Let’s take a quick look at the list of things I’d love to see happen right now.
* Bush losing stature and public support? Check.
* Congressional Republicans with the lowest poll support in a decade? Check.
* And perhaps most importantly, the dormant fissures dividing the GOP coming to the surface? One big check.
John M. Engler, the former Republican governor of Michigan who now heads the National Association of Manufacturers, vowed before the November elections to use his trade association’s might to back President Bush’s judicial nominees. But as the Senate showdown approaches, the business group is delivering a different message: Judges are not its fight.
NAM’s decision to sit out the brawl may be indicative of a broader trend. From Wall Street to Main Street, the small-government, pro-business mainstay of the Republican Party appears to be growing disaffected with a party it sees as focused on social issues at its expense.
“I’m inclined to support the Republican Party, but the question becomes, how much other stuff do I have to put up with to maintain that identification?” asked Andrew A. Samwick, a Dartmouth College economics professor who until recently was chief economist of Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers.
When members of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers start muttering about the difficulties he’s having identifying with the GOP, you know this is a party with serious internal problems.
The chasm between evangelicals who demand action on sexual/religious issues and corporate interests who demand work on tax cuts is growing, and seems to be getting worse. The religious right is convinced that the party leaders only pay lip service to social issues, but is actually concerned breaks for Big Business. Corporate Republicans, meanwhile, are convinced that the GOP is on some kind of religious crusade, and they’re not comfortable with the direction of their party.
Oddly enough, both sides have a point. The party is letting all of its factions down.
The evangelicals see their items dominating conversation in DC, but there’s no real progress in terms of policy. If you’re Focus on the Family, you look at the landscape and see abortion rates getting higher (unlike under Clinton’s leadership), gays receiving more legal protections, and the ongoing inability to convert children to Christianity in public schools. The corporate wing, meanwhile, sees record-high deficits, a weak job market, a record trade imbalance, and a stock market that’s lower now than it was when Bush took office five years ago.
(Making matters even more interesting, the libertarian wing is noticing that federal spending is up considerably under GOP rule, and the size of government is growing in uncomfortable ways in areas such as education, health care, and law enforcement.)
The social conservatives’ top priorities (constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and the nuclear option) aren’t going anywhere, and the economic conservatives’ top priorities (Social Security privatization and revamping the tax code) are making even less progress.
Since the election, Washington Republicans resemble the German military during World War I, opening new fronts before old battles are resolved, said John E. Silvia, chief economist at Wachovia Corp. and a former top GOP economist for the Senate Banking Committee and the Joint Economic Committee. One week it’s Social Security, the next week it’s Schiavo, then steroids, then judges, he said.
“It’s an unbalanced domestic agenda,” Silvia said. “If you’re going to go to the wall on one particular issue, you’re telling me you’re going to sacrifice other issues, and history is full of stories of battles won at the cost of missing issues that have lost the war.”
There’s plenty of time for the Republicans to change course and regain their footing, but at this point, the party has no direction and its leaders are either corrupt (DeLay) or hapless (Bush, Frist).
What’s more, there is no plan to turn things around. It couldn’t have happened to a more appropriate group of people.