"The GOP Ain't Dead Yet".
The GOP Ain't Dead Yet
By 2012 the bailouts will be Obama's to defend.
For Republicans, the big immediate problem of the past few years has been how to distance themselves from George W. Bush and all the disasters for which he stands. How do you put some daylight between yourself and this guy?
Unfortunately, they have been able to come up with only one way: Impostor theory. The movement's instinct, developed during better times, is to dismiss all failings as authenticity problems. The true faith wasn't discredited, they say, Dubya simply failed to live up to it. We didn't change Washington, they moan, Washington changed us.
Sorry, chaps. Conservatives did change government, and their long experiment with that institution discredited central elements of their faith. That is obvious today, even if it remains a forbidden thought for the movement itself.
Instead of moderating their message, though, conservatives have resolved to be done with moderation forever, to throw down primary challenges to the GOP's remaining centrists, to dig the hole ever deeper in a frantic search for purity.
But the current round of folly does not necessarily mean that the Republican Party is finished. The GOP has bounced back before and it will assuredly do so again. After all, it is one half of a political duopoly. The two-party system guarantees it a good chance of getting back into the White House in 2012 regardless of what kind of bloodletting it engages in today.
One way back is the populist one, expanding on conservatism's understanding of itself as a rebellion against "elites." I have spent no small amount of ink criticizing the emptiness of this rhetoric -- conservatism is pretty much responsible for our massive economic inequality, after all -- but I will acknowledge that hollow populism beats none at all.
And if you put aside things like President Barack Obama's soaring popularity and widespread public awareness of what caused the current economic predicament, conservative anti-elitist rhetoric might start making sense one of these days.
Consider the various bailouts of the financial system, which are deeply unpopular and which many of the Republicans in Congress can truthfully say they opposed from the get-go. Right now, it would be difficult to blame the bailouts on either party, since they started in the Bush days. But three years down the road from now, they will be Mr. Obama's to defend.
In that situation, Republicans may well decide to press their offensive against the elite by depicting the Democrats as the party of Wall Street. I know this sounds counterintuitive, possibly even hypocritical. And yet, if they choose to take that route, Republicans will have a lot to go on. Mr. Obama's great success in reaping campaign money from Wall Street, to begin with. Or his mystifying tendency to give important economic oversight jobs to former hedge fund managers and investment bankers -- rather than, say, regulators or experts in corporate crime.
The episode of the AIG bonuses, when the administration showed such solicitude for the sanctity of contract, will make a fine companion piece to the administration's failure to lift a finger for the mortgage cramdown bill, hated as it was by the financial industry. The administration's watered-down stress tests will come up, as will its perplexing failure to deal firmly with the so-called zombie banks. Useful comparison will be made with Republican administrations of the past, which put insolvent institutions into receivership.
True, taking this tack would mean overcoming a number of fairly large contradictions, but the potential rewards are great and resourceful conservatives will no doubt find a way. Indeed, some are doing it already, describing Democrats as the bought-and-paid-for puppets of Wall Street. For example, during the AIG outrage, Ann Coulter wrote a column titled "Gordon Gekko is a Democrat," in which she tallied up the enormous contributions that Mr. Obama collected from investment bankers over the years and concluded: "Wall Street gets what it pays for."
As for Obama administration officials, I suspect they will find it difficult to get back to "Yes We Can" after having spent so much time chanting, "Because We Say So."
But suppose we get through the current economic slump with no further great disasters, what happens then? For one thing, the culture wars, which have thankfully been doused by the economic crisis, will come roaring back in some yet-to-be-determined but certain-to-be-awful form.
For another, the administration itself will probably move back to the Clintonian sweet spot that Washington Democrats find so comfortable and correct and desirable. The jitters will be over, the killjoy liberals will be marginalized, the warm old consensus will envelop our leaders once more, and they will resume their old habits, adored by the press for their post-partisan high mindedness, celebrating free trade and the magic of the market, triangulating just like in the merry days of old.
Then the Republicans will eat them for lunch.
Write to thomas@wsj.com
By 2012 the bailouts will be Obama's to defend.
For Republicans, the big immediate problem of the past few years has been how to distance themselves from George W. Bush and all the disasters for which he stands. How do you put some daylight between yourself and this guy?
Unfortunately, they have been able to come up with only one way: Impostor theory. The movement's instinct, developed during better times, is to dismiss all failings as authenticity problems. The true faith wasn't discredited, they say, Dubya simply failed to live up to it. We didn't change Washington, they moan, Washington changed us.
Sorry, chaps. Conservatives did change government, and their long experiment with that institution discredited central elements of their faith. That is obvious today, even if it remains a forbidden thought for the movement itself.
Instead of moderating their message, though, conservatives have resolved to be done with moderation forever, to throw down primary challenges to the GOP's remaining centrists, to dig the hole ever deeper in a frantic search for purity.
But the current round of folly does not necessarily mean that the Republican Party is finished. The GOP has bounced back before and it will assuredly do so again. After all, it is one half of a political duopoly. The two-party system guarantees it a good chance of getting back into the White House in 2012 regardless of what kind of bloodletting it engages in today.
One way back is the populist one, expanding on conservatism's understanding of itself as a rebellion against "elites." I have spent no small amount of ink criticizing the emptiness of this rhetoric -- conservatism is pretty much responsible for our massive economic inequality, after all -- but I will acknowledge that hollow populism beats none at all.
And if you put aside things like President Barack Obama's soaring popularity and widespread public awareness of what caused the current economic predicament, conservative anti-elitist rhetoric might start making sense one of these days.
Consider the various bailouts of the financial system, which are deeply unpopular and which many of the Republicans in Congress can truthfully say they opposed from the get-go. Right now, it would be difficult to blame the bailouts on either party, since they started in the Bush days. But three years down the road from now, they will be Mr. Obama's to defend.
In that situation, Republicans may well decide to press their offensive against the elite by depicting the Democrats as the party of Wall Street. I know this sounds counterintuitive, possibly even hypocritical. And yet, if they choose to take that route, Republicans will have a lot to go on. Mr. Obama's great success in reaping campaign money from Wall Street, to begin with. Or his mystifying tendency to give important economic oversight jobs to former hedge fund managers and investment bankers -- rather than, say, regulators or experts in corporate crime.
The episode of the AIG bonuses, when the administration showed such solicitude for the sanctity of contract, will make a fine companion piece to the administration's failure to lift a finger for the mortgage cramdown bill, hated as it was by the financial industry. The administration's watered-down stress tests will come up, as will its perplexing failure to deal firmly with the so-called zombie banks. Useful comparison will be made with Republican administrations of the past, which put insolvent institutions into receivership.
True, taking this tack would mean overcoming a number of fairly large contradictions, but the potential rewards are great and resourceful conservatives will no doubt find a way. Indeed, some are doing it already, describing Democrats as the bought-and-paid-for puppets of Wall Street. For example, during the AIG outrage, Ann Coulter wrote a column titled "Gordon Gekko is a Democrat," in which she tallied up the enormous contributions that Mr. Obama collected from investment bankers over the years and concluded: "Wall Street gets what it pays for."
As for Obama administration officials, I suspect they will find it difficult to get back to "Yes We Can" after having spent so much time chanting, "Because We Say So."
But suppose we get through the current economic slump with no further great disasters, what happens then? For one thing, the culture wars, which have thankfully been doused by the economic crisis, will come roaring back in some yet-to-be-determined but certain-to-be-awful form.
For another, the administration itself will probably move back to the Clintonian sweet spot that Washington Democrats find so comfortable and correct and desirable. The jitters will be over, the killjoy liberals will be marginalized, the warm old consensus will envelop our leaders once more, and they will resume their old habits, adored by the press for their post-partisan high mindedness, celebrating free trade and the magic of the market, triangulating just like in the merry days of old.
Then the Republicans will eat them for lunch.
Write to thomas@wsj.com
Labels: Conservatism, GOP, Republicanism
posted by KYJurisDoctor at 11:29 AM
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