Republicans still unable to touch Obama
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Dear Danny Finkelstein,
In your analysis for The Times of what is happening to the Republicans in America, I think you might have stumbled across a problem that many political parties face from time to time on both sides of the Atlantic. Sarah Palin’s resignation has caused huge consternation among the Republicans, who still seem to view her as their leader. Like you said, this introverted attitude can cost any political party dearly.
“What with all the revelations about adultery, the regular resignations and defections, the talk show hosts hurling insults and the tone deaf response to the Obama honeymoon, I mean, where does one begin?” Good question. The Republicans are in disarray and are desperately seeking a focal point to rally round. From your article, however, it seems that old habits die hard. You described the sad tale of Governor Jon Meade Huntsman Jr. of Utah. “He was one of the most popular governors in the country, having been re-elected with 78% of the vote. His popularity wasn’t a mystery. He is lucid, moderate, likeable, an accomplished individual with a good grasp of economics and the ability to speak fluent Mandarin.” Then, just as Mr Huntsman had become a possible candidate for the Republican nomination in 2012, his invitation to a speak at a small-scale Republican event in Michigan was withdrawn because it was discovered that he favoured civil partnerships between homosexuals. Two weeks later Barack Obama announced that he had offered Huntsman an appointment as Ambassador to China. And he had accepted.” Oh dear. Another bright Republican mind lost to ignorance and religious bigotry. You believe that his decision to accept Obama’s offer was the right one because ”…there was no point him seeking the leadership of the Republican Party. For the Republican Party already has a leader. It is Sarah Palin.” Bloody hell. Even after all this time and all those gaffes and scandals, the Republicans still love her.
While I may find this extremely hard to believe, having thought Sarah Palin was a joke from pretty much day one, it really isn’t that hard to understand what is happening here. Think back to the Conservatives in between 1997 to 2005. They spent so long talking amongst themselves that they never turned around and starting talking to the public. In this period they had some good ideas and some terrible ones, but even the good policies and bright ideas died a painful death because they simply didn’t engage the public and were far too busy arguing among themselves and healing rifts. Furthermore, the Republicans, much like the Conservatives in the pre-Cameron years, believe that the media is out to get them. This may or may not be true; it doesn’t really matter. What matters is whether the Republicans look to the world outside their gun clubs and steakhouses and ask themselves one simple question: do we want to win the next election? If the answer is ‘yes’, they simply have no choice but to (much as I hate the phrase) ‘modernise’ – and by that I mean leaving their prejudices behind and showing the public that the reasons they avoided the party in the past are no longer an issue. Western society is becoming more liberal and tolerant, and every political party must accept this – regardless of how much it galls them to do so. Like you said, “the maths of politics aren’t very complicated. If you want to win and you don’t have enough votes from people who agree with you, you have to win support from people who don’t by accommodating their views. You cannot win elections by getting the same people to vote for you by pulling the lever harder. This, however, is the strategy the Republicans seem to be embarking upon.”
For David Cameron to turn a divided and ineffective political party into a government-in-waiting is a truly incredible achievement, but it took a lot of time and effort – and his task of rejuvenating his party is far from over. Unless the Republicans want to spend over a decade in the wilderness, they must understand that banging the same drum a bit louder than before will impress no-one. Obama’s honeymoon will end at some point before 2012, but if the Republicans are not ready to pounce and provide the American voters with a real alternative, Obama will stroll back into the White House. Swing voters are never impressed by insular, bigoted, old-fashioned politics and I think the Republicans would do well to remember that.
Yours sincerely,
A.Tory
Witanagemot Blogs
“Sarah Palin’s resignation has caused huge consternation among the Republicans, who still seem to view her as their leader. “
No, the core Repubs (the movers and shakers of the party, and more importantly, the power brokers) wouldn’t touch Sarah with a bargepole.
It’s the potential Repub members that went for her in a big way.
“For David Cameron to turn a divided and ineffective political party into a government-in-waiting is a truly incredible achievement..”
What makes Cameron electable now isn’t Cameron though. It’s Brown!
@JuliaM – Incompetent government doesn’t automatically make the opposition electable; see 1992 for a counter-example.
@LondonStatto –
The 1992 Conservative government wasn’t incompetent, it was merely corrupt. The 2009 Labour government is both.
The Republicans are being hit with sleaze after sleaze at the moment, but they’re compounding their own misery but rejecting anyone with even remotely centre-ground credentials.
You can’t really compare the Republicans with the Tories, our politics are pretty simple compared to the US as we’re a lot less opinion-diverse regionally.
The Republicans are also going to find it difficult to modernize, they remember how the Democrats lost the south when they modernized. The last thing they want is for the party to split, in the modern world a Republican version of the Dixiecrat party could very well succeed, and at the very least ensure Democrat success for several years by dint of splitting the current Republican vote.
The only platform the Republicans should be eyeballing is the States Rights concept, what the US was built upon prior to the Civil War and creeping centralization started, as like the idea of a federalized EU, the states are too varied for any one-size-fits-all solution to work. Federal governments, over wide areas, work best when they mainly keep their nose out of local activities.
Ob, the point I’m making is that they find themselves in a similar position to the post-1997 Conservatives in that they are a party that has apparently decided to look inwards rather than outwards in order to set their future direction. If the Democrats can force the Republicans to divide into modernisers and traditionalists, they could easily secure another election victory by fracturing their opponents’ voter base.
“Western society is becoming more liberal and tolerant”.
Exactly the opposite, I’m afraid. There are new orthodoxies now, and if you don’t conform then you are ineligible.
The GOP and the Democrats have their dogmas. The challenge the GOP faces is not that it is illiberal, but that they are the wrong ones.
In a way, though, it a good and healthy thing that they are having this debate. The religious right, whether you agree with their views or not, have a hugely intrusive worldview and have too much power in the Republican party. In the long run, it will probably do them good to fight and lose a couple of elections as only then they will come to the realisation that Cameron and others have finally reached.
The challenge always for Conservatives is to avoid becoming Last Ditchers (who cares these days about the Corn Laws?) and ensure that they remain relevant to society while preserving what is good about the current set up.
Earl Grey had a great motto: Reform that ye may preserve. Suitably nuanced for a truly Conservative party (and yes, I know he was a Whig, but that has now become the Hartington strand of the Conservative party)
LFAT, that’s the Republicans problem – looking outside will split them.
Inside there are plenty of Goldwater types, small government Republicanism will be their saving grace, they’ve just to got to realize it. And they need to learn the lesson Goldwater didn’t, you don’t fight the bigots in the party, you tell them they can preach their stuff at state level not federal.
The religious right can then slink back to their hovels and watch their populations shrink into oblivion over the next century whilst the world, and the Republicans, move on.
“If the Democrats can force the Republicans to divide into modernisers and traditionalists, they could easily secure another election victory by fracturing their opponents’ voter base. “
The perils of a two-party system, sadly…
“..small government Republicanism will be their saving grace..”
Precisely. And there’s yet another parallel with the Tories. Cameron’s ‘appeal’ isn’t to the voters, so much as to the vested interests in his own party.
Stuart, I guess I was referring more to issues such as homosexuality, which still poses major problems for the GOP.
Charles, I agree that it is a debate they should have – but they don’t seem that bothered about having it.
Ob, interesting point about the state and federal issues. That said, no Presidential candidate would be able to hide their prejudices for long.
Julia, I know that 2-party politics makes the UK look positively enlightened. Sadly we know better….
LFAT – I think my point was that internal debate is not going to have any effect. The Religious Right need to be in charge for a couple of elections and go down in flames (like the Tory Ultras did under Hague and Howard). Only then will they become a broken force in the Republicans.
The other approach is for someone on the moderate wing to become the party’s Kinnock and purge the Right, but again I am not sure that the sane members of the party are sufficiently in despair until that happens.
Best case for me is that Palin goes up against Obama in 2012 and loses horribly. Less than 40% should do it.
@Charles –
Palin Vs Obama.
An Obama with even more more assured presence enhanced by political and world experience. It would be a massacre.
The Republican’s can only hope that the ramping up of debt causes further economic woes. Then they can point to out of control spending and hope to label the Democrats with a similar Tory message to Labour’s economic incompetence.
“What matters is whether the Republicans look to the world outside… and ask themselves one simple question: do we want to win the next election? If the answer is ‘yes’, they simply have no choice but to (much as I hate the phrase) ‘modernise’ – and by that I mean leaving their prejudices behind and showing the public that the reasons they avoided the party in the past are no longer an issue.”
Half right, I think. Both in the UK and US, the mainstream electorate has been getting increasingly tired of spin. Politicians seeking office merely for the sake of achieving office no longer have any credibility. (Just look at Labour since 2005.) So while Cameron has glossed over the worst of the Tories’ presentational problems, the party’s success is largely down to widespread, and understandable, fatigue with Labour.
That said, you’re right that the GOP needs to show it’s not the party of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck or Michelle Bachmann. And the best way to do that is focus on fiscal conservativism; be slightly less interventionist abroad; prioritise energy independence and environmental conservativism; and target wasteful government programmes (being explicit about the what, why and how of cuts). Radical social conservativism and religious zealotry is incredibly dumb for a party that preaches the removal of the state from the lives of the individual – and just pisses off plenty of people who might vote for an otherwise conservative platform. After all, who else are the red-necks going to vote for?
(I’m a British social democrat, incidentally. If I were American, I’d be happy just to have leaders who were clever, articulate, experienced, committed, honest and able – regardless of policy. Sarah Palin is none of those things. Barack Obama is most of them.)
Richard
Most of your post I would agree with. However:
“If I were American, I’d be happy just to have leaders who were clever, articulate, experienced, committed, honest and able – regardless of policy. Sarah Palin is none of those things. Barack Obama is most of them”
Clever, articulate, committed (to what?) and able – yes.
Honest – probably not. Too disingenous and political for my liking.
Experienced – definitely not.
Not to say Palin is better (she isn’t) but don’t laud him too much.
They are in disarray and are meant to be so. Obama is the new Messiah.
It is difficult to comment on other countries politics as there are so many cultural differences but I think you’re right in drawing a few parallels.
And I would agree that people are becoming more liberal in general and this is reflected in many political parites racing to the centre to scoop up the voters. The Republicans have failed to race anywhere near the centre and are orbiting a different planet entriely. I’m sure part of the failure was an angry reaction towards Bush and the war but they are also not attractive not swing voters with such hardline and sometimes distasteful policies (issues about God, Guns and Gays only goes so far)
As Leigh Van Valen suggested with his ‘Red Queen Hypothesis’ you have got to keep moving to remain in the same place.
“If I were American, I’d be happy just to have leaders who were clever, articulate, experienced, committed, honest and able – regardless of policy. Sarah Palin is none of those things. Barack Obama is most of them.) “
Ha ha hah! Good one!
You were joking, I take it?
I think the recession and the on-going military involvement overseas might have more to do with the tories been a party in waiting than the leadership of the boy Cameron.
@JuliaM – you must either be the resident troll or just a bit simple. The only thing Obama is not (from that list) is experienced. You can go into denial and froth at the mouth about “creeping socialism” or whatever other bogeyman you want to create out of him. And, y’know, that’s fine with me. I like him and would like him to serve a second term. The only chance the conservative movement has of beating him is to acknowledge his strengths and come up with something better. All those Limbaugh-esque dismissals of him just make his re-election more likely. So go ahead – knock yourself out!
“@JuliaM – you must either be the resident troll or just a bit simple.”
Actually, it’s neither. And you need to do some reading on your idol.
“articulate”: when the teleprompter runs out, not so much. Not for nothing has he been dubbed ‘The Wizard of Uhhs’..
“honest”: how many campaign promises are in tatters now? He should have tried the old standby ‘Read my lips – no new taxes’.
“I like him and would like him to serve a second term.”
Oh, dear. It seems even his fervent supporters are having a bit of a rethink…
Never venerate any man in public service – they are NEVER what their PR staff say they are.
“All those Limbaugh-esque dismissals of him…”
Why, oh why do Obama-fellators always fall back on Limbaugh as their pinnacle?
Hint: I’m not a Yank, so unlikely to be payng much atention to him. And there’s plenty of pundits this side of the pond who are beginning to realise the glitter is fast wearing off the boy-king…
JuliaM – well, the least you can say for the wing-nuts (sorry, is that too much of an americanism, too?) like you is that you’re nothing if not predictable. And I’m delighted you chose to follow my advice and knock yourself out. But linking to Fox News in support of your case? As our yank friends might put it, “puh-leeeze!” You say you don’t follow American politics very closely. But having seen some of Obama’s unscripted events, I have to say he’s head and shoulders above anything the GOP has to offer right now. Again, as you’re not paying much attention to conservative figures on the other side of the Atlantic, allow me point you at the last but one Republican leadership hopeful: Bobbbby JIN-dalllll!. (And you’ll note I let him show himself as a total douche, rather than pointing you to TPM, Rachel Maddoww or ThinkProgress reviews of his calamitous performance.)
LFAT, prejudices aren’t a problem as long as they don’t let them interfere with policy.
Going back to a states-rights system would allow individual states to be as liberal or illiberal as they wish. Ask the candidate what their view on gay marriage is, and they can say “I personally don’t agree with it, but it isn’t an issue for the federal government nor the US constitution. It is down to the legislature of the individual state as to whether they permit or not”
Given a lot of the religious right are also paleo-conservative, that attitude fits in with their worldview.
@Richard
Obama’s another Blair – media savvy, currently teflon-coated and with an air of the Emperors New Clothes about him.
Regardless of political affiliation, it’s a tragedy there are so few genuine statesmen of any stripe out there, and the era of the spin-driven (Axlrod makes Campbell look amateurish) political class is a detriment to us all.
I’ve no doubt the Republicans will, eventually, find their own Obama just as the Tories found their own Blair. I’m just not viewing that as a positive for anyone.
“..well, the least you can say for the wing-nuts (sorry, is that too much of an americanism, too?) like you is that you’re nothing if not predictable…”
Where do you pick up your colloquialisms? Hufington Post? Daily Kos?
“..linking to Fox News in support of your case?..”
Did they falsify the report then? Did the propmpter not break? Do tell…
“..allow me point you at the last but one Republican leadership hopeful: Bobbbby JIN-dalllll!. “
Yes, what about him? Unlikely to be in the running for pretty much the same reason as Palin, as I outlined above.
Oh, and ‘Thinkprogress: the most inappropriately named blog ever’? Discuss….
So far Obama has done amazing thigs for science in the US after Bush dismissed his scientific advisor and stopped stem cell research. Obama has turned that wround by appointing some of the top scientists to top positions (rather than people who agree with his politics as Bush did) and he has started to make America Green! That will be a long struggle but the man is making progress. And his agreements over nuclear weapons with Russia are legendary.
I don’t care if he is not a great public speaker without a prompter it is actions by which he should be judged!
I love reading Republican “blogs” for pure schadenfreude. The stench of outrage, victimhood & pure whinging entitlement makes me laugh my head off every time.
They just can’t get it into their heads that America rejects their ideology.
“Obama has turned that wround by appointing some of the top scientists to top positions…”
Like this charming fellow?
“They just can’t get it into their heads that America rejects their ideology. “
*sigh*
2008 election results:
Obama – 69,456,897 McCain – 59,934,814
Not exactly a landslide for the Messiah. Or a ‘rejection’ of the Republicans, though they fielded an exceptionally poor candidate who many considered a RINO…
I refer to the bombing of Republicans in the polls subsequent to the election. These polls, gloating about any possible setbacks for Obama, all show GOP ratings even worse.
I tell you what. The right are wishing they’d never dismissed “community organisers” so lightly now. Because they’re being forced to take his political skills, learnt in Chicago, a bit more seriously.
@Candid
Whilst I agree that reducing nuclear arms is a Good Thing in the long-term, I’m a tad concerned about the short-term. Given Russia’s economic woes, it’s general disgruntlement over the Bush administrations failure to treat it as an equal, its current slide back towards anti-westernism and Putin/Medvedev’s contentment to roll into ex-Soviet states when they feel like flexing their muscles and giving the Russians something to distract from their day-to-day lives, I’m unsure as to the wisdom on freeing up its nuclear budget so it can spend away on conventional weaponry.
The Bear’s claws are currently rotten and weak, giving it the chance to heal them so it can use them effectively once more would seem to be an act that can only lead to more war rather than less.
@asquith
Do we really want the GOP to play the Chicago way?
“You wanna know how you do it? Here’s how, they pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way!”
“Do we really want the GOP to play the Chicago way?”
Well, indeed! They should never forget which side has all the guns…
This article focuses on one side of the coin – the internal Republican dynamics and what face that portrays to the American people. But the other side is (and this is a question, not a comment) does the ‘floating vote’ actually want to listen? As with post-1997 here, will it take a fair amount of time (2012/13/14?) for the aura of the ‘new’ to fade before any arguments will actually be listened to by the public?