How My Party Lost Its Way

In this cycle, many Republicans seem led to support their candidate by process of elimination—"I guess I could live with X." At the same time, many Republicans seem led to oppose candidates passionately—"The nomination of X would end Western civilization." This is a factionalism of Bolshevik fervor, and it is a bad sign. Parties that prefer purity to victory—à la Goldwater and McGovern—usually lose. At this moment, Republicans look like the party that wants to lose the most.

The problems run deeper than the temper of party activists. The Republican coalition of the 1980s was built around a series of issues—reducing high marginal tax rates, reforming welfare, fighting crime. The success of this agenda has made it less compelling. Tax rates have been dramatically reduced, leading to astounding economic growth. Rates of violent and property crime have plummeted in the last decade. Welfare caseloads have fallen by 60 percent. Public policy success always involves a political curse—issues that were once powerful became less urgent and relevant.

The Republican search for new issues to replace the old has been less than successful. For a while, some thought tough restrictions on immigration were the key. But like an unstable compound, this issue has a tendency to explode and burn those who handle it roughly. Especially on the presidential level, there are few winning strategies that involve the alienation of Hispanic voters.

Though all Republicans share a belief in federalism and limited government, a simplistic, exclusive emphasis on those themes serves only to confirm the worst Republican stereotypes. What does it profit Fred Thompson to criticize President Bush's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, arguing that we should focus on "problems here"? What is the benefit when candidates turn against the No Child Left Behind Act, which has succeeded in improving minority test scores? Why attack a Medicare prescription drug care plan that has been implemented smoothly and is wildly popular among the elderly? In all these cases, why not defend achievements instead of abandoning compelling issues?

The old priorities of the Republican coalition are being replaced—not yet totally, but swiftly—by new issues such as energy, the environment, health care and the effects of global competition on American workers. Some of the candidates have fragments of a new message—Huckabee's economic populism, McCain's support for a cap-and-trade system to limit carbon emissions, Romney's Massachusetts health-care approach. But, for the most part, this is unfamiliar territory for Republicans. National security issues, of course, could return in a moment, with a vengeance. But in the long term, Republicans will need to find compelling conservative and free-market policies that appeal to the concerns of young people, Hispanics and an anxious middle class. This will involve not only reassembling a coalition, but constructing a new one.

It has been a quick, downward path from Kerry's concession call to the present discontents of the Republican Party. But two caveats need to be kept in mind. First, political recoveries can be as sudden as political declines. And second, there is, perhaps, one large American political figure who could cause depressed, fractious Republicans to bind their wounds, downplay their divisions, renew their purpose, and join hands in blissful unity at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Republican convention.

And that figure is Hillary Clinton.

© 2008