Specter and the downward spiral
Republicans face a systemic dilemma that in some ways parallels the Democratic conundrum of the mid 1990s.
In those years -- thanks in part to Republican redistricting efforts -- moderate Democrats were being picked off. The surviving party was smaller and more ideological.
When Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) emerged as the House minority leader, it seemed possible that the Democratic movement would flounder toward the margins.
But Pelosi and Democratic leaders in the Senate somehow resisted the temptation to follow their more purist base.
They chose pragmatists like Rahm Emanuel (in the House) and Chuck Schumer (in the Senate) to lead their rebuilding effort.
Even former Vermont Governor Howard Dean -- at first seen as a firebrand -- hunkered down and got busy doing the nuts-and-bolts work of erecting a 50-state political movement.
The results were visible here in New York's 20th congressional district, where first Kirsten Gillibrand and then Scott Murphy laid claim to a seat that had been cozily Republican.
This week's defection of Senator Arlen Specter from the GOP is more evidence that the conservative movement is trying a different and far more perilous path.
With each passing year, the Republican Party is a smaller and more fervently ideological organization. (Rush Limbaugh describes this as a healthy "winnowing" process.)
It appears that the temptations of purity are simply too great. The GOP could lose as many as 4 additional U.S. Senators in 2010, as moderates are ostracized or weakened by primary challenges. More defections are possible, perhaps likely.
(Limbaugh seems particularly eager to drive Sen. John McCain out of the party.)
Where might the downward spiral end? Ask a Whig. Or a Federalist...
posted by Brian Mann @ 4/29/2009 09:48:00 AM
2 Comments
2 Comments:
Indeed... I'm all for letting Limbaugh purify the GOP... And in the process, let's start building a strong Independent Party. The deflections of folks like Specter and Lieberman may become more common in the not-too-distant future. Certainly, there are Democrats in the House and Senate who are uncomfortable with the scope of Obama's spending, and there are plenty of Republicans growing uncomfortable with the conservatism of their party.. Bring back Ross Perot!
Brian,
I agree with your take on the GOP, but you're rewriting history a bit to say the Dems thrown overboard in the '90s were just moderates. Several conservative Dems in the South lost or pulled a Specter and switched (who wanted GOP lite when you could have the real thing?) and as many liberals as moderates went down in flames, either by losing (Mike Synar, Ann Richards, Mario Cuomo) or retiring, leaving seats to the hot GOP brand.
However "ideological" the remaining Dems were, they had no voice. The core power base of the party was the Clinton-Gore Democratic Leadership Council, and it almost always tacked right (remember triangulation?) and made a fetish of bipartisanship because it was afraid conservatives and David Broder might say mean things otherwise. They liked big companies, war and a surveillance state. Just not quite as much as the Republicans.
It took the Dems a while to realize there were still plenty of Americans, especially younger ones, who didn't like hard-right ideas. Dean (who hunkered down in Vermont and as a prez candidate, I recall; he was far more moderate than the press painted him, and the DLC laughed at the 50-state strategy initially--it was a "kooky" pipedream) revealed that fact. Obama exploited it.
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