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Future of the GOP
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04/29/09 01:25 PM ET
This newspaper wrote Tuesday that Sen. Arlen Specter’s (Pa.) defection from the Republican Party had reshaped the Senate.
That it did. It means that Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will probably attain his filibuster-proof 60-seat majority sooner rather than later. It was always odds-on to happen in the 2010 election, but now that threshold will be met if or when Al Franken is seated as Minnesota’s junior senator.
But while Specter’s switch has changed the upper chamber — his voting decisions can be expected to track leftward, at least a bit — the bigger issue raised by his departure from the GOP is whether it will prove a catalyst for change within the party.
There was a perfunctory, pro forma flavor to Specter’s suggestion that the party had moved so far to the right and that it was truer to say it left him than that he left it. His other explanation, that his pollster had told him he had scant chance of winning the Republican primary, is much closer to the truth.
But even if the senator’s move was about simple political self-preservation — he has a strong chance of being reelected as a Democrat — it still reflects profound problems for Republicans.
It is not just in Pennsylvania, Specter’s state, that the party’s brand is getting crushed by the Democrats. As Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) noted in pressing the case for former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge (R) to take on Specter, other conservative states such as North Carolina were also won by President Obama in the last election.
The blue ink has slid southward on the national electoral map and now colors or has completely overwhelmed previously red-tinted states.
Is that because Republicans have moved sharply to the right? No fiscal hawk would see it that way. Republicans in power became more liberal in their spending, not more tight-fisted.
The Republican Party is unattractive to voters not because it has moved clearly in one direction or another but because it is no longer clear what it stands for. Its animating principles are hazy at best.
If Republican politicians and intellectuals aren’t sure what the party stands for, it’s a sure bet that voters don’t know either. Those politicians and intellectuals are engaged in a bitter fight over the direction of the GOP. They know that they need to decide where a big tent becomes a lack of principle, or where (to put it the other way around) admirably firm principle metastasizes and becomes ugly narrow-mindedness.
Like an automobile, a political party cannot go anywhere while it’s being repaired. Republican engineers are busy squabbling under the hood right now. It’s not a pretty sight, and no one can be surprised that a passenger or two decides to get out.
That it did. It means that Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will probably attain his filibuster-proof 60-seat majority sooner rather than later. It was always odds-on to happen in the 2010 election, but now that threshold will be met if or when Al Franken is seated as Minnesota’s junior senator.
There was a perfunctory, pro forma flavor to Specter’s suggestion that the party had moved so far to the right and that it was truer to say it left him than that he left it. His other explanation, that his pollster had told him he had scant chance of winning the Republican primary, is much closer to the truth.
But even if the senator’s move was about simple political self-preservation — he has a strong chance of being reelected as a Democrat — it still reflects profound problems for Republicans.
It is not just in Pennsylvania, Specter’s state, that the party’s brand is getting crushed by the Democrats. As Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) noted in pressing the case for former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge (R) to take on Specter, other conservative states such as North Carolina were also won by President Obama in the last election.
The blue ink has slid southward on the national electoral map and now colors or has completely overwhelmed previously red-tinted states.
Is that because Republicans have moved sharply to the right? No fiscal hawk would see it that way. Republicans in power became more liberal in their spending, not more tight-fisted.
The Republican Party is unattractive to voters not because it has moved clearly in one direction or another but because it is no longer clear what it stands for. Its animating principles are hazy at best.
If Republican politicians and intellectuals aren’t sure what the party stands for, it’s a sure bet that voters don’t know either. Those politicians and intellectuals are engaged in a bitter fight over the direction of the GOP. They know that they need to decide where a big tent becomes a lack of principle, or where (to put it the other way around) admirably firm principle metastasizes and becomes ugly narrow-mindedness.
Like an automobile, a political party cannot go anywhere while it’s being repaired. Republican engineers are busy squabbling under the hood right now. It’s not a pretty sight, and no one can be surprised that a passenger or two decides to get out.
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