HARD RIGHT TURN: How The GOP Destroyed Its Moderates

Lakhota · Oct 14, 2012

By Jonathan Chait

Rule And Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, from Eisenhower to the Tea Party.

MITT ROMNEY HAS BEEN running for president as the Republican nominee, de facto or de jure, for eight months now, and the grand historical joke of it has not yet worn off. A party that has set itself to frantically, fanatically expunge its moderates, quasi-moderates, suspected moderates, and fellow travelers of moderates chose as its standard bearer the lineal heir, biographically and genealogically, to its moderate tradition. It entrusted its holy crusade to repeal Barack Obamas hated health-care law to the man who had inspired it and run, four years before, promising to do the same for the rest of America. The man and his historical moment could not be more incongruous. It was as if the Mongol tribes of the thirteenth century, setting out to pillage their way across the Asian steppe, had somehow chosen Mahatma Gandhi as their supreme khan.

Romneys capture of the nomination required an incredible confluence of good fortune. Any one of several RepublicansJeb Bush, Chris Christie, Paul Ryancould have outflanked Romney in both grassroots enthusiasm and establishment support but chose not to run. The one candidate with the standing and financial reach to challenge him who did grasp for the prize, Rick Perry, performed his duties with such comic, stammering ineptitude that his final oops-de-grace by that point was not even startling. What remained to challenge Romney was a gaggle of third-raters lacking the money or the rudimentary organization even to get their name on the ballot everywhere. Still, running even against the likes of Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum (which is to say, running essentially unopposed), Romney still trudged laboriously to victory after endless weeks.

But there is another way to make at least some sense of the Romney nomination.

IT HAS TO DO WITH the strange and sad fate of Republican moderation. After all, moderates, or at least relative moderates, do continue to exist in the Republican Party. They merely do not exercise power in any meaningful, open way. They provide off-the-record quotations to reporters, expressing unease over whichever radical turn the party has taken at any given moment. They can be found in Washington and elsewhere rolling their eyes at their colleagues. The odd figure with nothing left to losesay, a senator who has lost a primary challengemay even deliver a forceful assault on the partys uncompromising direction.

For the most part, though, Republican moderation is a kind of secret creed, a freemasonry of the right. It lacks institutions that might legitimize it, or even a language to express itself. And since conservatism is the only acceptable ideology, the party has no open arguments with itself. Thus the debate in the Republican Party is entirely between genuine ideological warriors and unwilling conscripts, with intraparty skirmishes generally taking the form of hunts for secret heresies.

In this sense, Romneys capture of the nomination is perfectly emblematic of the state of the party. Conservative activists spent months resisting Romney, sometimes furiously, despite the fact that he was defending no positions that they disagreed with. Across the entire ideological spectrumin social, economic, and foreign policyRomney stood shoulder to shoulder with his partys reactionary wing. When Romney took on his hapless opponents, he assailed them from the right, as soft on immigration or anti-capitalist. The sole point of hesitation centered on conservatives suspicion that Romney did not actually believe what he was saying.

FIFTY YEARS AGO, the conservative movement, far from holding a monopoly on acceptable thought within the GOP, was merely one tribe vying for power within it, and not even the largest one. Geoffrey Kabaservices fine book tells the story of the slow extinction of the partys moderate and liberal wings. The conservative movement, he shows in often gruesome detail, took control of the party in large part due to an imbalance of passion. The rightists had strong and clearly defined principles and a willingness to fight for them, while the moderates lacked both. Meeting by meeting, caucus by caucus, the conservative minority wrested control of the party apparatus. Sometimes this happened through physical force or the threat thereof. (Anybody who recalls the Brooks Brothers riot during the 2000 election imbroglio in Florida, when a Republican mob shut down a vote recount in Dade County, will find many of Kabaservices scenes familiar.) More often, the conservatives won out by packing meetings, staying until everybody else was exhausted, and other classic methods of organized fanatics. The moderates lacked the ideological self-confidence to wage these fights with equal gusto, and battle by battle they lost ground until finally there was nowhere left to stand within the party.
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Much More: How The GOP Destroyed Its Moderates | The New Republic

Listening · Oct 14, 2012

Good bye and good ridance.

Who won the House in 2010, make it stronger in 2012 and possibly take back the senate ?

Ask Dick Lugar.

buckeye45_73 · Oct 14, 2012

Lakhota likes em "hard"

Annie · Oct 14, 2012

Gee, J. Chait as the 'voice of GOP?' I don't think so. I'm not a far right conservative on many of the social issues. I am one of those 'conservatives' that am voting against 'personal interests' according to the liberals, in fact.

He's got it so wrong, but again, that is his job as a 'journalist' carrying water for the DNC.

OKTexas · Oct 14, 2012

Yep, every person elected or appointed official takes an oath to support and defend the Constitution, not the government, not their party. When they start to moderate from that oath their wrong and in violation of the oath. The constitution was meant to restrain the federal government and any man that thinks they are exempt from those restraints does not belong in office, I don't give a crap what their well meaning intentions are, if you don't like the Constitution there are provisions in Article 5 to change it, but I'll be damned if I will endorse ignoring it, because I have taken that same oath.

Listening · Oct 14, 2012

If Obama wins re-election...he's a lame duck from day 1.

That's what we hire our representatives to do and as long as they keep doing it, they will stay hired.

Just ask DICK Lugar about that.

buckeye45_73 · Oct 14, 2012

Yeah and in the democrat party if you're not buttfucking another guy...they think you're "weird"

Erand7899 · Oct 14, 2012

The only ones who seem highly concerned about the rise of the right wing in the Republican party are liberal Democrats. Mostly, the hard left wing.

What is really weird, is that most of these left wingers consider themselves moderates. They don't have a clue as to what they really are.

The Republican party has not shifted far to the right, although it has turned right. The Democrat party has shifted so far left that the center right of the electorate is now considered, by them, to be hard right.

They sit near the left 20 yard line, and think it is the center of the field.

buckeye45_73 · Oct 14, 2012

Erand7899 said: ↑

The only ones who seem highly concerned about the rise of the right wing in the Republican party are liberal Democrats. Mostly, the hard left wing.

What is really weird, is that most of these left wingers consider themselves moderates. They don't have a clue as to what they really are.

The Republican party has not shifted far to the right, although it has turned right. The Democrat party has shifted so far left that the center right of the electorate is now considered, by them, to be hard right.

They sit near the left 20 yard line, and think it is the center of the field.
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yep they think abortion on demand, gay marriage are mainstream positions.....LOL

francoHFW · Oct 14, 2012

"No compromise, un-American Tea Party GOP" (TIME)

not to mention the disgraceful Pub Propaganda machine...

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HARD RIGHT TURN: How The GOP Destroyed Its Moderates

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