The Trouble With Sam's Club

I keep meaning to write this, but in my view the big flaw with Grand New Party qua book is that its analysis of why the GOP is the way it is struck me as very superficial and shallow. The book is very good on the nature of the GOP's predicament and on possible ways out of the predicament, but it seems to view the "how did we get here?" issue as just coming down to random luck -- Bush wasn't very bright or something.

I think that's wrong. And importantly wrong. Chris Hayes and Noam Scheiber both make arguments along the lines of what I would want to say, but I think they both weaken their argument by pitching an overly broad point. It's not the case that the Republicans literally only care about their super-rich financial backers. But what is true is that any other impulses Republicans might have are ultimately undermined by the stranglehold that the tax cut jihad holds over the party.

At the end of the day, a political party whose politicians all need to portray themselves as "tax cutters" is going to be very limited in its ability to do anything constructive. A lot of the models Ross & Reihan point to in their book were governors or mayors during the 1990s who, thanks to the robust economy, were able to cut taxes while also spending non-trivial amounts of new money on programs. That goes to show, I think, that Republicans aren't congenitally incapable of doing useful domestic policy stuff. But in order to do useful domestic policy stuff on any kind of consistent or responsible basis, they would need to be freed from the iron grip of tax cut mania.

How hard would it be to do this? I don't know. As recently as the George HW Bush administration, it was possible for prominent Republicans to act in a responsible manner with regard to tax issues. But John McCain's primary defeat in 2000 and his primary win in 2008 appears to confirm the idea that the GOP is first and foremost a tax cutting party. Maybe this is wrong, maybe Grover Norquist and the Club for Growth are paper tigers. Certainly I hope they are. But while Grand New Party is quite implicitly critical of the tax cuts uber alles forces, its authors seem to believe that those forces are sufficiently powerful that they shouldn't be taken on in a head-on manner. But unless they can be, it's hard to see how the kind of things Ross & Reihan would like to see happen could happen.

Comments

Right.

Posted by Brent | July 16, 2008 8:56 AM

Nowhere is this notion more poignant then in the State of Virginia where the Rethuglicans in the State House of Delegates absolutely refuse to do anything about the transportation mess in Northern Virginia. It is obvious to anyone with half a brain that the gas tax has to be raised to fund transportation improvements but the troglodytes in the House of Delegates stubbornly cling to their read my lips, no new taxes or increase in existing taxes mentality.

Posted by SLC | July 16, 2008 9:11 AM

If Bush had even come close to balancing the books, I'm sure McCain would doing slightly better than he is now. It's not just taxes, fiscal responsibility matters a great deal to many conservatives, after all, what good are tax cuts if they are only being borrowed from your grand-kids credit card...

Regardless, the biggest problem for conservatism has been the neocons and theocrats. They're a tumor on Republicanism. What the GOP really needs are leaders who are prepared to carry out the necessary surgery.

Posted by TDE | July 16, 2008 9:18 AM

I think this same analysis extends to many parts of the republican party. Essentially, they have decided their platform for the next 100 years - there can be no deviation from the essential elements of lowering taxes, hating abortion, shafting poor people, bombing brown people, and burning oil.

As a result, they can't address any real world problems that are facing Americans and the rest of the globe.

It will be a long 30 years for the republicans. They are so out of touch, and they don't know it.

Posted by mickslam | July 16, 2008 9:32 AM

Having read only the meta-talk about Grand New Party over at TPM Cafe and here (and not the actual book itself), the argument the book seems to put forward looks totally backwards to me.

The GOP embraced "family values" (read: bigotry) as a purely electoral strategy in the first place--as a means to an end of cutting taxes and removing other government impediments to wealth accumulation. Now the party is supposed to give up on the "end" and become 100% "means?"

It's one thing to sacrifice some principles to win elections, but why even try to win elections if you aren't going to push an agenda you actually care about?

Posted by Jake H. | July 16, 2008 9:34 AM

I haven't read the book so I can't really comment on its arguments about the GOP's current predicament, but I can say this: the party has been enthralled to its base of social conservatives, whose votes they need to win elections but whose agenda seems increasingly alien to a plurality of Americans.

Some of the concerns of the evangelicals overlap with Grover Norquist's, certainly, but at the end of the day the hard-core Christian right vastly outnumber the tax-cutting dogmatists and the GOP strategists put forward judges and the FMA and the New Testament in the public square to get these folks to the polls.

Posted by BryklynLibrul | July 16, 2008 9:42 AM

I think this is true of the Republican establishment. But I think it's far from certain that this establishment will continue to wield power in the GOP.

The story of Mike Huckabee's candidacy shows that they do still have power. Mike Huckabee is not a conservative because he raised taxes once, but the pro-choice Rudy Giuliani would have been fine, and pro-lifers would have been told to shut up and deal. That wouldn't have happened to tax-cutters, at least not in 2008.

I haven't read GNP yet, but it seems like this is what R&R fundamentally want to change. The tactics of how to go about doing that are debatable. It's the GOP's version of the Edwards vs. Obama tension -- should they be brought to the table or fought and defeated?

Posted by JohnMcG | July 16, 2008 9:44 AM

As recently as the George HW Bush administration, it was possible for prominent Republicans to act in a responsible manner with regard to tax issues.

And a lot of Republicans claimed, at the time, that his responsible manner on taxes cost him his re-election. I seem to recall that such was one of the lessons that GWB claimed, early in his Administration and through surrogates, to have learned. So it might have been harder than you imply for GHWB to act responsibly.

I haven't read GNP, but I do wonder to what extent the analysis addresses regional factors or urban/rural divides. It wouldn't surprise me if Southern working class people have different interests than the group as a whole, or rural working class people have different interests than the group as a whole. I'm not sure where the working class base of Republicans sits primarily, but I thought that the party's base was weighted towards the Southern and the rural. But maybe that analysis is part of the book, and there is no part/whole problem here.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | July 16, 2008 9:50 AM

I don't know about Grover Norquist and the Club for Growth, but the right leaning media are all about tax cuts. The entire right media landscape (from every Fox news commentator, to the smallest local personality) seems to actually believe that cutting taxes always increases revenue, or increases economic activity, or creates ponies, or something. Those people might actually have more effect on the right wing, and thus the Republican party than Grover Norquist and the Club for Growth.

Posted by Ropty | July 16, 2008 9:55 AM

What level of taxation is acceptable to these new [insert clever name here] Republicans? Current tax levels are 27.3% of GDP -- already near the bottom of all OECD and European countries. Couple the low tax rates we already have with massive military spending and there are things that people want (health care, infrastructure) that they just aren't getting.

Ask Ross and Reihan to go on the record with a level of taxation as a share of GDP that they think is sustainable long term for both parties and THEN they can hack out a vision for their side.

Posted by joejoejoe | July 16, 2008 9:57 AM

Can we stop calling it "tax cuts" and call it what it is -- borrowing largely from foreigners?
It's like saying I gave myself financial "relief" because I put a bill on my home equity credit line and not do not have to pay it.

In some concentrated cases (like China), the lenders will then have more leverage over the US. I'm increasingly seeing this as a national power issue, if not a national security issue. What if we pressure China about something and China says they will sit out the next treasury auction ... and will we know this has happened?

Completely unfounded speculation: What if China hinted at this if Bush did not attend opening ceremonies at Olympics?

Posted by mike | July 16, 2008 10:16 AM

Mike Huckabee is not a conservative because he raised taxes once, but the pro-choice Rudy Giuliani would have been fine, and pro-lifers would have been told to shut up and deal. That wouldn't have happened to tax-cutters, at least not in 2008. - JohnMcG

I'm not sure if this (which no doubt would have happened) really says what you might think it says about the GOP.

There is actually relatively little the President can directly do about abortion (besides instructing his underlings to act like assholes as much as possible in terms of ensuring no federal resources go toward anything dealing with abortions). What the President can do is appoint pro-choice or anti-choice judges.

What kind of judge would Giuliani have appointed? Nu? Would the anti-choice movement really care if Giuliani himself were a gay married terrorist who regularly performs abortions? No, of course not -- because in the long run, the judges he'd appoint would make sure to allow any legislative prohibitions against abortion (or gay marriage or whatever) to stand. Meanwhile even if the Dems. nominated Bob Casey, he'd probably be appointing pro-choice judges.

OTOH, given how far to the "right" is the Overton window on economic issues, any Democrat who actually would be a threat to the "cut taxes no matter what" crowd would not even swim too far within the Democratic party before the media shot down that "rabble rousing commie-pinko class warrior who hates successful people"(*).

Nu? The tax-cutters have a choice -- that they could defect (if not to the Dems., maybe to the Libertarian party ... and if a Dem is elected, so be it, it's not the end of the world to them) if the nominated GOP candidate were not to their liking. So the GOP knows in holding their coalition together they have more flexibility in regards to social conservatives than they do with economic conservatives.

* if there's one thing I cannot stand it's the equation of financial success with smarts, morality, etc. -- don't people read the Bible anymore "the race is not to the swift", etc., etc.

Posted by DAS | July 16, 2008 10:20 AM

See also, "The Big Con":

http://www.amazon.com/Big-Con-Washington-Hoodwinked-Economics/dp/0618685405

Posted by Chris | July 16, 2008 10:23 AM

And DAS's point was just completely underminded today when the Bush Administration decided to classify the pill as an abortion and pave teh way for denying funding.

Posted by Rob | July 16, 2008 10:25 AM

I don't think that being for tax cuts is necesarily indicative of bad goverance, it's being for tax cuts but against reductions in military spending.

That I think is the fundamenal split in the party: Small government capitalists, and jingoist christian "conservatives." Those two worldviews are fundamentally are irreconsiably inconsistant. In fact the rise of American jingoism has caused a breakdown in the two party system, as it is inconsistant with both "Republican" Deregulated markets, and "Democratic" public works programs.

Posted by JK | July 16, 2008 10:33 AM

Oddly enough the happiest country on earth is also the one with the highest tax rate.

Posted by novakant | July 16, 2008 10:38 AM

Republicans don't need to raise taxes because their interests can be fulfilled without doing so.

Someone once said (I think in the comments here) that Republicans were the party that represented states of "growth." I'm not sure this is correct; it's more about representing states and communities that are "spreading out." This requires infrastructure like roads and highways, and that revenue comes from regions that aren't spreading out, but rather regions that are dense and crowded. Virginia is a case in point. The surplus revenue from those dense regions is taken and spent on the "spreading out" regions. Republicans have all the revenue they need. The dense regions need money to improve their infrastructure, which becomes more crowded and whose needs are more complex as the region increases in density, but the money to do this has already been spent by the Republicans. So Democratic regions want to raise revenue to pay for the things that they can't afford because the money has already been spent on the Republican regions. The Republicans don't care, because they already have all the money they wanted.

So why should Republicans support raising taxes? Republicans take all the tax money they want to spend on themselves. As far as they're concerned, all deficits are just being caused by money being spent on Democratic interests.

Posted by Tyro | July 16, 2008 10:39 AM

This reminds me of back in 2004. There was a big hullabaloo about 527s because the dirty hippies were using them to "take over" the Democratic party. But the so-called liberal media managed to all but ignore the Club for Growth.

Actually, what's interesting to me is the GOP's ability to get people who sign on to part of the GOP agenda to internalize all of that agenda (even if they don't explicitly support it).

To whit, I know social conservatives who claim they are economic moderates and would gladly support a Democrat over a Republican provided the key distinction was economic rather than social. Yet, when such people are asked to rank Democrats in order of their preference, the more economically liberal candidates end up being deemed "too liberal" ("he'll force us all to gay marry and have abortions") while the more economically middle-of-the road candidates are deemed more "moderate" (even if such a candidate really is no more socially liberal than the so-called "too liberal" candidate). OTOH, they will (if not exactly happily) support pro-choice GOP candidates whose key distinction from the "too liberal" Dem is on economic issues.

Part of what's going on is the underlying calculus I mentioned above -- if social conservatism is your bag, you know your brand. Even a "pro-life" Democrat is liable to appoint more pro-choice judges than a "pro-choice" Republican. But probe further and something deeper is going on.

Part of the issue is that social conservatives tend to be Christians, or even if not, they are social conservatives because they have absorbed something of the Christian mindset that they want to conserve the "Christian heritage" of this country. As such, they tend to have a rather Pauline view (some would argue they misread Paul) of the efficacy of law: like Nisbet they distrust "law" but want a rigorous enforcement of traditional mores (whence social conservatism) to keep people in line.

Such a view of government is very much aligned to the view espoused by some quasi-libertarian tax cutters, hence the alignment between social and economic conservatives is more natural than we liberals might think.

But still, what causes someone who is a Huckabee voter, so to speak, to at some level adopt Giuliani's, so to speak, views on economics and national security. Is it all just fundamentally internalizing the views of a candidate you really only support for what judges he'll appoint? Is it all a Nisbetian alignment between social conservatism and limitted government? Is it the psychology of a social conservative not liking "big gummint"? Or is the GOP very good at selling its complete party line?

If so, then I'd say reports of the death of the GOP are, alas, overstated.

Posted by DAS | July 16, 2008 10:40 AM

I think this is sort of wrong. The Republican agenda is a coalition of religious zealots, war mongers, and tax cut fans. Of the three the tax cut fans are probably the closest to actually correct. The problem is the war mongers are by far the most expensive constituency to appease.

I can see how a dedication to tax cuts could limit a political party in doing positive things that advance the interests of it's particular coalition but I think that it would be worse for republicans to raise taxes to pay for new right wing policy initiatives.

I am all for raising taxes in the interest of fiscal responsibility and limiting the extent of the deficit. That idea is not a republican idea at all.

Posted by Michael Foody | July 16, 2008 10:41 AM

I think JK is right, but I would add a bit. There are essentially three forces ruling the Republican Party today: tax cutters, theocrats, and military fetishists. McCain, the military fetishist, had made small attmepts to curry favor with the theocrats, but is pledging his true fealty to the tax cutters in his economic plan. This is reason his policies are such a mess - his main interest in increasing the size of the military, but he also has to continue with irresponsible tax cutting.

Posted by Jake | July 16, 2008 10:49 AM

And DAS's point was just completely underminded today when the Bush Administration decided to classify the pill as an abortion and pave teh way for denying funding. - Rob

No. I made the caveat about the ability of an anti-abortion President to be an asshole. I guess this is a little bit more of an effect than I would have admitted in my comment ...

But still, could you imagine even Bob Casey doing this sort of thing? OTOH, I'm sure Rudy Giuliani would figure out some spin whereby he would be "pro-choice" and still deny funding ("just because I'm pro-choice doesn't mean I expect everyone, including people who aren't, to pay for abortions and birth control" or even "yeah, I'm a jerk for denying funding ... but you knew I was an ass when you elected me!").

I think my larger point about who's more likely to bolt based on who has less to fear from a Dem. being elected still stands. Look at the behavior of the Republicans themselves: talk to a social conservative who ain't necessarily an economic conservative and see what they fear about a Democrat being in office.

*

An addendum to my last comment -- the other issue in keeping the GOP coalition together is that we Americans are strivers and imagine that we either are rich enough to benefit from GOP tax cuts or we hope one day to be so rich and hence want to keep the tax cuts, etc. Maybe the social conservative mindset (for various reasons of their approach to faith, etc) are more likely to engage in such hopeful thinking about their economic positions?

Posted by DAS | July 16, 2008 10:55 AM

"because in the long run, the judges he'd appoint would make sure to allow any legislative prohibitions against abortion (or gay marriage or whatever) to stand."

I know it's common among liberals to assume that conservatives are stupid, but, believe me, your average conservative isn't stupid enough to think that Guliani would have nominated conservative judges. Which is a good deal of why he couldn't get the nomination.

Posted by Brett Bellmore | July 16, 2008 10:59 AM

norquist's "starve the beast" theory has been tested, and the beast does not starve. the beast whips out its credit card.

i mean, it was an interesting experiment to give total control of the government to conservatives and see what they did with it. the theory was they would implement quasi-libertarian economic policies, be pro-market (versus pro-business), cut taxes AND spending, and be generally more sober-minded. no national healthcare and the like, but still not a completely terrible thing, fiscal restraint.

in practice, spending exploded as long as it benefitted defense contractors, pharmaceutical companies, and other large, gop-friendly businesses. instead of acting upon the promise to not have the government favor certain types of income over others, they cut capital gains taxes. there was nothing libertarian about it. so, in addition to not being fiscally restrained and market-neutral, they were (as expected) also not interested in governing well or implementing good policies.

i have been saying for years: libertarians are useful fools, total dupes who are funded not by other libertarians but by Republicans precisely because they develop appealing (to some) economic and policy theories that are then selectively deployed only against certain classes of people (i.e., those that are not rich) but not against everybody equally (hence "incentives" to drill for oil and so on).

and this is what basically converted me from a republican in college to a democrat now. it was a nice experiment as far as these things go, and we have a pretty good sense of what we'll get with republicans in charge. they are, to put it bluntly, a group of looters who deliver booty to their patrons, the very wealthy, and don't mind wrecking the country in the process.

my real frustration is not with the looters - who will always exist - but with their intellectual dupes and suckers and paid liars, the libertarian scum.

Posted by nobi yuno | July 16, 2008 11:08 AM

Brett Bellmore,

Of course a "real conservative" was preferred by the right to Giuliani. But social conservatives (even those claiming to be moderate on economics) would have gladly voted for Giuliani over Bob Casey, e.g., no matter what they say about being willing to vote for some hypothetical Democrat. Whenever that hypothetical Democrat gets a name, the social conservative finds some reason to declare "so and so is soooo liberal".

The only good faith explanation I can think of for this behavior is that the social conservative knows that the judges that would be apppointed even by a Rudy Giuliani (and when he did so, any Dem who questioned the appointment of such a judge would be shot down by the media as "even the socially liberal Rudy Giuliani thinks that judge is ok") would be more conservative than even a judge appointed by Bob Casey.

Of course, the other explanation is that, for all their protestations otherwise, many "social conservatives" are economic conservatives. Just look at their preferences for Democratic candidates. They may say they oppose Dems. on social issues, but they conveniently rank Dems in terms of how likely they are to rock the Reaganomics boat.

Nu? What do you think is going on? BTW -- I'm certainly not saying conservatives are stupid ... I'm saying that social conservatives are actually far more strategic in their voting than, e.g., Nader voters. Either that or they are far more economically conservative than they'd like to let on, in which case all this talk about underlying conflict between social and economic conservatives is way overblown.

Posted by DAS | July 16, 2008 11:10 AM

"Fiscally conservative Republicans" miss out on an essential truth: spending is not unpopular, but raising taxes is almost always unpopular. If you want to cut spending, tie new spending to increases in taxes. Since no one likes having their taxes raised, odds are they'll oppose the new spending that the taxes are being raised to pay for.

Not all conservatives are this stupid as to miss this essential truth. Norquist et. al. are just a bunch of middle aged rich dudes who want to keep their own taxes as low as humanly possible for NOW until they retire, at which time they don't care what happens when "the bill comes due." High spending doesn't concern them, except in so far as they consider it an acceptable expense to pay the right people off in order to get tax cuts passed.

Posted by Tyro | July 16, 2008 11:16 AM

Matt: Why do you hate the science of economics so much? Don't you know that slashing taxes or rich people will unleash a torrent of economic activity resulting in a gusher of new revenues we can then use for compelling domestic needs such as border fences and pharmaceutical profits?

Posted by Jasper | July 16, 2008 11:40 AM

Matt only scratches the surface here as to why Bush isn't solely responsible for the GOP's current calamities. Tax cut purists certainly hinder the Republican Party domestically, but everything Bush did while in office was within the mainstream of the GOP and widely supported by the base, the intellectuals, and - with a few exceptions - the "moderates" within the party.

Furthermore, hostility to public services is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Despite massively expanding the role of the federal government, George W. Bush in his gut doesn't support an active federal government. So why would he care about appointing competent officials to govern organizations like FEMA if he doesn't really care about the performance of the federal government. He'd clearly rather see private institutions exercise extensive powers at the behest of an unusually strong executive. If Ross and Reihan want to say that this is because of incompetence, fine. They might be right. But nobody should discount the real possibility that government sucks under Republicans because Republicans today don't care about making government work well.

A little all over the place as I'm in a hurry to get these thoughts out, so I apologize.

Posted by Matthew Struhar | July 16, 2008 12:17 PM

"Regardless, the biggest problem for conservatism has been the neocons and theocrats. They're a tumor on Republicanism. What the GOP really needs are leaders who are prepared to carry out the necessary surgery.

Posted by TDE | July 16, 2008 9:18 AM"

Leaving who, Drezner, Jeffrey Hart and Fukuyama? Bill Weld? Considering how neocons and theocrats together make up at least 20% of the electorate, where would the GOP go for new voters? What's to stop the neocons and theocrats from making their own party that constantly bites at the GOP from the right?

Posted by Reality Man | July 16, 2008 12:19 PM

struhar makes a great point and was sort of what i was getting at above as well (though less well said). the gop isn't interested in governing - "good government" is far, far down the list of things that gop activities lie awake at night worrying about. they don't care about it because they don't believe in it. what they believe in is spoils.

one reason i like obama a lot is that he's a good government type. it amazes me that that phrase is considered a slur, but it shouldn't be. i may be going out on a limb, but it seems to me that candidates who really care about making government run well may be better at running the government than those who don't believe in the promise of good government.

to put it another way, if candidate A is interested in fighting cultural wars, and candidate B is interested in making government effective and efficient, i think candidate B will make a better president.

Posted by nobi yuno | July 16, 2008 12:54 PM

I think there is a huge reason why Ross can;t identify teh root cause of the problem: it would require explaining why Reagan is not the greatest president of all time. In fact you'd pretty much have to udnerstand that the only halfway capaable Republican president of the last 100 years is Eisenhower and Bush I is probably the only other oen even in the running.

How much of a future as a Republican pundit would you have?

Any acceptable critique from the right has to start with the premise that Reagan is the awesome, Bush I was an appostate who lost becasue he raised taxes and Bush II is incompetnant. Once you agree with all that you can argue whatever you want, but in reality your nothgin but a usefull idiot who helps convince your constituency that being a small government republican is compatable with whatever else you care about. In Ross's case it is retrograde social conservatism. Pick Libertarians, McCain Military fetishists or whoever else you want and there are similar lip service issues, as long as you don't cut off the flow of money to the chosen biznessmen you can say whatever you want.

Posted by eric k | July 16, 2008 1:11 PM

and this is what basically converted me from a republican in college to a democrat now. it was a nice experiment as far as these things go, and we have a pretty good sense of what we'll get with republicans in charge. they are, to put it bluntly, a group of looters who deliver booty to their patrons, the very wealthy, and don't mind wrecking the country in the process.

This was pretty much my experience as well. Maybe I was more naive back then- I was less politically informed- but I think it's more clear at this stage what the Republican party is really about.

Nu? What do you think is going on? BTW -- I'm certainly not saying conservatives are stupid ... I'm saying that social conservatives are actually far more strategic in their voting than, e.g., Nader voters. Either that or they are far more economically conservative than they'd like to let on, in which case all this talk about underlying conflict between social and economic conservatives is way overblown.

I don't think there is really much of a threat of conflict among actual Republican voters. I think the Republican party has been successful at brainwashing these people over the last 20 years. The problem is that that demographic is shrinking. Looking at those political views as an outsider, the stench has been growing worse and worse over time. And now the brainwashing will come back to haunt them. The economic aspect of the party turned out to be fundamentally bankrupt, and people are starting to see that. You could create a christian conservative party out of the wreckage, but this will be hard to do now that the core party members have been brainwashed into demanding the economic bankruptcy as part of the agenda. It will be a while before this all breaks down enough that a coherent party identity that has the chance to appeal to a majority of americans emerges again. Right now, the Republicans are heavily dependent on their positions of power enabling them to swing a few more percentage points of support their way. We are going to see that there is a large amount of hysteresis in their support. The long shot they are going for at this point is a worldwide war on brown people. That's not completely shot, at this point. I think the right kind of terrorist attack, spun the right way could still resurrect their chances.

Posted by mpowell | July 16, 2008 1:56 PM

There's something very Orwellian about the term "conservative movement."

There's nothing remotely conservative about an agenda to cut government "down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." There's nothing conservative about enshrining a fundamentally ignorant understanding of Christianity as the official culture of America. There's nothing conservative about running a democracy as if it were a business, as the relationship of citizen to government being vastly different from that of consumer or employee to company. There's nothing remotely conservative about invading nations "preemptively", or attempting to remake the culture of an entire distant region of the earth.

This is not to say these ideas are a-historical, or that America hasn't flirted with them before, it is only to note that they are not agendas, approaches or ideas that have not historically been considered "conservative."

The conservative movement is as conservative as Robespierre was democratic, and they've done more damage to America than the Reign of Terror did to France.

Posted by west coast | July 16, 2008 2:37 PM

The problem with the "Grand New Party" thesis is that it's old hat. We've heard this stuff since before Reagan. Those who believe it, believe it already. And vice versa.

It's akin to the emerging libertarian argument--"if only the Republican Party would advocated LESS government, LESS taxes!" Ah...what have they pushed since the 1920s?

Conversely, the Democrats just keep swimming in circles. To paraphrase Alaska bumper stickers, the liberals plead "Please God, give us one more New Deal/Great Society; we promise not to piss it away this time." The DLC types, meanwhile, want to be pro-Social Security, vaguely pro-Roe v. Wade Republicans.

Everything is a retread, in other words.

Douthat and Reihan would do better to try and think about what a NEW political ideology would look like, where it would come from, and if it's at all feasible today. But that would require historical imagination, not just wonky bullet-point advice.

Posted by some guy | July 16, 2008 2:50 PM

At the end of the day, a political party whose politicians all need to portray themselves as "tax cutters" is going to be very limited in its ability to do anything constructive. A lot of the models Ross & Reihan point to in their book were governors or mayors during the 1990s who, thanks to the robust economy, were able to cut taxes while also spending non-trivial amounts of new money on programs.

This doesn't make a lick of sense. The GOP has been remarkably spending-friendly over the last 8 years - see here. The GOP hasn't exactly been fiscally austere recently. The commitment to cutting taxes has done absolutely nothing to hold them back from engaging in various expensive projects, from Medicare part D to the Iraq war. Cutting taxes and increasing spending while running a deficit is irresponsible, but it's politically advantageous because it pushes the costs off into future years' budgets, which is why it happens.

Willingness to spend big money on ambitious projects is largely what got the GOP into their current mess. The Iraq War is the epitome of this strategy - an very ambitious, very expensive realization of the ideas of an major faction of the GOP foreign policy establishment. The parsimonious explanation of why the GOP is in decline is that the fact that their most expensive and ambitious project turned out to be a huge clusterfuck. If your ambitious program runs massively over its estimated budget while failing to achieve it's objectives, it's going to hurt you electorally.

The GOP's problem was that it embraced the GNP strategy over the last 8 years (it's more or less the "compasionate conservativism" strategy rehashed) and put forth a variety of new policy initiatives whose results ranged from mediocrity to disaster. What's with Atlantic bloggers and writing books that saying the solution to our current woes is to do more or less the same thing as we were, but pretend it's something different?

Posted by MattXIV | July 16, 2008 3:05 PM

Douthat and Reihan would do better to try and think about what a NEW political ideology would look like, where it would come from, and if it's at all feasible today. But that would require historical imagination, not just wonky bullet-point advice.

Yeah, it's a real shame that they didn't produce a world historical book. And a bit of a surprise.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | July 16, 2008 3:41 PM

"What do you think is going on? BTW -- I'm certainly not saying conservatives are stupid ... I'm saying that social conservatives are actually far more strategic in their voting than, e.g., Nader voters. Either that or they are far more economically conservative than they'd like to let on, in which case all this talk about underlying conflict between social and economic conservatives is way overblown."

You raise a lot of good points here.

There are a couple of ways to address this. One is that by 2008 or so, there are plenty of suburban, upper-middle class mega-church Christian conservative types who see there economic interests more aligned with the GOP, (I.E., What’s good for the rich is good for me because I want to be rich.). The separation between the George H.W. Bush Republicans; wealthy but more conservative than the old Rockefeller Repubs and the economically challenged socially conservative evangelicals isn’t as clear as it used to be. Both camps still exist but the lines blur more.

Another explanation is that many social conservatives are stupid…or at least very ignorant. They see a Pro-Life Democrat like Sen. Bob Casey and say, “he’s for the environment and labor unions…he can’t really be Pro-Life”. But you say, “Huckabee preached economic populism, Pro-Life views and liberal-ish economic views don’t necessarily go against one another”. That’s right, they don’t, and I’d even argue they go together. But Casey is a Democrat; he has a far higher burden of proof. Huckabee can get away with it, at least among social conservatives, just because he’s a Republican. It’s not so much that they embrace Reaganomics; they just suspect economically liberal Dems secretly must be socially liberal as well. So holding the line economically will ensure social conservatism as well. It is kind of tortured logic but hey, that’s modern conservatism for you.

Then there is another issue, racism. I’m not saying this still has much pull today, 2008. But in the past, I’m sure many elections were won with the whole “welfare queen” B.S. Older social cons probably still hold to an economically conservative line just because of this.

Of course, I don’t really know. I’m not a socially conservative evangelical. Most of my first-hand knowledge of evangelicals comes from my in-laws. They are social conservatives and supported the war in Iraq largely over fear of Islam. Aside from Arabs Muslims, they don’t seem to have any racist sentiments to them. But I have never heard any consistent opinions that would lead me to think economic conservatism has a strong foothold in their world. In fact, just the other day one of them, (a big Bush supporter in ’04), was complaining to me about high gas prices and saying things like, “someone ought to stop the oil companies from making these kinds of profits”.

Posted by Raindog | July 16, 2008 7:06 PM

The thing about the modern Republican coalition that always made me wonder was the embracing of the Religious Right.

Yeah sure, they helped get St. Reagan elected, maybe. They were definitely foot soldiers that could be counted on to get out the vote. But if you kept a close eye on these guys over the last 20+ years, you’d have to recognize that they would end up doing more harm than good to your party.

It’s not that posistion the GOP to the right of the Dems on social issues was a bad idea politically. But the adoption of the RR talking points, if only to placate them, just doesn’t make sense. Take the issues in question; abortion, gays, pornography, prayer in schools, Ten Commandments, feminism, Christianity as the official religion of the United States, etc. Then take the polling of the issues over the last 20+years. The only issue going the RR way is abortion.

So much of the RR’s strategy can be encapsulated as “bringing back the 1950’s”. It goes without saying that there is a clear time limit on such a goal. (This is in clear contrast to the other factions in the GOP, like them or dislike them.) To the children and grandchildren of those who call themselves social conservatives, the 1950’s are as alien as the 1850’s, none of them want to go back to that time. Social conservatism isn’t necessarily going away but the current version of social conservatism most certainly is. Abortion is an issue because it involves a matter they consider to be one of life and death. But young people of all classification approve of gay marriage. And all of the other issues are largely dead. Not that young American who call themselves socially conservative disagree with their elders, they just don’t see such issues of great importance today. Global climate change and poverty are up with abortion as issues of grave urgency.

But put the issue of the future aside. If Roe V. Wade was overturned tomorrow, the RR would collapse. That’s because they’d lose a huge majority of their Roman Catholics. A recent Pew Survey has borne this out. In terms of issues, American Roman Catholics and Evangelical Protestants agree on their opposition to abortion to almost the same percentage. Take an issue like gay marriage and the Roman Catholic opposition percentage drops by almost half, while the Evangelical Protestant figure stay almost the same. And Evangelical Protestants can not fight the fight alone.

So how the hell does the GOP begin to right this ship? It seems like they face the choice of enduring at least one landslide defeat no matter what. They either abandon the RR and deal with the temporary fallout of shifting coalitions and political rebranding. Or they ride the horse of modern social conservatism until it drops dead and then deal with the full problems when they come.

Posted by Raindog | July 16, 2008 7:38 PM

Oh, come on. The rich Republicans and the neocon Federalists are pulling all the strings. The single issue voters and religious right are just the pawns in the game, being used and they don't even know it.

This has been obvious for years now. The entire campaign strategy is built around it. They figure out how many votes they need to get elected and how many single issue voters they'll have to get riled up to go to the polls, and target them mercilessly with phone calls about black babies, stupid postcards with guys getting married, whisper campaigns about muslims taking over the government and whatever else it takes.

Posted by donna | July 17, 2008 12:18 PM

9/11 was basically the GOP's life preserver that helped them keep treading water. Demographic trends work against them. No one outside of the evangelical movement, which is running out of steam by being explicitly separated from mainstream America, wants to see their vision implemented. Without 9/11, Bush was easily on his way to being another one-termer before losing to Gore or whoever in 2004. He had already gotten the tax cuts and stem cell issues out of the way he actually cared about, so all that was left was helping out his corporate cronies, which wasn't going to get him re-elected. The Iraq War was the wedge issue that let him be a war president and win in a polarized electorate.

Posted by Reality Man | July 17, 2008 12:53 PM