarian on the ticket; someone, I’m ashamed to admit, I knew nothing about.
And then came 2016 and the shock of my life. That a conman so transparent from the moment he stained my consciousness in the ‘80s with his garish use of his name on everything he touched and his front-and-center cheesy sleaze had won the nomination was - and frankly, still is - unfathomable to me. And I’d voted all over the philosophical map, including my own protest vote in the previous election, so was prone to understanding a vote for something other than the status quo. By now, I really was a RINO. I felt the Republican Party had fled me with it’s fatuous and often dangerous culture-warring, it’s lack of empathy for the disenfranchised, its absolutist approach in battling anything that came from a Democrat, and perhaps most viscerally for me, its seeming embrace of inanity, mendacity and vulgarity. The through-line from the likely unfair caricature of Dan Qyale to George W. to Michelle Bachman and the Tea Party Express to Sarah Palin pointed right to the reality show clown and his inept cabal. And while I never expected it to get that farcical and treacherous, I knew I was no longer with them.
Since my protest vote, I’ve spent a lot of introspective reflection and time listening to and observing thinkers, pundits, columnists, economists, politicians, and my kids and their network. It's no longer just about voting against a group I'm disillusioned with, I have proactively embraced progressive ideals when it comes to social issues. And while I still have some questions about the most radical economic concepts on the American left, I subscribe to the notion that we need to reimagine capitalism to make it work better for more people. Another former Republican, Elizabeth Warren’s approach seems very smart and reasonable to me for example - labeling it Venezuelan-style socialism is disingenuous. But mostly, I find it hard to align myself with or take seriously a party that has so embraced blatant untruths and that consists of a majority too feckless to stand up to a demagogic liar even in the face of his greatest lies and outrages.
I voted for Hillary Clinton because I believed that not only was she very qualified for the job and had a history of service to the country, but that the other guy would be an unmitigated, unimaginable disaster and a stain on our reputation and history. And I voted whole-heartedly for Joe Biden (bringing the totals to Rs - 5, Ds - 4, Ls - 1 in case you lost count) because I think he’s a decent person with tons of relevant experience and because of the urgency to rid ourselves of that unmitigated disaster.
Why they'll wander
With all that as background to give at least a superficial understanding of the baggage I bring to this, I believe more deeply today what I’d been saying to the unfortunate family members within earshot since the 2016 Republican primary result -- that the Republican party as currently constructed is dead and likely to wander in the political wilderness for a generation if it doesn’t do a version of what the Lincoln Project suggests and dismantle and rebuild. It needs to reform or suffer many more defeats.
I’m not enough of a historian, politico, or strategist to claim to know how what should be done, but this is what I observe and suspect will see confirmed by history one day:
The win-at-all-costs absolutism of Republicans is killing them. It’s manifesting itself in a cartoonish version of the “groupthink” they’ve accused liberals of since I first came of age (in fact, that accusation used to appeal to me, the independent thinker - that Libs were trapped by and pushing groupthink). Worse, it's forcing them to embrace or ignore the most radical and racist elements in their ranks. I suspect the source of that approach is the desperation they feel as they realize demographics and attitudes are moving farther and farther away from them. It's reflected in the fact that at any political rally I've witnessed in my neck of the woods over the past four years - from a MAGA rally in 2016 to Black Lives Matter protests to impeachment marches - I see angry men carrying some version of "diversity = white genocide" banners. They're scared. They believe they can’t afford to compromise.
Yeah, yeah, I can hear my Republican friends now: we hold a majority of statehouses, we have a majority in the Supreme Court, [the loser] just got the second most votes in history. I get it, but I think whatever success they’ve had recently is coming at too great a cost and on too thin a margin to be sustainable. Consider that two of their last three presidents made it in with a minority of the popular vote (put another way, they’ve only won the popular vote for the presidency once in the 21st century). They’ve too often had to gerrymander, attempt to suppress votes, lie to the public, reject science, and embrace conspiracy theories to get these wins - again, unsustainable.
The problem now is that many of the candidates and elected officials are not radical enough for the large, most extreme base that supports the outgoing president and almost none of them are progressive enough on social issues for most Americans. And they need that coalition of radicals and moderates to win.
The radicals are fleeing Fox News because it’s not loyal enough and they're headed for even less intellectually honest outlets. I personally know people who are threatening to or have left the Repubican Party in the wake of what they see as leadership’s and others’ weakness in not supporting the Big Lie. In these eyes Pence is treasonous, Mitch is a Deep State traitor, Graham is a feckless toady, or as Lou Dobbs ranted, Bill Barr is “a liar or a fool or both”. Many (thankfully, none that I personally know) are calling for violence against these guys, so it seems like it’s going to be hard for any “mainstream” or reasonable Republican who will admit to objective facts to count on those votes. I have in my head the image of Wile E. Coyote out over the cliff.
Then there's a shrinking number of reasonable Republican and independent voters who might continue to look the other way on social issues or tolerate some pandering to the base to stay in the coalition, but I don’t think that group is large enough for years of success. And there definitely aren’t enough of them when unattached from the base.
Some may say you don't need the moderates or RINOs because many tens of millions of Republicans are all in on the current brand of the party, but even if 65% say the loser of the last election acted responsibly after that election or 66% say there is solid evidence of widespread fraud and 60% of Republican's and "lean-Republican" voters say party leaders should not move in a different direction, that leaves a dangerous percentage of doubters given how tight national races are.
Because of the culture wars, Republicans are out of touch with most Americans. 66% - 77% of Americans don’t support overturning Roe V Wade for example (or, if you prefer - majorities consistently say they are for the right to legal abortion even if with restrictions). The majority of Americans consistently prefer stricter gun-control laws; even late last year, when that number ebbed to its lowest level since 2016, 57% are in favor. The vast majority of Americans support same-sex marriage and even half of Republicans do now. The majority of Americans believe systemic racism persists in this country. Considering how dug in most of the party remains on so many of these issues, it seems unlikely that over time they’ll be able to win over undecideds or others who differ so much on such critical and visceral issues. Now I see Wile E. Coyote looking up at the anvil.
The bottom line is that unless they change, they’re dangerously dependent on a massive number of people so radical that they ignore objective realities and the norms of civil society; and the things it'll take to win them will likely chase some small, but fatal percentage of the rest of the coalition away.
Consider that this is the first time since Herbert Hoover that a party in power lost the presidency, the House and Senate in a single term as some evidence.
Unsolicited advice
Having said that, there are plenty of polls that show a plurality of Americans (42%) identify as conservative vs. a smaller portion who identify as liberal. This means there’s still an opening for Republicans. But only if they adapt.
So maybe I do have advice in addition to the observation above. I recognize that a party has to differentiate itself from the opposing party in order to be effective. I also recognize that there’s a lot of study and opinion that suggest “major parties perpetuate themselves by maintaining a consistent ideology on major nationals issues, even at the cost of periodic defeats at the polls...ideological polarization maintains the vitality of the two major parties and renders them almost immune to threats from new parties…” But if you want to have a chance of winning and governing in the foreseeable future, I see two choices you have at this historic crossroad if you're a leader in the Republican Party:
You can continue pandering to the delusional or bigoted and hope to keep enough of the more moderate groups on board. This path is politically dangerous because as we’ve seen with the emergence of the likes of the Lincoln Project, the current flight of big donors, the results of the presidential election in November, and the Georgia runoffs in January this year, it’s likely to turn off a significant portion of otherwise Republican-leaning citizens and to turn out the opposition in large numbers. All of that is before one notes that it’s morally fraught and clearly, materially dangerous to validate and embolden violent, racist, and irrational corners of our society (see January 6th and, I fear, the weeks ahead of this writing). It’s suicidal, and arguably, homicidal.
The other plays the long game, but seems like common sense to me. It would be to accept the loss of the hypnotized wing of the base, by embracing truth and facts and by resisting any demagoguery that strays as deep into the amoral as this last president’s. Some of the hypnotized will snap out of it and return over time. At the same time, give up on culture war favorites that seem to be on the wrong side of history (those enumerated above) - they’re not winners and are going to make you unattractive and irrelevant over time. Once you’ve thrown off the shackles of the Moral Majority, white supremacists, and the gun lobby - and I’d argue, cease suggesting that anyone who’s left of Mitt Romney is a socialist in the vein of Castro or Chavez - you can try to appeal to a wider swath of the electorate on the merits. Maybe then you can get enough voters to hear your re-articulation of the traditionally conservative philosophies that really matter to you. I don’t expect that you’d embrace the progressive agenda either philosophically or strategically. You can restate and embrace sophisticated, intellectually honest economic policies that differ from Democrats. Bring the debate on immigration and border security back to a rational one by rejecting the xenophobic, dehuminizing rehtoric around DACA families and refugees and at the same time establish a clear, firm, and enforceable set of rules, which is something we undoubtedly need. You can make a very compelling case for the need to stand up to China and lead the way on how. Logical gun control policy might preserve the 2nd Amendment’s spirit instead of pitting a new generation of voters against it altogether. Drop the fringe stuff and appeal with compelling, winning ideas. My guess is that would leave you in a much healthier position to take advantage when Democrats overreach or slip up as those in power are bound to do.
There are plenty of things progressives will never agree with you on, but I suspect a majority of us would welcome reasonable debate in a world of shared reality. Honest debates about tax and economic policy, how to address climate change, racial injustice, pay equity for women and people of color, the widening wealth gap, border security and immigration policy, election security, international affairs, how or whether to regulate Big Tech are good and healthy. I want us to have those debates because the genuine contest of ideas is likeliest to surface the best options.
But you can’t have effective debate without a shared reality and at least a modicum of intellectual honesty on both sides of the debate. The widening wealth gap and wage stagnation is real; how or whether to deal with it is a conversation. Climate change is not a hoax; how to battle it is a conversation. Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden are not part of a pedophiliac cannibal cult; whether they're the best choice to lead the country is a conversation.
That shared reality doesn't exist right now and I sincerely hope that the remaining principled Republicans seize on this moment to do the brave, scary, and selfish thing and deal with the potential of a short term hit in order to set themselves up for longer haul success. I believe we’ll be a healthier democracy and society if we can get there. Hell, you guys might even beat ‘em fair and square a lot of the time since apparently there’s a plurality that identifies with you.
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Adding news links that validate my premise (ongoing, latest at bottom):
“there are very few rank-and-file Republicans interested in storming any hills for Mitch McConnell, while many of them would scale K2 for Donald Trump.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/24/opinion/mitch-mcconnell-would-like-trump-to-fade-away.html
”In prime time, CNN’s viewership was up 61% compared to February 2020, with MSNBC seeing a 23% rise and Fox News dropping 30%. Among viewers 25-54, CNN was up in prime by 39% year-over-year, while MSNBC was up 7% and Fox News was down 38%.” https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/markjoyella/2021/03/02/cnn-fox-news-split-prime-time-victories-in-february-cable-ratings/amp/
"The fact that a significant plurality, if not potentially a majority, of our voters have been deceived into this creation of an alternate reality could very well be an existential threat to the party," https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/10/politics/qanon-republican-party-congress/index.html?utm
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