Reports of Republicans in Decline are Exaggerated

The Economist has published an opinion that passes for a pretty broad swath of the emerging CW on the state of the Republican Party:

"The Republican party lost the battle of ideas even more comprehensively than they lost the battle for educated votes, marching into the election armed with nothing more than slogans..."

"Republicanism's anti-intellectual turn is devastating for its future. The party's electoral success from 1980 onwards was driven by its ability to link brains with brawn. The conservative intelligentsia not only helped to craft a message that resonated with working-class Democrats, a message that emphasised entrepreneurialism, law and order, and American pride. It also provided the party with a sweeping policy agenda. The party's loss of brains leaves it rudderless, without a compelling agenda."

I like the criticism of their anti-intellectualism, but I also think that in its zeal to point out contemporary Republican shortcomings, it puts too kind a sheen on what the R's were doing in the 1980s. I would postulate that the last two election cycles are a matter of simple evolution. OK, so Bush is an idiot. But he's an idiot operating within the same damn firmament that Reagan and Bush 41 operated in. Some of Bush's failures are in fact the result of him being stoooopid (Katrina, for example). But most of the failure is a failure of conservatism as a governing philosophy, because most of what Bush did was straight out of the long-standing conservative playbook, only with Congressional majorities, and therefore a more potent version of the same conservative philosophy.

Conservatism's heyday was really enabled NOT by some high-minded, intellectually rigorous, philosophical triumph. Rather, it was the result of the southern strategy, the disastrous Carter administration and the easily attacked, bloated welfare state. In other words, conservatism never sold itself successfully. It just successfully attacked what was then taken as liberalism, thereby establishing the filter through which we have seen our politics for nearly 30 years. Has conservatism really ossified, or has its weaponry been neutralized by a liberalism that has adapted to its own political weaknesses? Obama seems to me to be the embodiment of liberalism with antibodies. How? Because the attack machine doesn't work on him.

The appeal of Republicanism is negativity--ridicule, scandal, investigation, character attacks, religious divisiveness, and anti-intellectualism. For a party that likes to deride liberals as overly emotional wussies, their appeals are entirely emotional, and based on winning elections by making the Democrat completely unacceptable in character. Democrats have a natural advantage on almost every issue (see my poll results table from a few days ago), but Republican character attacks are specifically designed to prevent the Democrat from ever really being heard.

That has been the Republican formula for victory since the 1960s, and in that sense, they have not changed one bit, whether they have won or lost. Republicanism is not aspirational, it is deconstructive. They couldn't break down Obama, so they lost. They broke down Kerry and Gore, so they won. They couldn't break down Clinton, so they lost. The difference with Clinton and Obama though, is their method of inoculating themselves against the Republican attack machine. Clinton neutralized them through triangulation and sometimes even capitulation. He surrendered the premises of Republican attacks and allowed them to frame American politics. He became the most skilled operator within a Republicanized landscape, which enabled him to win. Obama inoculated himself very differently. He challenged the entire framework of our politics, in his person, his approach to politics, and most importantly, his actual policies. He refused to "make a big election about small things", thus challenging the entire Republican narrative of the past 40 years. They couldn't break him down, so they lost. They couldn't deconstruct him and caricature him, so they lost. It wasn't the economy, it wasn't Iraq, it wasn't even Palin. These things only served to make people a little more willing to listen to Obama. But the win/lose is determined by whether the Republican succeeds in destroying the Democratic candidate's character. Every presidential election turns on that. Most state elections turn on that too.

That's the true barometer here. And that is why, if Obama governs successfully, this really could be realigning. The negativity stuff is weakened most by political and policy achievement. How will character attacks work if the Democrats are delivering real results? The question answers itself. They won't.

However, if the Democrats blow the enormous opportunity now in front of them, Republican attacks will be fierce, relentless, and highly potent, and we'll be right back in the mid-1990s. We'll hear about how liberals can't govern, that they can't protect the country, just want to tax and spend, and have failed to address the economy properly because they are latte-swilling effete snobs in Birkenstocks. It is maddeningly effective when it works.

But the real Change We Can Believe In is NOT about cabinet appointments. It's not about Joe Lieberman. It's not about the whole Clinton soap opera that we are unfortunately being treated to right now. It's about governing successfully over the next two years. There can be no disarray, no pettiness, no turf wars, none of the usual bullshit that Democrats get caught up in, as they did in 1993-1994. If Democrats are successful for the next two years, they will break the Republican Party as it currently exists, which will force the real conservatives to become far more intellectually rigorous and honest, and will split them from the paranoid Christian Righties and anti-government types, who will become electoral poison. If the Democrats are not successful, then Obama's historical importance becomes more symbolic and less substantive, and then we are right back in 1994.

I'll say it again. Super Bowl time, guys.