Lincoln's Prophecy for the GOP
By Harold Meyerson
WashPost
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Sen. Charles Grassley was grumping as usual on MSNBC on Monday morning ("the government is a predator, not a competitor") when journalist Chuck Todd interrupted his rap with a serious question. If the Senate Finance Committee's bipartisan Gang of Six comes up with a compromise that you think is a good deal, Todd asked Grassley, "are you willing to be one of just three or four Republicans" to support that deal?
No, Grassley answered immediately. "It isn't a good deal if I can't sell my product to more Republicans. We have to find a broad base of support within the Republican Party."
Why, then, does Max Baucus, the committee's Democratic chairman, persist in the charade of bipartisan negotiations with Grassley? Does he -- does anybody -- really believe that a Republican Party so deeply invested in defeating President Obama's campaign for health-care reform is open to a scaled-down version that Obama can still claim as a victory? On Tuesday, the Republican Senate whip, Jon Kyl of Arizona, called Democrat Kent Conrad's proposal for cooperatives in lieu of a public option "a Trojan horse" for a government takeover of health care. Hard to find the green shoots of compromise in that response.
Hard to believe, in fact, that they'll ever be found, given the increasing rigidity, insularity and extremism of today's Republican Party. The problem is that the GOP is no longer a truly national party in its geographical composition or its ideological breadth. Throughout U.S. history, our two major political parties have usually contained multitudes and contradicted themselves accordingly. For much of the 20th century, the Democrats were the party of the white South, the immigrant north and labor unions. The Republicans were the party of Wall Street bankers, Main Street merchants, professionals and Sun Belt cowboys.
But today's Palinoidal Republicans have lost most of the professionals, much of Wall Street and an increasing chunk of suburbia. What they can claim is the allegiance of the white South and the almost entirely white, non-urban parts of the Mountain West. Of the 40 Republican members of the Senate, fully half -- 20 -- come from the old Confederacy, the Civil War border states where slavery was legal or Oklahoma, which politically is an extension of Texas without Texas's racial minorities. Ten others come from the Mountain West. The rest of the nation -- that is, of course, most of the nation -- has become an ever-smaller share of Republican ranks.
(Continued here.)
WashPost
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Sen. Charles Grassley was grumping as usual on MSNBC on Monday morning ("the government is a predator, not a competitor") when journalist Chuck Todd interrupted his rap with a serious question. If the Senate Finance Committee's bipartisan Gang of Six comes up with a compromise that you think is a good deal, Todd asked Grassley, "are you willing to be one of just three or four Republicans" to support that deal?
No, Grassley answered immediately. "It isn't a good deal if I can't sell my product to more Republicans. We have to find a broad base of support within the Republican Party."
Why, then, does Max Baucus, the committee's Democratic chairman, persist in the charade of bipartisan negotiations with Grassley? Does he -- does anybody -- really believe that a Republican Party so deeply invested in defeating President Obama's campaign for health-care reform is open to a scaled-down version that Obama can still claim as a victory? On Tuesday, the Republican Senate whip, Jon Kyl of Arizona, called Democrat Kent Conrad's proposal for cooperatives in lieu of a public option "a Trojan horse" for a government takeover of health care. Hard to find the green shoots of compromise in that response.
Hard to believe, in fact, that they'll ever be found, given the increasing rigidity, insularity and extremism of today's Republican Party. The problem is that the GOP is no longer a truly national party in its geographical composition or its ideological breadth. Throughout U.S. history, our two major political parties have usually contained multitudes and contradicted themselves accordingly. For much of the 20th century, the Democrats were the party of the white South, the immigrant north and labor unions. The Republicans were the party of Wall Street bankers, Main Street merchants, professionals and Sun Belt cowboys.
But today's Palinoidal Republicans have lost most of the professionals, much of Wall Street and an increasing chunk of suburbia. What they can claim is the allegiance of the white South and the almost entirely white, non-urban parts of the Mountain West. Of the 40 Republican members of the Senate, fully half -- 20 -- come from the old Confederacy, the Civil War border states where slavery was legal or Oklahoma, which politically is an extension of Texas without Texas's racial minorities. Ten others come from the Mountain West. The rest of the nation -- that is, of course, most of the nation -- has become an ever-smaller share of Republican ranks.
(Continued here.)
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