Recapturing The Center
Posted on May 14th, 2009
by Daniel Larison |
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My new column for The Week is now up. Here is the main point:
The faction most responsible for the GOP’s political failure is national security conservatives. Yet within the party, they remain unscathed, their assumptions about the use of American power largely unquestioned, and their gross errors in judgment forgotten or readily forgiven. Among the mainstream right, the foreign policy of the Bush administration is barely a subject of debate. Rather than reorienting Republican foreign policy towards a political center defined by realism, humility and restraint, the GOP’s leadership and activists have redoubled their commitment to Bush and Cheney’s hawkish stances and to a lock-step defense of the Bush administration’s policies.
This situation creates a strange incongruity. In one breath, conservatives will invoke a baseless claim that Bush’s excessive spending lost them the country, and in the next they will defend to the last Bush’s decisions as Commander-in-Chief. Yet these were the decisions that, more than anything else, led to Democratic victories and the GOP’s now toxic reputation. What is more, everyone outside the conservative bubble knows the narrative that mainstream conservatives tell themselves is false, which makes conservative professions of fiscal austerity and continued hawkishness even less likely to win public support.
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
“The faction most responsible for the GOP’s political failure is national security conservatives.”
Really? So you think that, if the situations in Iraq and Pakistan were exactly the same, but unemployment at home was at 3.5 percent, the GOP would still be in the weeds? Or, as far in the weeds? That if one thing could change the GOP’s political fortunes, it would be more stability in Anbhar rather than a Dow three times higher than it is now?
I am not saying that foreign policy doesn’t matter, only that, as I talk to regular folks about politics, it’s, uhh, the economy, stupid. (Me being the stupid one.)
Would the GOP be as badly off right now as they are had there been no recession? No, I think that unlikely. Would they have regained some ground lost in 2006 had there been no crash in the middle of the general election? Possibly. Some marginal districts might have gone the other way, and some Senate races might have been more competitive. Do I think the GOP would still have been beaten in 2008? Yes, definitely. Unemployment was maybe 5% in 2006, which didn’t stop the electorate from chucking them out with enthusiasm. Economic woes have deepened the existing anti-GOP feelings in the country, but those feelings had already become quite deep, and the war was a huge part of that. I think that holds up.
I don’t deny that wage stagnation and rising income inequality were having an effect over the last few years, but according to exit polling economic concerns were not the primary things driving people to the Democrats in most places. In some states in the Midwest, that may have had a larger impact, but one cannot underestimate the importance of the war for those midterm results.
Daniel, I think you have it right. The economic issues sealed the deal, but it was the failures in both Iraq and Afghanistan that lost the Republicans the center of the nation.
I don’t know that Americans would necessarily have turned away from the GOP had both wars been successfully concluded. As much as I found both wars distasteful, many people found them appropriate. Had they been won in some real sense, I am not sure that the economic woes we have today would have been enough to sink their ship – at least not in 2008.
Jake
Daniel,
You failed to make the most important link for the loss of conservatism. There is a tie between Free Market/Free Trade GOP Capitalists and the National Defense Hawks which adds up to GOP economic trouble with the majority of the general population.
The reason Bush wanted democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan was to aid the spread of Free Trade/Globalism throughout the Middle East and the world. A democratic country discourages war and peacefully allows corporations to offshore outsource overseas leading to that region’s economic ascent while accessing their cheap intelligent labor for companies to pad their profits. If democracies, hence, peace spreads throuighout the Middle East then companies are able to safely expand operations/employ overseas building goods and services cheaply there and selling expensively back here in the US or Europe.
This is all about Bush/Free Market GOP Capitalists’ granting the demand companies (their constituents) have for unrestrained access to cheap labor. Selling US jobs for corporate profit. Wall Street’s gaining at the expense of Main Street getting hammered. Look at Bush’s jobs creation. ZERO jobs creation “Jobless Recovery” from November 2001-2004. Most of the jobs created from 2004-2007 were in Homeland Security, beneficiaries of the Real Estate Bubble, Education, and non tradeable services. Healthcare was the only private sector creating jobs and if you subtract the private sector jobs lost from Healthcare’s job gains the gains are canceled out.
Bottom line is conservatism has lost its populist message. Reagan attracted me by claiming with tax cuts “a rising tide lifts all boats” and Trickle Down economics.” Today the GOP message pretty much is tax cuts with “jobs aren’t a business’ concern.” Why then would the general population support economic/defense policies enabling a few to get wealthy at the expense of many either losing their job to a cheap legal or illegal alien or as a result seeing wage stagnation? Add the Free Marketer’s support for open borders/illegals and you have a GOP policy that’s anti US worker.
It comes down to quality private sector jobs and net wealth effect. With the Bush policies of militarily exporting democracy to make the world safe for offshore outsourcing combined with unlimited access to cheap illegal workers here for increased corporate profit by selling US jobs to cheap alien workers why would the general population support the GOP/”Conservatism?”
Bill
Everybody has is partially right. Disgust of Republicans is driven by a fetid stew with synergistic host of toxic ingredients, a prime one of which is the Wars to Nowhere. However the wars, the economy and the bloated Washington Leviathan are symptoms of the same roots causes, an arrogant, feckless Executive branch and an impotent, often stupid Congress. Layer some corrosive greed on top of that and voila! – Democratic control. Of course the Democrats will replicate the Republican MO in spades.
P.S. When I see Pelosi and Reid, I see a couple political hacks who are fundamentally idiots. Is it just me or what?
I am still skeptical, for this reason: Let’s do a thought experiment. Let’s say four years from now, Obama faces a situation in which the economy is in the tank the same way it is right now, but we are out of Iraq. Alternatively, the situation is the same as it is now, but the economy is booming.
Which situation do you think makes his reelection prospects better?
I would say the latter. That’s open to debate. But very few of the people I talk to care about Iraq at all. Maybe that’s sad. Maybe it says something about the people I know. But when we are gathered around the church vestibule, or a keg, or the dinner table, it seems to me that the chatter is never about Sadr City. And i bet not a single person knows who General McWhatsHisFace is. But we do talk about GM an awful lot.
Sam M – agree. And what makes it worse is that Americans have now become desensitized to massive, massive government spending. Ten billion a month in Iraq used to be a big deal. But now TARP and Detroit and everything else combined has scaled that number down to chump change.
This all portends a massive economic collapse of course under a Democratic regime. The trajectory will be adjusted temporarily by the gigantic federal deficits. But that is government debt replacing the private debt store that is now closed. It’s unsustainable. The super-nova phase of a dying economic star.
The Republicans will have an opportunity to govern when the implosion happens. But who in their right mind would want to?
SteveM
The deficit is in shambles in large part because of the war expense, which was done in detachment from reality. Had we confined our effort to cleaning up Afghanistan, we would have seen completely different results economically and diplomatically.
A lot of conservatives are pointing at Bush and saying he is the issue, but the issues go a lot deeper. The Neocon’s gave Republicans a bad name, but Bush still won in 2004 when the war was going bad.
Right now the Republicans are saying freedom is bad (gay marriage), crime is good (torture), and we need to subsidize the rich (taxes). How did we get to this?
Obama’s popularity has increased since his election, not because he is doing a good job, because the only alternative out there is the Republicans. And the Republicans are loathsome. The loathsomeness is primarily the social conservatives. Church goers are the ones who think torture is good and that it is governments job to manage other peoples lives. Until the Republicans can Sista Soulja their base, they are going to continue collapsing.
Daniel,
Nice analysis. I also think this Bush admin. reckless neocon adventurism on foreign policy, embodied by the disaster in Iraq, is the “elephant in the room” that gopers refuse to acknowledge.
It is patently obvious. Shills and sycophants for Bush foreign policy refuse to come to terms with this, and to the extent the national gop refuses to accept the horrendous blunders of Bush foreign policy, “papering over” this noxious neocon philosphy, and pretending the fault for gop losses are elsewhere, the party will continue to be irrelevant to most Americans.
The war expense isn’t the crux of the problem.
The problem is lack of middle and upper middle class jobs creation since 2000 due to GOP support for business’ unrestrained access to cheap labor involving offshore outsourcing and Illegals/open borders, and the Democrats’ Communism of government/public sector control of the private sector. Both contribute to job loss forcing the majority into giving up the “American Dream” tossing them into survival mode depending on government.
We now have a President wanting people government dependent as it empowers him to re-engineer America into his redistributionist Communist vision of “spreading the wealth around.”
Bill
Sam M,
Recall macroeconomic conditions in early to mid-2005 through November 2006: not outstanding, but pretty solid, but Bush’s approval rating, and the Dem vs. Rep generic ballot were on a downward slope all through 2005 & 2006. Clearly something other than the “it’s the economy stupid” was going on during that time frame. Of course, the economic slide in 2007-2008 sealed the deal as far as the 2008 election was concerned. I would agree that whatever the outcome in Iraq and Af-Pak, if the economy is still on the skids in 2012 Obama will have a very difficult time getting elected.
Daniel, I believe the major reason for GOP failure at the polls is due to the combination of excessive spending and the collapse of Lehman brothers and subsequent TARP response. The GOP had a horrible ticket and yet they were still tied in polls until Lehman nailed the coffin shut for good.
The foreign policy issues are a little more complicated. There have always co-existed a Nixon-Kissinger/Snowcroft policy alongside a muscular, moralistic Wilsonian / Neocon policy for Reagan and GW Bush. The two aren’t incompatible but have their differences when the realpolitic – Wilson paradigms clash. I am not sure how you would flesh out a policy of restraint or “humility”? If you are arguing that there are limits to what’s feasible given time, people resourcing limits, and budgets, that’s one reasonable input, among others, to consider. But the GOP cannot be isolationist anymore. The world’s too global. It would also have a hard time standing with a morally neutral realpoitik approach. The Bush administration did not make effective use of “soft power”. But that doesn’t mean I’d throw the baby out with the bathwater.
There were sound, very long term strategic reasons why the Iraq endeavor was worth doing. The alternative of burying one’s head in the sand about the changes of the Middle East, and leaving it alone, are not good in the long term. The idea of go get’em in Afghanistan cuz their the ones who got us, is not compelling to me. I actually see far less strategic rationale for Afghanistan than for Iraq and mustering up a coherent Iran and Israel/Palestinian strategy. Frankly, I’d be focusing much more on Pakistan right now than Afghanistan. Afghanistan seems more in line with our want for revenge. But it’s not an overall key pillar of future geopolitics. I’d also focus on China and Russia policy more.
I’d need to know exactly what a humble policy is in more detail, beyond just simple assertions implying maybe we should talk more or be nicer to our allies. Certainly there are limits to What America can do. So why aren’t we focusing more resources elsewhere rather than in Afghanistan?
http://www.rightreturn.blogspot.com
Daniel, you also mention “conservatives will invoke a baseless claim that Bush’s excessive spending lost them the country”. I would hardly say that’s baseless. Everybody I know targets that as their number one gripe about Bush. While my anecdote is not a scientific poll, it seems to be a prevailing feeling. I’d say the teaparties and the disapproval of everyone in Congress shows that. Obama’s approval will come down as well eventually because of his cartoonish spending policies. Few mention the Iraq war other than the principled libertarian friends I have. But outside of think tanks, that ilk is not the majority.
There were sound, very long term strategic reasons why the Iraq endeavor was worth doing.
There, that statement right there is why the Republican brand in bankrupt. That statements glosses over what those reasons lead to. They have led to hundreds of thousands of human beings killed, maimed, displaced and tortured, and for what? Cold hard cash, the sort of cash the Bush family generates with it alliance with the House of Saud.
Those reasons have nothing to do with ethical, responsible actions taken in the best interests of not only our nation, but other nations as well. They are reasons to make money, nothing more nothing less. You don’t hear one respectable Republican leader calling for investment in alternative fuels technology, instead they stand behind an idiot like Palin and chant “drill baby drill.”
You don’t hear one respectable Republican leader calling for an end to warrantless wiretapping, the end of the use of torture, a return to diligent fiscal oversight that protects Main Street from Wall Street.
You don’t hear one respectable Republican leader bucking the system and calling for deep and meaningful,change to our woefully unfair and inadequate health care system that treats illness as just one more commodity to be bought and sold and may the best or the most healthy man win.
Instead, you get these clown car tea parties in which a bunch of willfully ignorant Limbaugh and Hannity listeners pretend they’re shocked, shocked I say, that Americans pay taxes and those tax monies are wasted, stolen or misused.
From that crowd of intellectual infants you also get statements such as this gem Few mention the Iraq war other than the principled libertarian friends I have.
As grandma always said, show me who your friends are and I’ll show you who you are. Maybe it’s time you found some new friends, hell, even a liberal Dem like me would buy you a beer.
The idea that protecting the bank accounts of this nation’s wealthiest individuals and corporations is vastly more important than the lives of our fellow human beings is the only idea that Republicans bring to the table. But somehow, we all know it’s Barney Franks fault.
@dennism:
I think you are supporting Daniel’s point, not refuting it, by your invocation of “everyone I know” and the tea parties. This is exactly the sort of cocoon he’s referring to in the piece, and illustrates a perspective largely out of touch with what the majority of the country believes are the GOP’s failings.
I don’t go quite as far as Daniel in blaming it exclusively on foreign policy for many of the same reasons others above state, but also due to the manifest incompetence of the Bush White House & GOP Congress on issues like NCLB and Katrina.
But “spending” as an abstract issue continues to be a loser with voters. Spending on unpopular wars, subsidies to large corporations, and failed education or health care policies is unpopular, but you can’t logically extend that to all government spending.
Like most things, the GOP’s political situation is the product of a convergence of many factors. What all those factors have in common, is that they all the GOP’s fault.
The best way for conservatives to be heard in government, I think, is to decouple conservative support from the GOP. There are more than a few Democrats that have conservative tendencies, and many GOP members to espouse outright neo-liberalism. There’s no good reason for conservatives of any stripe to restrict their efforts to solely the GOP, especially when the GOP is so despised as it is now.
I like to point to the (somewhat meager) success of the gun lobby. Every serious Democratic presidential candidate since 2000 at least pays lip service to gun rights, and they all avoid making gun rights a central campaign issue like the plague. The difference between the Democratic party of 1992 and the Democratic party of 2009 when it comes to gun rights is like night and day (notwithstanding Attorney Generals flying off the hook at press conferences), and it is the result of gun owners and lobbyists opening up efforts toward Democratic lawmakers and organizations. If conservatives mimic this, I think it would serve the cause greatly.
The reason why the GOP’s foreign policy disasters were so devastating to its electoral chances are that this is the one area of policy that the GOP had a long-term often decisive advantage over the Democrats. Even when people thought the Dems might do better in a number of areas, the fear of national security frequently drove them into the GOP camp. The collapse of their central appeal to the electorate – “we will keep you safe by making wise foreign policy choices” – was catastrophic for the GOP in the way it never would have been for the Dems.
The fact that McCain seemed wholy incompetent at economic issues, floundering about like an amateur, simply poured salt on the wound. And the continuing Republican emphasis on economics only shows them at their weakest, since complex economics issues have never been their strong suit, the tax-cut mantra being exhibit number one. The reason the GOP tends to remain defensive on the wars and foreign policy is that they feel that if they admit to being wrong there too, they really have no reason to exist. Rather than simply fold up the tent and go home, they cling to the illusion that they can just bluff their way through these failures, and at some point people will think they are actually credible on national security at least. The idea that they actually have to come up with a whole new foreign policy agenda is simply too much for them to handle, or risk.
Why not just start a new party?
http://modernwhig.org/issues.html
@srv
Why re-invent the wheel? As Specter found out, and as the Senator’s from Maine no doubt will as well, there is little reason to invest in an independent candidacy when you can just switch to the other side an avail yourselves of its resources. “Moderate” Republicans and Democrats always talk about their independence while on the campaign trail, but none of them are delirious enough to forgo all the advantages of organization, money, and manpower that comes with being a candidate of a major party.
The only way I could see such a situation of a new party forming is if a large enough segment of various Republican state parties abandon a caucus to form a new centrist coalition. The only problem is theres no especially good rationale for that with Democrats so obviously willing to take on just about anybody. I’m comfortable with the idea that the Democrat’s are becoming the equivalent of Japan’s LDP, a monster party whose internal dynamics will be far more salient than what goes on outside.
“As the cliché goes, there are three main factions in the conservative movement: social conservatives, economic conservatives and national security conservatives.”
Cliché it is.
In the US, there are, granted, social conservatives, but radical activist megachurch evangelicalism is anything but a conservative form of Christianity. It is radical, new and deplorable. It bears no relationship to the small church that binds a locality together on a personal level of Christian fellowship.
Since Nixon, the GOP has been less economically conservative than the Dems. Starting from Nixon, the GOP has, on average, run bigger deficits and produced less GDP growth than the Dems. Growing a financial sector from 10% of the economy to 40% was not a conservative move, whatever adjective the movers applied to themselves. So-called economic conservatives in the US are anything but. Wall Street dynamism and creativity has been adventurism, not conservatism, with predictable results.
But all that dissonance is nothing compared to the oxymoron that is national security conservatism – GOP style. What is remotely conservative about false pretexts for groundless invasions recklessly pursued – and resorting to torture to justify them ex post facto? You are right, Daniel, to choose this as the GOP’s greatest betrayal of conservatism.
There are dwindlingly few true US conservatives and by now they are as likely to be voting Dem as GOP.
The most conservative critique of Obama is coming from the “left” of his party – from those concerned to uphold the constitution and the rule of law who are alarmed with his partial adherence to Cheneyesque notions of executive power and secrecy.
Conservatism has essence and had forms. The GOP commandeered the forms and lost the essence. Technology and globalization call for new forms. Now conservatives have to rediscover the essence before even contemplating the forms.
Alan, great comment on every front. Were you Steele, this would be another Kinsley moment – an impolitic truth accidentally voiced.
Somehow, I don’t think there is anything accidental in your comment.
Jake