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The following is an excellent article in the Washington Monthly by editor-at-large Benjamin Wallace-Wells. Whether or not you agree with some of its assessments of the Democratic Party in the 1970s and early 1980s (it calls it sclerotic, and frankly I agree) or it's assessment of Kerry (in a stupid dig, they the author calls him ineffective and it's way to early to make that assumption), it correctly identifies that regardless of what happens to Bush this year, the GOP is probably going on a path to long-term electoral collapse: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0410.wallace-wells.htmlI'm going to summarize the article's key points, because it's long, but if you can get a chance to read it, do so - it's very good. True Conservatives Are Distraught: Wallace-Wells shares a quote by his friend, a conservative Georgian staffer for a Georgia Republican congressman: "What's infuriating," he told me, "is that it's hard to know what the party stands for beyond defending a bunch of interests. I mean, look at the leadership--who do you have? Frist? Hack. DeLay? Hack. Hastert? Total hack. I can't figure out if the administration are hacks or just don't care. John Kerry's running on budget deficits--that's supposed to be our fucking issue." He started slamming his hand against the table. "In 15 years, the whole federal budget blows up because of Medicare, this ridiculous prescription-drug benefit that no one even likes, our taxes go through the roof, and the economy breaks down. And this time, it's gonna be our fault." Today's Republicans are Yesterday's Democrats: Wallace-Wells makes an allusion to great empires - they often seem strongest right before they fall. He points to the Democrats of the 70s: He details how the party had become an unwieldy coalition between big old-economy interest groups, Conservative Southern populists, and the new left, all of whom were united on just one thing: the need for more regulation, more government agencies, more activism. Carter's instincts were moderate, but the Congressional leadership continually undermined his approach and favored the most high-spending innefficient ways over more pragmatic ones. It took dogmatic positions on spending and much of the party was consumed by the call for government-mandated full-employment. It mistook the desires of interest groups for what was right for the country. Eventually, this strategy led to the party's collapse in the 80s and the Reagan presidency. Today, the GOP faces the exact same problemsTwenty years earlier, a policy agenda of tax cuts and smaller government made practical sense for the country. Reagan succeeded in cutting taxes, and his successors, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, eventually got government spending under control. By the 2000 election, upper-bracket tax rates had been steady for two decades at a rate far lower than they were through most of the previous 50 years, and the federal government's share of GDP was 18.4 percent, well below where it had been during the Reagan administration. While short-term, broad-based tax cuts still made sense as a recession-fighter, the big challenges America faced--chiefly the unrecognized danger of terrorism and the coming retirement of the baby boom generation--could not be solved with further tax and spending cuts. If anything, the opposite would be called for.
But this budgetary reality had little effect on the movement conservatives who by 2001 dominated the Republican Party. Instead, they embraced the small-government/low taxes paradigm even more tightly, with a moralistic fervor not unlike that which moved liberals in the 1970s to a ferocious defense of big government and high taxes against all logic. Politically, cutting taxes provided for Republicans a unifying force similar to that which spending had provided the Democrats: It was the one policy that almost every part of the often-fractious GOP coalition--libertarians, cultural conservatives, multinationals, small business owners, investors in Wall Street, the energy sector--could agree on. And for the party's strategists, tax cuts were the route to a permanent GOP majority. The promise of a new rate reduction every year--first rate reductions, then dividend cuts, then corporate breaks--would keep K Street pliable. And eventually, a shift in the tax burden from the wealthy and corporations onto the backs of the middle class would (or so the theory held) cool voter demand for more government, thereby undermining the Democrats' reason for being.
Meanwhile, as tax receipts have plummeted, federal spending has increased by more than 6 percent per year since 2000. Most, if not all, of this spending--for the military, for homeland security, and for prescription drugs for seniors--was necessary and had broad public support. Yet it has panicked conservatives, who cannot accept the historical reality that, as Sebastian Mallaby wrote in these pages last month, when advanced societies grow wealthier, the share of GDP devoted to government inevitably increases ("The Deficit Conquers All," September 2004).
Instead of facing this reality, the average congressional Republican has acted like a preacher hooked on prostitutes, publicly inveighing against the sin while personally wallowing in it. There is no greater measure of spending indiscipline than "earmarks," targeted spending provisions attached to appropriations bill. The number of earmarks has tripled since Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in 1994.
Further crippling the GOP's spending discipline has been the same tendency that affected the Democrats two decades ago: confusing the agendas of its favored interest groups with the interests of the public at large. Where the Democrats created ineffective public works bills and the ludicrous SynFuels program, the Republicans have put forth an energy bill that has collapsed under the weight of its own energy-sector subsidies, and a Medicare prescription-drug benefit so indulgent of the pharmaceutical and HMO lobbies that barely a quarter of seniors support the bill. Meanwhile, energy costs remain high, Medicare premiums are rising, and polls show that on energy and health-care issues, voters prefer Democrats to Republicans by wide margins. Moderates See a New Teddy-Roosevelt Style Progressive CentrismDavid Brooks outlined in the NYT magazine what a new GOP should look like: Brooks wants the GOP to embrace a slightly larger government, to value balanced budgets as highly as low taxes, to stop doing so many favors for business, and to focus on entitlement reform, national service, improving teacher quality, and promoting marriage in the ghetto. This is the vision of the Republican Party that belongs chiefly to its rump reformist wing: John McCain, Colin Powell, Rudy Giuliani, and others. It's not a bad platform, and Brooks is probably right that the Republicans would command more votes and run the country better if they hewed more closely to it.
Except that this is far closer to today's Democratic Party than the Republicans and it's unlikely that the GOP hacks who control the party are not going to suddenly capitulate and become apostles of bipartisanship and common-sense. The same forces that brought down the Democrats in the early 80s will bring down the GOP, even if we lose this round (which we won't) |
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