Wondering whether ‘the Republican party will survive this dilemma’

May 1, 2007

The National Review’s William F. [tag]Buckley[/tag] has generally bucked his far-right brethren on the [tag]war[/tag] in [tag]Iraq[/tag]. A year ago, Buckley labeled the war in Iraq a failure and concluded, “There will be no legacy for Mr. Bush. I don’t believe his successor would re-enunciate the words he used in his second inaugural address because they were too ambitious. So therefore I think his legacy is indecipherable.”

Now, however, Buckley is taking a few steps further. Not only is Bush’s presidency ruined, but the conservative icon is wondering whether the Republican Party itself can withstand such a disaster.

General Petraeus is a wonderfully commanding figure. But if the enemy is in the nature of a disease, he cannot win against it. Students of politics ask then the derivative question: How can the Republican party, headed by a president determined on a war he can’t see an end to, attract the support of a majority of the voters? General Petraeus, in his Pentagon briefing on April 26, reported persuasively that there has been progress, but cautioned, “I want to be very clear that there is vastly more work to be done across the board and in many areas, and again I note that we are really just getting started with the new effort.”

The general makes it a point to steer away from the political implications of the struggle, but this cannot be done in the wider arena. There are grounds for wondering whether the Republican party will survive this dilemma.

There seems to be a lot of this going around.

RCP highlighted this exchange from ABC’s This Week:

Stephanopoulos: If this now declared deadline of Gen. Petraeus of September, if the political goals haven’t been met by then, do you see large scale Republican defections at that point?

George Will: Absolutely. They do not want to have, as they had in 2006, another election on Iraq. George, it took 30, 40 years for the Republican Party to get out from under Herbert Hoover. People would say, “Are you going to vote for Nixon in ’60?” “No, I don’t like Hoover.” The Depression haunted the Republican Party. This could be a foreign policy equivalent of the Depression, forfeiting the Republican advantage they’ve had since the ’68 convention of the Democratic Party and the nomination of [George] McGovern. The advantage Republicans have had on national security matters may be forfeited.

As Blake Dvorak put it, “[E]ssentially two of the most respected and smartest minds in conservative politics just declared that the Republican Party will not only suffer greatly in 2008, but that it is in danger of becoming a minority party for generations.”

To be sure, some of the Buckley/Will gloom seems overwrought, and I don’t doubt that the GOP will exist beyond 2008. Never underestimate the ability of smears and demagoguery to help Republicans persevere under difficult election circumstances. More than once, we’ve seen the arsonist tell the homeowner not to trust the man outside with a hose, and we’ve seen it work when it shouldn’t.

That said, as we talked about yesterday, Republicans are not only in trouble, there are institutional hurdles that make it difficult for the party to change.

It seems like just a couple of years ago, Karl Rove, Tom DeLay, and their cohorts were talking about a “permanent” Republican Majority. Oh wait, that was just a couple of years ago.

As literate a man as Mr. Buckley is, he seems to have said “dilemma” when he really meant “debacle”, for it cannot be said to be otherwise.

  • God I hope the GOP is done. America became the leader of the free world after WWII largely in part to the new deal and a middle class surge. It is not a coincidence that democrats held power for the most part during this time. The republicans on the other hand have based their entire party platform on dismantling government and privatizing power into the hands of the wealthy and the corporations. The middle class is slowly but surely eroding, as was the plan.

    Now, thanks to the bungling incompetance of Bu$h and his neocon handlers, 30 + years of conservative dominance is now crumbling. I never thought I would be thankful for anything a Bu$h does, but it took 6 short years for the coward of Crawford and the rest of the rubber stamp republican bozos to expose to the population the true agenda of the GOP, and we saw evidence of tha bad taste left in our mouths last November.

    Sometimes you have to hit rock bottom to bounce back up, and I think that is what we are seeing here; a population that is coming out of the post 9-11 trauma/paranoia, one that will not fall for the divisive wedge issues and propoganda the GOP has spewed for the last 3 decades.

    There is hope for our democracy and our citizens.

  • i think we have to be a little careful about getting ahead of ourselves. i know it is early for polls, but a number of recent polls in key states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida show the main R candidates, particularly Giuliani, beating or within the margin of error with all of the leading D candidates. one possible explanation is that the disasterous last 6 years are being personalized to Bush and are not tarring Rethugs or conservatives more broadly. if the R’s were really on life support, they should not be polling so strongly for 2008.

  • The time for at least one more viable party in American politics was long ago. Maybe this Republican disaster called “The Bush Years” is the catalyst for a splintering of the wackos from the moderate republicans and a new party can result, further isolating the “base”. One can only hope.

  • I feel I should repeat what I said in the McCain discussion earlier:

    In other words, I expect they’re simply doomed for the next election cycle. Unfortunately, I expect that after 8 years of Democratic rule, with things going rather well, people will turn again to Republicans with their promises of tax cuts for all. It’s rather hard for most people to resist the promise of something for nothing.

    Remember that this is essentially what happened in 2000. Bush made the case that he was giving away more ‘free stuff’ than Gore, in the form of tax cuts, and that certainly helped him get enough votes to steal the election (even though Gore’s plan actually gave more back to the people who needed it). Once people get complacent, they stop worrying about the overall management of the country and start looking for what they can personally get out of the government. My question is, how can we keep them from reaching that conclusion?

  • True they appear to be on the ebb…

    But think of it this way:

    As the Republican tide goes out, the Democrats wrestle to control the middle-right part of the beach. There’s no talk about running to the left. That’s quicksand. They’ve ceded that territory. Liberal is officially a dirty word.

    In a few years when the Republican tide comes back they well be well-positioned to claim even more territory and force the Democrats even further to the right.

    That’s why I think including a passionate voice like Mike Gravel is a must for future debates. His statements force everyone to look down and see if they’re wearing clothes.

    Kucinich does the same thing of course.
    Except he lacks passion.
    Quite frankly, for me anyway, he comes off sounding like a bliss ninny.

  • zeitgeist said: “i think we have to be a little careful about getting ahead of ourselves. i know it is early for polls, but a number of recent polls in key states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida show the main R candidates, particularly Giuliani, beating or within the margin of error with all of the leading D candidates.”

    Very true. I’m guessing the R strategy in 2008 will be very much the strategy of 2004: No defense of the competence of their own candidate, just a constant barrage of negative advertising to drag the D nominee down below the R in public perception. It will take a lot of activity to fight against this trend.

    I’m hoping that Giuliani is still polling well in many places simply due to name recognition. I’m guessing that the average person on the street doesn’t realize that Giuliani agrees with Bush pretty much 100%. Once they start to see this, I’m guessing the G-man will start to fade fast. Also, he’s another candidate who can’t keep his idiotic statements to himself.

  • How can the Republican party, headed by a president determined on a war he can’t see an end to, attract the support of a majority of the voters?

    Pumping Stupid Sauce directly into the nation’s water supply.

    The better question is should such a party attract the majority of voters?

    Perhaps I should try to shed at least one layer of my Anti-Fuckley sentiments but all of this hand-wringing over the fate of the poor old GOP reeks of a person wringing his hands over some burnt out junkie who has fried his brains with fast living and one too many coke binges. The junkie knew what he was doing, he had fun while it lasted and now he’s a dribbling pile of pulp. If you really care, ship his arse to detox. If you don’t want to do that, shut up.

    It seems like just a couple of years ago, Karl Rove, Tom DeLay, and their cohorts were talking about a “permanent” Republican Majority.

    Lying about a permanent ReThuglican Majority is kid stuff compared to some of the whoppers these bastards have been pushing. But I do savour the irony of Tom Delaythevote painting a picture of a ReThuglican utopia (I know this an oxymoron) while he contributed to the party’s overdue slide down the slopes of irrelevance. Yum!

  • I have never understood how a party devoted to the interests of the obscenely rich could survive in anything even claiming to be a democracy. The only things I could think of which made survival possible were (1) blatant appeals to bigotry in spite of an egalitarian ideology, (2) hypocritical exploitation of religious sentiment and superstition in spite of the Constitutional separation of the church and state, and (3) just plain stupidity and ignorance.

    Apparently these were insufficient to overcome the Bush Crime Family’s hubristic overreach. Here’s to Commander Codpiece, ruin of everything he ever touched including the Republican Party.

  • In the 70’s the Republicans identified the news media, the federal judiciary and academia as structural blocks to their achieving their goal of domination. They have systematically gone after these institutions. They have largely succeeded in stacking the judiciary in their favor and bullying and co-opting the media. They have had less sucsess on the academic front but they continue wage the war. What can we on the left learn from this?

    I believe that the the major structural block for our side is corporate power and not social conservatives. Remember, the outlines of the above right wing strategy was laid out for the US Chamber of Commerce by Lewis Powell prior to his appointment to SCOTUS. The social conservatives have merely been pawns of the big money boys of the GOP. If we are too consolidate any short term victories, we must, therefore, focus our efforts in reigning in corporate power in this country. I won’t give any specific recommendations, but will say that exactly what must be done to achieve this goal would be an excellent Sunday Discussion Group topic.

  • Ed’s right about the Republicans, ever since the assassination of Lincoln. I’ll be happy to take 30+ years of them being in the wildnerness like they were after 1932. I’ll be long gone by the time their next cycle gets a start.

  • We Democrats have a remarkable ability to destroy ourselves. We WILL find a way.

    I personally am hoping for a Guiliani nomination. I plan to get rich selling tee-shirts with pictures of Rudy-in-Drag on them.

  • I worked on the Johnson vs Goldwater campaign when I was 19. On election night I was at the Los Angeles Democratic headquarters when a friend said to me that she didn’t see how the Republican party could survive this huge defeat of their “reactionary” candidate and that the party was doomed to extinction.

    I remember this conversation in light of what has happened since.

  • He who owns the presses. Fox smear machine and ABC hate radio will keep the party of corruption alive and functioning. Then there’s McConnell who sets up the electronic voting and vote counting and also the RNC servers(lost emails anyone?) plus, set up and runs eGov for congress and WH, who says he will not work for a Democrat, He will do what he can (already has in Ohio). Bush has been successful at infiltrating the DoJ and the courts at every level so stop being naive CB, the GOP was 2 steps away from a “complete” takeover almost mirroring the rise of Hitler. Their fungus is here for sometime to come and will take years to get rid of it.

  • The Republican party may be down, but I would be careful about counting them out. Heinlein once said, “Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.” I think we of the literati forget that a president who brags about not reading the news and chews with his mouth open has a tremendous appeal for voters whose political views can be reduced to a text message. Plus, we should remember a little thing called party loyalty. I was raised in a family of “yellow dog Democrats,” as I expect were many of you. How many Republicans go to the polls and vote for the party, not for the man? The more Joe Lunchbox gives up for something, the more he believes in it. You want to win elections, you’ve got to kiss babies and talk about family values. The Democrats used to know this, but during the last few elections the Republicans have stolen our old thunder. We need to hold our noses and steal it back.

  • As long as there are completely selfish people who want to profit at the expense of this entire nation, there will be Republicans. I don’t think the party will whither away, but I think this golden age for them is over. It will take a while before they can once again con a simple majority of Americans into thinking that what is best for the rich few should come out of the hides of the many.

    I have no doubt the Repubs will come back slicker, meaner and more mendacious than ever. Let’s hope than another 9/11 doesn’t fall into their hands to exploit with all the fear that the elephant party can possibly conjure up.

  • Get a grip folks. I live in Texas and I can tell you R’s are going no where. We are talking about a near cult like following to GWB and it’s not because of who he is, it’s what he is, a big fat R.

    Does anyone think the noise machine will ever stop. GWB might have put a damper on the machine, but it will continue to operate.

    Religious zealots, corporate greed, and stupid people will always inhabit this country and as long as they do, we are stuck with R’s.

  • “[E]ssentially two of the most respected and smartest minds in conservative politics just declared that the Republican Party will not only suffer greatly in 2008, but that it is in danger of becoming a minority party for generations.” –

    Well, one of the most respected and smartest minds, anyway. George Will thinks way too much of himself and intellectually isn’t qualified to carry William F. Buckley’s jock.

    Or even know what it’s for. 😉

  • I think we need a pejorative that means the same thing as “yelllow dog” R’s, and QUICKLY. Catch the turn of the tide, and give the middle something NOT to aspire to…

  • I think we need a pejorative that means the same thing as “yelllow dog” R’s, and QUICKLY. — cookie, @20

    Pink elephant?

  • I think it is a delicious thought that the Republican party is through for thirty or forty years, but I would have guessed the same thing after Watergate. We got a Democrat for four years and then look at what happened: the “Reagan Revolution” which amounted to a transfer of wealth and resources from domestic spending to military spending. It also was a trasfer of wealth from the lower and middle classes to the extremely wealthy

    The country, still reeling from the economic aftermath of the Vietnam war and fuel shortages from the Middle east, experienced extreme tightening of interest rates. The middle class was squeezed, people lost their jobs and their homes, and we started hearing about the homeless.

    We also started to hear about deficits from the so-called trickle down theory, which didn’t work. David Stockman, the so-called architect of Reagan’s economic plan called it VooDoo economics off the record.

    So while it is true that people hate George W Bush, that hatred probably will not transfer to all Republicans for very long. Not as long as these people control, as has been pointed out, the media and the courts. I am afraid the Dems have a lot of work to do before they discount the Republic-thugs for very long. The public has a short memory and tends to be gullible.

  • I think Buckley may be misunderestimating the ability of the wingnuts to forget how disastrous Republican leadership has been for them. The wingnuts will vote for whoever has the R by their name, no matter how badly that person screwed them. They supported Bush in droves in 2004, and Iraq was already a fiasco.

    Fortunately, the swing voters don’t drink the koolaid, and they see what a mess the Republicans made. Hopefully they will remember that in 2008.

    Democrats need a good candidate like Gore to run behind, if they get a good run at 2008, Buckley might just see his prediction come true.

  • “I have never understood how a party devoted to the interests of the obscenely rich could survive in anything even claiming to be a democracy.” – Ed Stephan

    If poor and middle class people who vote Republican understood their own economic self-interests they would get out of debt, get an education, make gobes of money…

    … and be so rich they’d vote Republican.

    There’s a certain core of wingnuts that we are never going to crack. The best we can do is expose their extremism to the moderates and independents and hope that drives the center to us.

    Read Kevin Phillips “American Theocracy”. A slow read, but really scary.

  • If the Democtratic party cant win convincingly, across the board, in 08, the party should be euthanized. Not kidding.

  • In regards to the corporate interests. As an idividual there is something you can do. Do not buy anything from a company that supports the Republican Party. So….

    Put your money where your mouth is, and do NOT shop at WALMART, stop whining about it being cheap…. Each time you make a purchase, you are supporting the Republican machine.

    Are you thinking about a do-it-yourself project at home? Buy at Lowes, NOT Home Depot because they spend more money supporting Republicans than they do Democrats.

    There are lists available you can use in your daily life, support businesses that support Democratic causes. Even when buying locally… do you visit a restaurant where the Republicans have their meetings? why not take your business to a restaurant that shows support for your causes….

    I do my little part, how about you?

  • The day after Lincoln died, the Republican Party became a criminal organization.

    Wise up.

  • Bruno, @26

    Our Piddlington (small town, rural South) has a Lowes and doesn’t have a Home Depot, so it’s easy to follow your prescription. But avoiding WalMart? Half of the stuff I get at Walmart (not a whole lot) isn’t available anywhere else within a 35mile radius, and more likely 50 miles away. So, in order to not support Walmart, I’d not only have to spend a lot more time, I’d be supporting Exxon *and* screwing up environment. You figure that’s any better?

    • Comments are closed.