Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Why Should The Republican Party Be Preserved?
By Tom Kando
There are many discussions in the media (Meet the Press, even the liberal MSNBC, etc.) about how to preserve the GOP. “Reasonable” Republicans (as opposed to Tea Party extremists) like Bobby Jindal are quoted by pundits. Everyone agrees that the party must heed the country’s growing demographic diversity, court Hispanics, etc. Even multiple loser Karl Rove is on this bandwagon. The consensus is that otherwise, the Republican Party will become a regional, primarily Southern, white, male, non-urban, upper middle-class party, increasingly irrelevant to national politics.
First, I’d like to remind you that all the talk about the GOP’s demise is, like Mark Twain’s death, premature: Nationally, Republicans control the Supreme Court and the House. And at the state level they control more governorships and legislatures than do Democrats. Furthermore, they are clever and successful cheaters, as more and more states pass voter disenfranchisement laws and gerrymander their districts in such a way as to perpetuate rule by the affluent, white, conservative minority of the population.
A few months ago, Frank Rich wrote a New York Times article “The Tea Party Will Win in the End” (Oct. 14, 2012), which I reviewed on this blog: 'The Tea Party Will Win and America Will Lose'.
Rich is a progressive, but he is also a pessimist. He shows the tremendous resilience of conservatives in America. Like cockroaches, they always come back and survive. Obama’s election has produced a temporary euphoria among liberals and temporary hand wringing among conservatives. But liberals are counting their chickens before they hatch, and republicans’ tears about their party’s weakness are crocodile tears. The GOP is far from moribund!
But here is my main point: Why does everyone accept it as axiomatic that the GOP must be preserved? If your family, your country, your culture or your alma mater school are in jeopardy, of course you’ll want to do whatever you can to help it survive. But what is a political party? It is a power bloc advocating a point-of-view, an ideology. If that point of view and ideology are obsolete and noxious, then the party should disappear.
Those who talk about “turning the GOP around” and saving it from the Tea Party crazies are proposing remedies. These boil down to making the GOP demographically more appealing (to Hispanics, primarily). But isn’t the only real way that the Republican Party could become more popular a total change in its TUNE, its message, its ideology, its principles? In other words, to become a second Democratic Party? We already have a democratic party, so what’s the point? The problem with the GOP is that it is WRONG on most issues. The solution, then, is for it to disappear.
Do I advocate a one-party system for the US? No. We are in dire need of new parties, alternatives to the Democratic Party. But the GOP isn’t one of them. The GOP is a has-been. Unlike a family, a country, a culture, or a school, there is nothing inherently lovable about a political party, any political party. A political party only needs to survive as long as it achieves good things for the people. Once it no longer does that, it’s time for it to go.
Should a country try, through reform, to save the royalist party, the Tories, the Whigs, the Nazi Party, the Communist Party or any other obsolete and dysfunctional party just because it has a history? The GOP could only survive if it ceased to be itself. What’s the point? I suggest that anyone who is currently a republican and is at the same time reasonably progressive stop being a Republican. leave comment here
6 comments:
Jindel was right. They cannot survive as the party of austerity. Every conservative I have a discussion with I end up pointing out every one of their ideals of economic policy are being played out 555 miles south of my front door just past San Ysidro, and all points south of there to the straights of Magellan. If we follow the ideal of almost no government interference, almost no taxes there's your model and the results are there for all to observe. The same model exists in nearly all of Africa and Asia as well with exactly the same result.
Interesting comparisons.
Thanks!
The basic point here is that neither party has the capacity to do anything but run campaigns (and very poor ones at that).
The rampant paranoia of the left to the Tea Party is curious. Jindal's speech was actually pretty good. He understands that federalization of everything is not a way to govern. (The Tea Party agrees with that). He believes that federal spending is out of control (Tea Party agreement there too). He says we should treat citizens as adults (which means a lot less concentration on social issues) (the Tea Party agrees with that too - indeed one of the major reasons that the Tea Party movement began was concern that social issues were trumping fiscal and economic issues).
I do not assume (so I guess it is not everybody) that the GOP (nor the Dems) should be preserved. I would like a political party that understands the very real relationship between elections and governing. The President clearly does not understand that link - having spent less than an hour in substantive discussions with the leaders of the GOP on the sequester in the last week.
Tom,
You are 110% correct...the No-Nothing Party disappeared long ago...why not the current "no very little" party. But, a reason has arisen...we need some of them around to use for mind-melds...you can't know your enemy unless you know what's going in there...OK, what can we learn from a Black Hole? Maybe if they changed their name to "The Liberal Party"....as one sees in European countries...now THAT would confuse the issue.
I thank Jonathan and Jerry for their comments. Both are erudite and intelligent men (with PhDs). I am going to Europe in a couple of days, so I have no time te reply to the substance of their remarks. However I will say that, while I disagree with Jonathan's conservative stances, I very much appreciate his frequent civil and intelligent comments. Dialogue is always good, and it is good that our blog doesn't just preach to the choir.
Tom, In one respect the Democrats are the new conservatives and the Republican position on social issues is the social position of the Christian Era. One would almost have to say that the Boomeritis that has infected the Democratic Party is the cultural norm, and that it is a norm insufficient for running a country.
For a new Party to have appeal it should be both post-Christian and post-value-free pluralism.
There is nothing inherent in reducing the size of the federal government and putting more responsibility on lower levels that is socially conservative. It might be necessary for survival. The Russian and the Chinese both discovered serious problems with over centralization and have made efforts to decentralize.
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