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Baraka_Guru · 05-01-2009, 07:00 AM

Quote:

The Dismal Future Of The GOP
Bruce Bartlett, 05.01.09, 12:00 AM EDT
Losing its moderate voice and its moderate voters.

The defection of Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party has engendered little anguish within the GOP. The general attitude seems to be "good riddance." Democrats had the same attitude when conservative Southern Democrats began defecting to the Republicans back in the 1970s. The result was GOP control of the Senate in 1980 and the House of Representatives in 1994.

For 100 years after the Civil War, the Democratic Party was based in the South. Northern Republicans were blamed for destroying the Southern way of life by engaging in a war of aggression against the South. The Republican Party was also the home to most African Americans for many decades after the war.

Although the former slaves had been given the vote by the 15th Amendment to the Constitution, there was no way that Southerners were going to allow them to exercise political power. Once Reconstruction ended and federal troops were withdrawn from the South, Democrats conspired to disenfranchise blacks using every legal means they could conceive.

When these methods were inadequate, violence was commonly used to maintain Democratic control of the South. Groups like the Ku Klux Klan were essentially the militant arm of the party of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson.

The main way Democrats maintained control was by barring blacks from voting in the Democratic primary. Within the Democratic Party, different factions representing rural populists and establishment conservatives would fight tooth-and-nail. But at the end of the day, they all voted for the winner of the Democratic nomination.

After World War II, the Supreme Court held that restricting Democratic primaries to white voters only was unconstitutional. But it wasn't until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that blacks were truly able to exercise their voting rights throughout the South.

As time went by, populism gradually declined and the Democratic Party in the South became dominated by conservatives. After Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to purge some of them in 1938 for opposing his liberal agenda, Southern Democrats and Republicans joined together in a conservative coalition that exercised effective control of Congress for the next 36 years.

In the wake of Watergate, Democrats won big in 1974. In the House, their membership increased from 243 to 291. And most of the newly elected Democrats were Northern liberals who wanted nothing to do with their Southern brethren. Several Southern Democrats were purged from their committee chairmanships and reforms instituted to diminish their power.

At this point, conservative Southerners had no reason to stay in the Democratic Party. The Republican Party became viable in the South for the first time since Reconstruction. When Southern Democrats began to switch over to the GOP, Northern liberal Democrats considered themselves better off for it.

The Democratic Party became a more purely liberal party no longer restrained by a conservative Southern wing. In the process, it lost millions of conservative voters and became less attractive to middle-of-the-road voters as well. In 1980, they voted for Ronald Reagan and also put Republicans in control of the Senate for the first time since 1954.

After Walter Mondale was soundly defeated in 1984 running as an unabashed liberal, moderate Democrats saw the handwriting on the wall. Unless the party's liberalism was curbed, the Republicans would continue to gain power. These moderates formed the Democratic Leadership Council in 1985.

In 1988, Democrats nominated Michael Dukakis for president. Although a liberal, he was more of a technocrat and less of an ideologue than Mondale. Nevertheless, George H.W. Bush had little difficulty painting him as an extreme liberal. This was possible because at this point, the Democratic Party was indeed very liberal, with those on the far left like Jesse Jackson often calling the tune.

In the wake of the Dukakis defeat, the DLC became more aggressive in trying to curb the Democrats' liberalism. Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, who became chairman of the group in 1990, pushed the party to tone down the liberal rhetoric and concentrate on practical solutions to the nation's problems, even if it meant conceding that Republicans sometimes had worthwhile ideas.

Clinton's election in 1992 was viewed as a triumph of the DLC strategy. But in his first two years, he governed more as a traditional liberal than the moderate he had run as. Newt Gingrich, then the House Republican whip, recognized that Clinton's betrayal of his moderate image created an opportunity for Republicans to take control of the House.

Gingrich's key insight was that the few remaining Southern Democrats were the primary barriers to Republican control because they all represented districts that Republicans could win. Historically, Republicans had given a pass to conservative Democrats in the South because they mostly voted with Republicans. But there was one time when the Southerners were loyal Democrats: when it was time to organize the House and elect a speaker.

Gingrich's strategy was to put severe pressure on conservative Democrats. Either retire, switch parties or suffer an aggressive Republican challenge, he told them. Most chose to retire or become Republicans. This is what gave the GOP control of Congress in 1994. Thus we see that Republican control of Congress was the ultimate result of the Democrats' decision to purge their conservative wing in 1974.

After winning control of Congress and the White House in 2000, Republicans were as full of themselves as Democrats had been after achieving the same goal in 1976 and 1992. Cooperation with the other party was viewed as a sell-out by partisans of the party in control. The dominant element of each party--liberals in 1977 and 1993, and conservatives in 2001--moved quickly to implement long-cherished measures that had been blocked by a lack of unified control of the executive and legislative branches.

At this point, Democrats finally accepted that applying ideological litmus tests was self-defeating. If some moderate or conservative wanted to run in a district that would only elect a moderate or conservative, then it was stupid to insist that they endorse every liberal item in the Democratic agenda. Moderates and conservatives were permitted to dissent from the party line on issues such as gun control if that was what it took to win.

This "big tent" approach was highly successful and greatly helped Democrats retake control of Congress in 2006. What probably hurt congressional Republicans the most, however, was their down-the-line support for every action by George W. Bush, no matter how ill-conceived, poorly implemented or at odds with the party's basic philosophy, such as when he insisted on a massive expansion of Medicare in 2003.

As a consequence, the Republican brand was destroyed. The party is now widely viewed as corrupt, incompetent, ideologically rigid and out of step with the American mainstream. It should be engaging in self-examination, developing an agenda that addresses the real problems faced by Americans and reaching out to the millions of voters who have left the GOP in recent years. Instead, Republicans are pushing out the last of the party's moderates as if that will somehow make them more popular with the very moderates whose votes are essential if they are to regain power.

I think Republicans desperately need a group that will do for them what the DLC did for the Democrats. Unfortunately, I see no such organization or any resources available for those that might start one. Those with such resources are either turned off by Republican pandering to its right wing and have left the party or they agree with it. Either way, no one in the Republican Party seems to have any interest in victory, and they prefer to wear defeat as some kind of badge of honor.

Eventually, Republicans will tire of being out of power just as Democrats did, and they will do what it takes to win. But I fear that Republicans will have to at least lose in 2010 and again in 2012 before they start to come to their senses. Perhaps by 2014, some leader with maturity, resources, vision and discipline will find a way of leading the GOP out of the wilderness. But I see no one even in a position to start that process today.

Bruce Bartlett is a former Treasury Department economist and the author of Reaganomics: Supply-Side Economics in Action and Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy. He writes a weekly column for Forbes.com.

The Dismal Future Of The GOP - Forbes.com

Is the loss of Specter a huge hit to moderate Republican politicians and moderate Republican voters?
How are the Republicans doing in the wake of GWB and a Democratic government?
Are Republicans losing their grip as the voice of conservatism?
Does conservatism need to be more flexible in changing times?
What's going on in American politics on the right? How will conservatives need to change to get back on track to their core values in a changing world?
How do you see the future of conservatism?