Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Analysis of the Republican Party

Brad DeLong has a posting on his blog that very nicely analyzes the current state of the Republican party:
To understand the Republican Party today, you have to recognize that right now it is bespelled by three curses:
  • The curse of Ronald Reagan: it believes that over the long haul somehow America can tax like Calvin Coolidge and spend like Lyndon Johnson and everything will come out fine because it is morning in America.

  • The curse of Richard Nixon: it believes that the purpose of politics is to win high-paid jobs with no heavy lifting involved and to humiliate your political adversaries, rather than to make a better country and a better world, and so anything goes.

  • The curse of Barry Goldwater: it believes that the big threat to liberty comes from government attempts to enhance equality of opportunity, and so the Republican Party must abandon its historic commitment to equality of opportunity.
The Republican Party may never again have a legitimate place in American civil life. But if it does, it will only be because brave men and women working within it lift these three curses.
I don't expect the Republicans to recover. I think that when Nixon took them on their "Southern strategy" they left the mainstream of politics and have slowly been edging over the cliff. It is pretty clear to me that with the Great Recession they have finally tumbled over the point of no return with their fanatical policy of obstructionism.

3 comments:

kanna said...

"I don't expect the Republicans to recover."
Maybe, but what will take their place is of concern.
Yet the Republicans are very adept.

RYviewpoint said...

Kanna: You may well be right, but I like to think they have sunk their boat. I like to think people see them as a party of the past with no future to offer. Instead, I would like to see the Democratic party split into two parties a new progressive/liberal party and a new centrist/conservative party. The two new parties can fight like cats & dogs but they will should be able to rise above partisanship and vote together for bills that set a cornerstone for a new future like the health care bill. In short, I want to see the US recover the politics of the post-WWII consensus where fights were on small issues and there was generally consensus on big issues. I'm probably deluding myself, but that what I see in the tea leaves.

kanna said...

RY,
Now that would make for a good split and things would run along more smoothly for many years.
Of course, I really hope you are right in your tea leaf reading.
Delusion is sometimes the best way to keep going.