After a year of presidential politics, it’s hardly a secret that the Republican Party is burdened with a none-of-the-above problem — the GOP has, at various times, had about a dozen candidates seeking the party’s nomination, and none of them can draw support from all the various Republican constituencies. It seems hard to believe, but only 42% of Iowa Republicans say they could support any of their party’s nominees (among Iowa Dems, the number is 61%).
But there are several worthwhile reports this morning that point to the broader problem for the GOP — it’s not just that their presidential field is unimpressive, it’s that the fissures between the party’s various factions are quickly becoming chasms.
The long-standing coalition of social, economic and national security conservatives that elevated the Republican Party to political dominance has become so splintered by the presidential primary campaign that some party leaders fear a protracted nomination fight that could hobble the eventual nominee. […]
That instability has fueled fears that if a winner does not quickly emerge in a primary calendar loaded with contests in January and early February, a prolonged primary fight could delay the GOP’s focus on election day in a campaign in which Democratic voters already have contributed more money and, according to several polls, expressed greater satisfaction with their choice of presidential contenders.
The Republican Party has business interests, the religious right, and defense hawks, which have been kept together with smoke, mirrors, and chewing gum for the better part of a generation now. But now the factions are drawing lines in the sand, and making clear who they won’t vote for — business interests won’t tolerate Huckabee, the religious right rejects McCain or Giuliani, and hawks look askance at everyone but McCain or Giuliani. Romney has tried for a year to tell all the constituencies that he’s with them, but given that he felt the opposite up until fairly recently, no one seems to believe him.
We’ve heard talk about a Republican “crack-up” before, but could it actually happen this year?
The WSJ’s Jackie Calmes also took a closer look at the “fractured party.”
It is possible the party will coalesce around the nominee from among the seven candidates still running. It’s also possible the nominee will divide the party further.
“It’s the end of the conservative revolution that started with Goldwater,” says longtime party activist Donald Devine.
The Republican Party’s identity crisis leaves it at a disadvantage. The Democratic Party’s moderates and liberals, an amalgam of antiwar, pro-labor and pro-women’s and minority rights factions, are relatively united. Any of the major Democratic candidates would be acceptable, most party voters say.
In part, Republicans are victims of their own success, party professionals say. Christian conservatives have been a key to Bush-era victories, but their outsized influence, including an emphasis on cultural issues like gay marriage and opposition to embryonic stem-cell research, has alienated secular Republicans.
Ross Douthat scrutinizes the same phenomenon.
It’s true that the current conservative intelligentsia, forged in the crucible of Ronald Reagan’s successes, is heavily invested in keeping the triple alliance intact – hence the Thompson bubble, the anti-Huckabee crusade, and the “rally round Romney” effect. And it’s true, as well, that if the Republican Party recovers its majority in the next election the alliance will be considerably strengthened.
But such a recovery is unlikely, and already, in the wake of just a single midterm-election debacle, it’s obvious that the Norquistians and neocons and social conservatives aren’t inevitable allies – that many tax-cutters and foreign-policy hawks, for instance, would happily screw over their Christian-Right allies to nominate Rudy Giuliani; or that many social conservatives don’t give a tinker’s dam what the Club for Growth thinks about Mike Huckabee’s record. (So too with the neocon yearning for a McCain-Lieberman ticket, which would arguably represent a far more radical remaking of the GOP coalition than anything Chuck Hagel has to offer.) The “movement” institutions, from the think tanks to talk radio, have resisted these fissiparous tendencies, and if Mitt Romney wins the nomination they’ll be able to claim a temporary victory. But if the GOP continues to suffer at the polls, in ’08 and beyond, the (right-of) center can’t be expected to hold, and the result will be a struggle for power that’s likely to leave the conservative movement changed, considerably, from the way that Tomasky finds it today.
Granted, this isn’t the first time talk of a GOP “identity crisis” has emerged, but I’d argue it’s probably the most credible. The Republican factions used to be able to largely ignore one another; now they’re actively hoping to defeat one another, and there’s no presidential candidate who can step up to keep the gang together.
Yes, this can change. Once there’s a nominee, and once Dems offer the GOP a specific target, the factions tend to settle down and get back together.
But I’d argue that more so than in any cycle in recent history, this seems far less likely now. And with no frontrunner, and the possibility of a protracted nominating process, this may very well get ugly and leave the coalition in tatters.
I’m pretty sure popcorn was made for developments like these.