Balkinization: The Future of the GOP as a National Party

The Future of the GOP as a National Party

Arlen Specter's defection to the Democrats has been the occasion for the strange claim that the Republicans are no longer a truly national party, or are only a regional party organized in the South. Obviously, some Republicans may say this to goad their allies into action, and some Democrats may say this in order to generate an aura of invincibility, but the idea doesn't stand up to serious reflection.

The Republican Party, like the Democrats, has had its ups and downs. This is natural part of the political cycle, and we should recognize it for what it is. The Republicans continued to be a national party even when they were being seriously and repeatedly trounced by Franklin Roosevelt during the New Deal, and held had many fewer seats than they do now. If you want to see a party truly in the throes of defeat, look at the electoral maps from 1932 through 1936. And yet the Republicans came back.

Following the 2002 and 2004 elections various people fretted that by failing to compete in the South the Democrats were on the verge of being a spent force and no longer a national party. We see how short sighted these predictions proved to be.

John McCain, the party's nominee, received some 46 percent of the popular vote in the 2008 election. That is the mark of a national party, not a regional one. Minor parties do not get 40 percent of the national vote, a vote which is virtually guaranteed no matter who runs. If Barack Obama is a successful president, the Republicans may do less well in 2012 than McCain did in 2008, because incumbent presidents sometimes win reelection by substantial margins. But so what? Barry Goldwater and George McGovern were trounced by incumbent presidents and their parties did not lose national status. It is worth noting that in 1964 Goldwater not only lost badly, but his party also lost seats in Congress. By 1966, the Republicans regained momentum and in 1968 they began a long period of dominance in American politics.

Matthew Yglesias points out, correctly, I think, that parties tend to rise to dominance to solve particular problems that their opponents created or couldn't satisfactorily deal with. Once these issues are resolved in a more or less satisfactory way, more difficult and intractable problems remain, and other circumstances change; as a result the dominant party tends to lose steam. This happened to the New Deal/Civil Rights coalition of the Democrats and now it has happened to the Reagan coalition that brought the Republicans into power. If Obama is a failure, the opposition party will quickly make a comeback. But even if Obama is a success, and the Democrats secure health care, end the Iraq war, and revive the economy, the Democrats will inevitably create a new political situation with new conditions and challenges in which the Republicans, offering new solutions to new problems, can reemerge.

The only way that the Republicans would not survive the current difficult times is if there is an issue (or a series of issues) that splits their coalition in a way that cannot be repaired, so that a new third party emerges to displace them. But at present it is very hard to see how such a party would emerge and how it would displace the entrenched advantages the GOP enjoys. The structure of Congressional arrangements, voting rules, campaign finance and candidacy regulations are all designed to preserve a duopoly for the two major parties. (Although many Republicans despise campaign finance laws, ironically, these same laws are guarantees of Republican survival, because they help restrain third parties from displacing the two parties we currently have.)

What is far more likely is that the modern Republican coalition begun by Nixon and solidified by Reagan will splinter and reassemble with slightly different proportions and combinations of groups and of membership. It will still be called the Republican Party. And it will still worship Ronald Reagan, because, for all of the political dominance the GOP has enjoyed in recent years, Ronald Reagan was the one truly successful Republican President since 1960. (Dwight Eisenhower, interestingly, was not someone that contemporary Republicans tend to venerate, in part because he did not create a new winning coalition but rather made peace with the New Deal. And although George H.W. Bush is underrated in my view, he is unlikely to be a rallying point for the party).

It's not difficult to guess at what substantial parts of the eventual new Republican coalition will look like. It will still be grounded in the South, but that is an advantage, not a disadvantage. The Democrats were firmly anchored in the South for some 150 years and they did just fine. It will still attract white religious voters (including evangelicals and Catholics), fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, and war hawks. It will (eventually) pick up more independents, Asians, and Hispanics and make inroads with the technical and managerial classes. It will be retooled to recognize urban and suburban problems because these problems will increasingly pervade the areas of Republican strength in the South and West. It will make its peace with a larger and more powerful central government, with national health care, with increased investments in infrastructure and with environmental regulation. Despite its current rhetoric, it will be a party of big government because all parties these days are the party of big government. Even so, it will still be the more conservative of the two parties, although the meaning of "conservatism" will eventually change, as it has before. In short, it will build on the old Reagan coalition but with a slightly different set of groups and different set of issues in a new political and demographic context. It will take the successes of the Democrats-- such as they turn out to be--as a starting point and offer alternatives in the changed political world that the Democrats create.

When will this new coalition reassert itself? Assume for the moment that Obama and the Democrats are mostly successful, so that they dominate American politics for several election cycles. Even so, we can expect a successful Republican Presidential candidate who tempers the dominant political trends of the time without overthrowing them, like Cleveland, Eisenhower, Nixon or Clinton. Such a person could be elected as early as 2016. Eventually, the Republican party will regain strength in Congress and be ready to challenge for a new round of dominance. On the other hand, if Obama and the Democrats fail badly, the Republican resurgence will occur even earlier, perhaps as early as 2010.

All this is speculation of course. I am merely extrapolating from past history. But my larger point is that we should not understand two losses in 2006 and 2008 as spelling anything like the end of the GOP as a national presence. It has lost, and lost badly, to be sure. But losing is sometimes the first step in winning.

Posted 9:05 AM by JB [link]