A question worth pondering: Can the Republican Party be salvaged? Yes, the Democrats have their own dysfunctions these days, but it is the Republicans who appear to be in complete disarray and incapable of governing, as the current deadlock for House speaker unfortunately demonstrates. And it is the Republicans who appear to be on track to overwhelmingly select as their presidential candidate an individual indicted on 91 federal counts in four criminal cases, not to mention a series of state criminal cases and civil trials. How did we get to such an impasse, and how can Republicans get out of it?
I should say in passing that it seems to me vital to have two healthy political parties, because usually each keeps the other from straying too far from the center. In the absence of this balance the political system can get seriously out of whack, which seems to me the case right now.
I have seen three arguments in recent years that bear on this question. Two are examples of the road to hell being paved with the best of intentions, or perhaps examples the Law of Unintended Consequences.
An article I read some years ago noted that legislative bargaining in Congress used to take place behind closed doors, where opponents could horse-trade in private to reach bipartisan agreements that gave both sides some of what they wanted. Then came the well-intentioned movement to make such bargaining more public. The result was that as soon as one side made a concession, visible on TV coverage, they were promptly swamped with threatening emails, orchestrated by online activists. The result was to make it much harder, even impossible, to do the kind of horse-trading that effective bipartisan legislation requires.
A related argument focuses on the effect that modern air travel has had on Congress. In the “olden days”, when travel to Washington was slow from much of the country, members of Congress tended to live in Washington, and as a consequence to socialize with each other and develop close friendships, even across the aisle. When Sam Rayburn was Speaker of the House (for 17 years in three separate terms), leaders of both parties would adjourn to his office after a day of battling on the floor of the House and drink Bourbon together. With the advent of cheap air travel, many (most?) members of Congress now go back to their districts on weekends, and don’t build social bonds with their opponents across the aisle, or even with fellow party members on their side of the aisle. In fact there is clearly a lot of animosity among members in today’s Congress, especially in the House.
Then there is the change, again well-intentioned, in selecting candidates. Political parties used to select their candidates in smoke-filled rooms by powerful political pros who attended primarily to whether their candidates were electable or not. It was certainly a system abused at times, so well-intentioned activists pressed for open primaries instead, where the voting public would select the candidates. It certainly sounds like a good idea, but it turns out to have problems. Primary elections aren’t the “real” election, so turnouts tend to be much smaller than in actual elections. And who, then, turns out – mostly people with a burr under their saddle about some issue or other, often those with the most extreme views. As a consequence, in recent years parties have been picking candidates with views more extreme than their voting bases. That is no doubt why we have some many extremists in Congress these days, and in state legislatures as well.
Finally, there is the effect of corporate and private money on Congress, though that isn’t particularly new, and the effect of social media, which is new. Political campaigns have gotten wildly expensive these days, while rulings like the Citizens’ United ruling have magnified the effects of “dark money” (ie – unaccountable money) in campaigns. In particular, a few very wealthy individuals ( George Soros, Richard Uihleon. Kenneth Griffin, Michael Bloomberg, etc) seem to have an outsized effect.
And social media, with its ability to spread information and misinformation widely and quickly, and even target selected voters with selected messages, has clearly changed the nature of campaigning. But then, there must have been fundamental changes in the voting base as well, apparently driven, or at least magnified, by social media.
So if these are important, or even the primary, reasons the Republican Party is off the rails these days, can any of it be reversed? Is there any force that can bring back a substantial moderate wing of the party to hold the extremists at bay? I don’t have an answer, but it is worth thinking about.
Of course The Democratic Party is subject to the same forces, though their hot-button issues are different. Nevertheless, while there is certainly an extremist group on the left as well, Democrats seem marginally less dysfunctional at the moment. Is it perhaps because they are a larger and more diverse coalition than the Republicans, with more internal stresses and hence more need to find compromises and accommodations? That is another question worth pondering.
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