The pitfalls of shrinkage
Arlen Specter and the shrinking GOP
The pitfalls of shrinkage
Dick Polman, Inquirer National Political Columnist
My Sunday column, the revised and expanded director's cut:
Once upon a time, long before the GOP plummeted to its current status as the Southern and Rural Older White Guy Party, it actually was home to a healthy subspecies known as the Republican moderate.
These moderates roamed the land, cutting deals with Democrats, winning statewide elections, and broadening the GOP’s appeal. Pennsylvania alone was fertile turf for people like William Scranton, Richard Schweiker, John Heinz, Hugh Scott, and Arlen Specter. But now, of course, that era is over. Specter has quit the party one step ahead of his own extinction – yet another sign that the Republicans, in their self-defeating quest for ideological purity, have ceased to be a national party.
By the way, I’m hardly alone in saying that the GOP, in its current shrinking iteration, is no longer a national party. Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn basically confirmed it the other day when he asserted that he and his fellow Republicans fully intend "to regain our status as a national party." But perhaps this new assessment of the GOP said it best:
"The (GOP’s conservatives) can’t always be kicking people out…A great party cannot live by constantly subtracting, by removing or shunning those who are not faithful to every aspect of its beliefs...Room should be made for (the moderates). Especially in those cases when Republican incumbents and candidates are attempting to succeed in increasingly liberal states, a certain practical sympathy is in order. In the party now, there is too much ferocity, and bloody-mindedness...'Shrink to win': I’ve never heard of that as a political slogan."
So wrote Peggy Noonan, the Republican speechwriter for Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, in a Friday column for The Wall Street Journal.
Naturally, the conservative true-believers scoff at such warnings and declare themselves thrilled that Specter is gone ("good riddance"); they’ve somehow convinced themselves that the loss of yet another Republican Senate seat constitutes a great victory. It’s delusional. The more the party shrinks, the happier they seem. In Pennsylvania, more than 200,000 mostly moderate Republican voters have quit the party over the past several years, dumping their registrations, yet somehow the conservatives, in their "ferocity," see this as cause for celebration. I marvel at their ability to resolutely march through the smoking wreckage, all the while insisting that it smells like roses.
Let us briefly sift the ashes. The party right now has no coherent message, aside from "Do Not Offend Rush Limbaugh." Its messengers are basically conservatives who sing to the choir. It has virtually zilch appeal beyond its base; as evidenced by the ’08 election and every subsequent poll, the party is alienating suburbanites, independents, Latinos (the fastest-growing cohort in the electorate), and people under age 30 (the voters who will dominate for the next half century). And the geography is worse.
A respected non-partisan group, the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, summed it up perfectly in its winter report: "The GOP is out of contention in New England and the West. It is getting out of contention in the mid-Atlantic states and the industrial Midwest. Its bases of former support in the farm Midwest, mountain states, and the South, are eroding.
"The only places where the GOP enjoys a durable advantage are Idaho, Utah, Kansas, Nebraska, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Oklahoma, and Texas. And with the growth of the Latino population, Texas will likely be at least a toss-up state within the next decade." (Actually, pollsters report that 48 percent of Texas Republicans are so angry with President Obama that they want their state to secede from the union.)
Anyway, the GOP’s "durable advantage" has been reduced to 10 red states. A new national poll, conducted by Republican pollster Bill McInturff and Democratic pollster Peter Hart, reports that only 20 percent of Americans identify themselves as Republicans, the lowest figure in decades. Those holdouts – nationally, and, as Specter discovered, in Pennsylvania - tend to be those who will tolerate no detours from conservative orthodoxy, nor tolerate kind words for Obama.
Specter has left behind a narrowcasted party that would rather marinate in its anger and paranoia than win elections in states outside the heartland and the Old Confederacy. How else to explain the burgeoning popularity of Glenn Beck, the Fox News host, who has been warning of a fascist plot hatched by Democrats? (I’m not kidding. Beck says there’s a fascist symbol on the back of the dime in your pocket – a bundle of rods – and points out that a Democratic president, Woodrow Wilson, approved that artwork in 1916.)
Fortunately, there are still some reality-based Republicans. Kristen Soltis, the research director at a top GOP polling firm, warned the other day that her party "is facing changing demographic forces that present a challenge to its long term growth." Translation: Unless the party wakes up and diversifies, it is toast.
For starters, Soltis said that if the GOP is to have any chance of connecting with younger voters, it "must shed its image as the party of 'old white guys.'" Indeed, the party’s current deficit among the young is dire. In the ’08 presidential election, the Republicans lost the under-30 voters by an unprecedented 34 percentage points. (Reagan, in his landslide ’84 victory, won the under-30s by 19 points.) And the ’08 results can’t be simply attributed to Obama’s personal appeal; farther down the ballot, House Democratic candidates won the under-30s by 29 points.
Why were the young so decisive for the Democrats in 2008? Because they grew up during the incompetent tenure of George W. Bush, and witnessed a needless war that was founded on institutional deception. And because they apparently can’t warm to a party that appears intolerant and exclusionary.
The schism on gay marriage says it all. Whereas a landslide majority of under-30s see the concept as no big deal, the Republican party – hostage, more than ever, to its conservative base – equates it with the downfall of civilization. Unless the party modernizes on that issue, its prospects of wooing the next generation of voters are bleak – which is why Steve Schmidt, who ran John McCain’s ’08 campaign, is now urging his party to lay down an important future marker by endorsing gay marriage.
To woo the young, the GOP could also use some new voices; a recent Pew poll reports that 75 percent of all Republicans, regardless of age, have no idea who the leader of their party is. Lately, the two most prominent spokesmen have been Newt Gingrich and Dick Cheney, which should tell you plenty. Gingrich peaked in November 1998, when he was compelled to quit as House Speaker after the GOP suffered losses in the midterm elections (Gingrich had tried to make a campaign issue out of President Clinton’s sex scandal, but the effort backfired).
And one can only imagine how young voters view Cheney, who keeps resurfacing to defend "enhanced interrogation," thereby keeping the party firmly rooted in yesterday when it clearly would prefer to divorce itself from the Bush tenure once and for all. As Noonan lamented in her column, today’s young voters "seem embarrassed to be associated" with the GOP.
History does teach us that party fortunes fluctuate over time, so I assume the GOP will somehow find its way back. That’s the natural order of things. But for now, the party reminds me of the college marching band that went astray during the climax of the film Animal House; strutting blindly down a dead-end alley, the musicians collided with a brick wall, and even as they crumpled against each other and tumbled to the cement, they kept on playing the same old programmatic music.
Specter found a way out of that alley. Who can blame him? As Noonan put it, "It is fine to dismiss Mr. Specter as an opportunist, but opportunists tell you something: which side is winning."
Yeah, we should all listen to Steve Schmidt, because he did such a wonderful job running the McCain campaign. That wasn't a bumbling mess of a campaign at all. Oh, and McCain was a moderate. If it is so important that republicans be moderate, how come he got hammered in the election? You act like conservatism is dead, but honestly, democrats have done well in 2 major elections, mostly related to the unpopularity of Bush, which though he did have some failures, his unpopularity is the result of 8 years of constant attacks by the liberal media. This does not indicate an end to conservatism, it most likely indicates a temporary shift to the left. Many liberals were exclaiming the end of conservatism in the post Nixon period, and we all saw how that ended up. People will drift back to the right when their taxes go up and things generally get worse.— pete317- An Inquirer columnist calling Republicans irrelevant is like the pot calling the kettle black.— jwad56
Comment removed.- Comment removed.
- Dr Xi. Define "free lunch" and "limited government". These words are all nice and symbolic, and I'm sure they pump you and your friends up big time, but what are they really? Bush's track record shows expanding government and free lunches for corporate rockstars. Therefore, I only can imagine that you must be talking about a different party than today's GOP, which is the point Polman is trying to make - namely, this party has no idea what it is doing. As I have said before, if you want to excite young people, you have to rev up the "libertarian" bus, which is what you guys are trying to do, but the bus looks more like a jalopy at this point.— puttinonthefoil
- Pete--the idea that Bush would have been a popular president if it hadn't been for constant attacks by the liberal media strikes me as a major escape from reality. Maybe if Obama crashes and burns we can blame it on Fox News.— liberal
- It is comical reading the posts by the GOP supporters. Specter is a loss for the GOP and a gain for the Democrats. All this revision about the past 2 election losses shows just how little of a message the GOP has. Perhaps if the GOP starts doing the best for the country then doing the best for the party they will truely have a chance. I for one cannot wait for the Santorum race do-over with Toomey. Results will be the same - ANOTHER GOP LOSS !— ModerateMarge
- Pete, McCain ran away from most of his moderate positions in the primaries and the runup to the election. The Palin pick to mollify conservatives along with the tanking economy sealed his fate.— PA_Dutch
- Comrade, the problem with the gop of the past 10+ years is that it had no grasp of limited government and expanded and spent (and all spending should be included: military, homeland security, medicare, etc) like a drunken sailor. So, when the gop tries to preach small govt and low spending now, it just comes off as such a crock that no one believes them. I would love if the gop would return to its roots, but it's just so beholden to the the religious right and neocon wings of the party that most of us will not return to the party in its current state. The party would be much wiser to run a Goldwater-esque platform: although he lost wildly in his presidential run, most (not all) of his ideas are much more attractive to people now.— donde
- What member of the GOP in Congress can credibly claim to be conservative? After doubling the national debt & trashing the dollar the GOP may be many things but conservative is not one of them. Other than Ron Paul most of them are closer to Obama than Ronald Reagan. Santorum didn't lose because he was conservative but because he abandoned conservatism & voted with W 97% of the time. Santorum became corrupt. He cared more about power than principles. The same goes for the unholy trinity of Fox, Limbaugh, & Rove. The last thing they are is conservative.— Rob Baker
- Where's Jonathan Krohn when you need him? If the Repub's actually cling to the 4 principles of Conservatism (Respect for the Constitution, Respect for Life, Less Government, Personal Responsibility), then their tent will likely expand and the pendulum of party fortunes will swing back to the GOP. In the meantime, this Conservative Democrat (who opposes gay marriage and abortion - see how that works? I'm registered with the Dem's, but not in accord on EVERY issue) will enjoy watching the show as the haters who drive the Repub's wagon jump from the ledge of relevance into the abyss of myopia. ••• http://www.defineconservatism.com/— Phrossty
- When I first read Polman's title, I thought he was talking about the Inky!— CD75
- Why is the left obessed with inappropriate innuendo? Very Classy. See also Anderson Cooper's and Rachael Maddow's obssession with tea. Is the leftist media all strange, or just some of them?— CD75
- If you want to know why the Republican party is less popular than gonorrhea, all you have to do is read some of the anti-Obama posts here. The remaining Republicans know how irrelevant (irrelephant?) they are, all they can do is carp and complain and namecall and make stuff up-- just like their big brothers on Fox. Guys like CD75 and his alter-ego Xi have no ideas that haven't been discredited, so they're stuck with their ungrammatical squeaks about Obama being a socialist-fascist-Nazi-hippy and their desperate hope that he screws up in some way that they can inflate and lie about enough to win an election. I don't think it's going to happen; Obama is too smart and too shrewd and has the ability to do amazingly practical and cynical stuff and make it look like idealism. The Republicans are going to do the only thing they know how to do, which is lie and embrace their base; their base is going to get crazier and crazier, and my hope and expectation is that, at 54, not only will I never live to see another Republican president or majority in either house of Congress, but that my daughter might not either. My only regret, and I'm not proud of this, is that the reforms that Obama is initiating are going to benefit everybody-- guys like CD75 are going to have their lives improved by better health care and credit card reforms and all the rest, even though they'll never stop griping about it until the day they start saying it was a Republican idea.— Irritated Prof
- 1939-2009. Hillary testified on Friday that she is prepared to give North Korea millions of dollars if they resume 6 party talks. This is called appeasement. Yea, that works. Also, why should we give money to North Korea when little kids in America do not have enough to eat? A very stange liberal logic. P.S. The White House announced (after hours of course on Friday) that North Korea may ahve a a-bomb. Does the leftist media care, nope. They would rather bash repubs then focus on news.— CD75
Cited by the Columbia Journalism Review as one of the nation's top political reporters, and lauded by the ABC News political website as "one of the finest political journalists of his generation," Dick Polman is a national political columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer. He is on the full-time faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, as "writer in residence." Dick has been a frequent guest on C-Span, MSNBC, CNN, NPR and the BBC. He covered the 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004 presidential campaigns.
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