A Case for Republican Secession (From Itself)
As a country with a rather horrific civil war in its past, its no easy to thing to bat around a concept like secession. It's filled with evil reminders of an unjust past that sought, amongst other things, to preserve slavery. And yet, sometimes the body from which a political party springs is so filled with bile and corruption that its healthiest components should seek to go their own way. A case in point is today's Republican Party.
This is supposed to be the party of Lincoln, but its two loudest voices are those of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. At worst, these gentlemen are unrepentant racists; at best they are crass, self-serving race-baiters. Under either circumstance, they have become the 'credible' voices of leadership in a party that has denuded itself of anything approaching centrism, rationalism or moderation.
The Republicans are also supposed to be the party of strong, conservative family values. And yet, this same party insists on standing by Governor Mark Sanford, an adulterer who almost certainly broke state law by letting the state fund trips to visit his mistress. He only refunded the money after getting caught. And while the governor's personal life is really none of my business or anyone else's but his family's, he has certainly behaved like an ass ever since. In doing so, he has robbed his state of credible leadership in a time of crisis. Refusal to resign has tangibly hurt the people of South Carolina. Despite this, Senator Lindsey Graham, as recently as today, defending Sanford just today.
Finally, the Republicans are also supposed to be the party of fiscal conservatism. That's why they don't want to lower the carbon footprint, reform the health care system, overhaul the financial system or invest in American education. And yet, these same people are all too happy to invest in Iraq and Afghanistan, the cost of which dwarfs anything that the current president is proposing to save the country. John Boehner seems to positively relish the idea of sending 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan. Apparently, he believes that supporting the corrupt government will allow us to stabilize the country, defeat Al Qaeda and quell the violence in Pakistan. (Representative Boehner apparently isn't a big fan of reading military history.)
In the midst of all this hypocrisy and nihilism, the ideals of responsible limited government, practical fiscal conservatism, and progressive values (of the sort embodied by Lincoln) are nowhere to be seen. That why I suggest that all the sound thinking, sane Republicans consider seceding from the GOP in favor of a new party, maybe the New Republicans.
To make this work, sane Republicans simply need to find themselves new and credible leadership capable of espousing ideas that rational conservatives can embrace. Liberal that I am, I nevertheless recognize that there are many smart, thoughtful political conservatives who are deserving of credible representation in government. Moreover, the country needs all kinds of smart ideas from across the political spectrum. It's hard for that to be possible when Rush Limbaugh is your mouthpiece.
So secede, regroup and then when you're finished, sue the puny rump of what's left of today's Republican party for your name back. This way, almost everybody wins.
Follow Michael B. Laskoff on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mlaskoff
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Thanks for saying so MBL-
What has become clear is that modern Republicans are not conservative. And that's a shame because we need the conservative voice in the national dialogue (to reign in our enthuasiasms, if nothing else) but the modern Republican party has moved so far to the right that it's edging on outright fascism (and I mean that in it's full technical sense), so far that a moderate (if not centre-right) pol like Obama appears communist to them and their leaders (Beck, Limbaugh) are ravingly insane.
I think the Republican party is going to have to split. Leave the Republican name to the assorted racists, Birthers, Birchers, cranks, corporate lackeys and loons that make up the Tea Party crowd and let the sensible moderates (of whom, there must still be some) split and create a centre-right party of their own, perhaps merging with the DLC Democrats in the process.
Political parties are not necessarily forever. You’d be hard pressed to find a Whig or a Federalist today. I perceive of both the Democrats and Republicans being composed of two, rather fuzzily distinct, wings – one much larger than the other. The Democrats have a larger Progressive wing and a smaller Blue Dog wing. The Republicans have a smaller Rational wing and a larger Neo-Conservative wing (also known as the “wing-nuts”). I see the Blue Dogs and the Rational Republicans as closer in many ways than either is to the core of the larger wing of their respective parties.
I agree that a realignment is in order and I could easily see a center-right party emerging from a coalition of a core of Blue Dogs and Republicans such as Olympia Snowe, Joseph Cao, and Arnold Schwarzenegger – to give three examples from three levels of government and three regions of the county. They would immediately hold the balance of power in DC and would have a national presence.
This plan will only work if the liberals hold together over the next few election cycles. The far-right is fomenting division among the liberals even as we speak, and would be delighted to see US break up instead of them. Stick together, libs!!! The only way we will get this country to move farther to the left is to vote in more and more Dems!
The problem is, the coalition of Republicans that won 1980, and the defining structure of the Republicans since then, is an alliance between hard-core religious rightists and free-market/small government libertarian types. They have little in common, but they've supported one another's talking points without putting much thought into it.
But recently, they've begun to realize that many of their core tenets are working at cross-purposes: it is hard to reconcile "small government" with a religious right that wants to regulate birth, right to die (Terry Schiavo) and what people do in their bedrooms. The Christians in the movement want to use Federal power to regulate "morality", something that the Libertarians in the party don't like.
The Republican brand name will probably stay with the hard-core Christians; the pro-business Libertarians already have the Libertarian party to use as a lifeboat. The party of Lincoln will come to an ignominious end.
The party of Lincoln switched to the Democrats when LBJ championed and passed the Civil Rights Act,. The GOP chose to embrace southern anger by adopting the "southern strategy" under Nixon. That was the last time the old libertarian GOP was seen. The dea.thnail tolled when Reagan was elected. He rallied all the values voters and co-opted the libertarians in his party and irrevocably changed the GOP. He spent the country into near bankruptcy (until Bush 43 came along and dwarfed even Reagan's spending), started the march to dismantal New Deal Era poverty programs and generally put this country on the path to its enevitable economic collapse. The only answer is for the party to be completely dismanteled and reingeneered into a more rational minded opposition party. I'm not holding my breath though.
The new Republican party is called the neocon party, the party of ULTRA BIG GOVT. Govt so big that neocons want domestic phone calls tapped, US citizens held without due process, defecit spending so big by Bush that Bush outborrowed 200 years of presidents combined. Neocons are the fascist party who want BIG GOVT in charge of every single aspect of every liberals lives. The reason I say liberals only is because everyone knows that rights only apply to neocons and laws only apply to liberals. You can see this by the GOP hard-line on drug users, and the ultra-soft line on Limbaughs legendary hillbilly heroin addiction. You can also see this by liberal protesters being quiet with shirts on naming a dead soldier family member, while neocons bring assault rifles to townhalls with sings that threaten to "water the tree of liberty". Neocons hate spending less money on US health care saving tens of thousands of lives, because "nothing is free", while neocons support the war in Iraq which costs more than health care and killed over 4000 US citizens and refused to pay for the war opting for borrowing to fund the war instead. Borrowing to fund a war while reducing taxes is not patriotic.
Yes, there's a certain degree of hypocrisy here. We all know it, and yet it continue to "sell" to the American public. C'est la vie; c'est la guerre.
The GOP is far from dead. Yes, at the moment they've been abandoned by all but the cranks, bigots, and cretins, but that won't last. Soon enough, the governing party will become complacent, then arrogant, then corrupt. When that happens, the public will turn to the alternative, which is the Republican party.
No doubt. Power breeds complacence and usually corruption. That's why the certainty of orderly change is almost more important than ideology. (That's why I believe so strongly in term limits.) The question is how long do we all have to wait before something good happens.
Only if they moderate back toward the centre. Given the choice between corrupt but competent government (Dems) and government embodied by the ravingly insane (Repubs), I'd wager that the public will go for halfway logical government every time.
It's probably wiser to start a new, third party. Doubtless there are some sitting Republicans and some Blue Dogs who would join so they could begin with a faction in Congress possibly large enough to be tie-breakers. Neither the Dems or Repubs have divine standing as one of two parties that should govern the country. Leave the Republican party to the "core" that they are clinging to. The middle is a wide open field in which most of the voters in this country stand.
Are you sure... It seems to me like the middle is firmly filled by the Democrats, which seems to have been ossified into a hard-core center-left party. The Republicans, meanwhile, seems to have lost their center altogether. The gaps, it would seem are on the center-right and progressive left.
Perhaps, either way I think we are ready for a third party. If it is centrist I'm sure there are many of the Republican ilk would subscribe. They can't be comfortable in the neighborhood they're in now.
Could have been shortened, a little: "When the crazy people are running the asylum, its time to find a new place to hang out."
I'll keep that in mind. I hate being thought of as verbose.
Maybe really the problem is that the Republican party is essentially the party of big business, and that is still what motivates it? If I'm right (I'm not claiming expertise, just putting forth a possibility) about that, isn't it pretty much always going to be vulnerable to cynical "leadership"?
On an unrelated note, you mention that the Repub. party is supposed to be the party of strong conservative family values. If that's true, I don't know how such a concept is defined, and I *really* don't know why it should be part of how a country should be governed. (Talk about big government)
Wish on dudes. They said the same things about the Dems only a few short years ago.
Why? Let 'em drown!
The problem is that the moderate Republicans needed people stupid enough to vote against their own economic interest. That was the (ir)religious right who bought into the socially conservative act while getting sold on the idea that "the government don't work Jeb." Now that the inmates have taken over the nut house and are scaring away everyone to the left of the Goldwater Republican standard, it looks bleak for them. The middle of the road folks may not like electing anyone who appeals to the slack jawed gun toters.
The problem is repubs have a philosophy (if you want to call it that) which they can't live up to. Family values...teen pregnancy is highest among those religious rights, fiscal conservative...gw took a budget surplus and when he left not only was the economy is shambles, but the budget in deep red. What is a social conservative and why is that parleyed into a political philosophy??? Does that translate to moral superiority...better than others???
Here's the issue: people are afraid of change. Obama promises it, even if he doesn't always deliver. Republicans, on the other had, deny it's necessity, even in the face of reality. Voters who are compelled to exercise the franchise out of terror tend to pine for a mythical Ozzie & Harriet moment, which benefits Republicans.
What we need more of is a clear expression of reality-based optimism founded on progressive policies. Such things excite people to vote as a positive expression. We need to hope that the Obama administration can continue to elicit such behavior.
Waving a flag in one hand and a Bible in the other works wonders for the slackjawed. Don't underestimate it's ability to rally the lemmings over and over again.
"if fascism ever comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross"
If the Republican Party wants to do itself in, why should we stop them? We could still have a two party system. The Dems could split into Dems and a Proggresive Labor Party. RIP Republican Party.
Money will be served. If not by the Republicans then by the new "Republicans", or what ever they call themselves.
In this calculus, I'd probably be a Progressive and the Dems would be New Republicans. That's fine so long as it happens.
We'd finally get a Progressive Labor Party, and I could stop settling for "Repub-Lite" Dems?
Sign me up.
Nicely written.
It occurs to me though that if those handful of sane true conservatives aren't willing to speak out against the Limbaughs, et al, they're complicit in their own demise.
And even IF the GOP manages to get back in power any time soon, what will they have to do to appease their Limbaugh-Beck following voters? Take us back another hundred years? Promise a free cave for every wh ite man? Take back the vote from women and people of color?
Personally, I'm disgusted by their silence. If you believe something deeply, then for heaven's sake man up. Saying nothing is unforgivable.
40 acres and a mule...
I think that it's hard for the serious Republicans to compete with their own demagogues.
What would be best is to get Limbaugh & Beck elected to office so that people can understand that spewing venom and having to deliver something weightier than low quality entertainment are not the same thing.
Remember, recently high-profile conservatives who disagree with Rush have been run out on a rail. Remember when Michael Steele wrote Rush off as "just an entertainer" and was savaged by him on the radio show? Within 48 hours Steele was licking Rush's boots. General Colin Powell as well, was run out, but he had too much dignity to come back seeking approval.
Nihilism--thank you for using this word. I couldn't agree more.
You're welcome.
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