On Tuesday, Atrios gave me a copy of Bill Bradley’s new book, The New American Story. I’ve been perusing it, and it is excellent. He has a chapter called Why Republicans Can’t in which he lays out the development of the modern Republican Party. It’s a blistering critique. I found his section on The Rise of Republican Factions to be the most interesting.
By 1988 the Republican Party was composed of a dozen factions: the corporatists, the anticommunists, the realists, the messianists, the fundamentalists, the Main Streeters, the libertarians, the subsidists, the liberals, the racemongers, the crime busters, and the supply siders.
Bradley then goes on the define these groups. They are pretty easy to identify by their names, but he puts the neo-conservatives in the ‘messianists’ category, stating, “They took John Withrop’s noble description of Puritan New England as “a city upon a hill” and turned it into a form of self-conscious chauvinism derived from a sense of America’s divine mission to liberate the world for democracy.” Sounds like a decent description of Paul Wolfowitz to me.
In any case, Bradley goes on to make a fascinating point.
In the 1990’s, Bill Clinton, in an act of political genius, defanged nearly the whole Republican coalition by co-opting issues they had used against Democrats. He trumped the Main Streeters by running a budget surplus, the racemongers by instituting welfare reform, the crime busters by increasing aid to local police and supporting the death penalty, the realists by holding defense spending steady, the messianists by going into Kosovo, the libertarians by opposing government interference with abortion rights, the subsidists by leaving their sweetheart deals intact, the liberals by asking them to join him in a streamlined government constituted to solve problems, and the corporatists by pushing free trade and allowing an unprecedented consolidation of corporate power through massive mergers and acquisitions. Republicans- with the exception of the now ascendant fundamentalists and supply-siders- had little to criticize, because Clinton was doing what they had long advocated, but in his own way.
Many progressives agree with Michael Moore that Bill Clinton was the best Republican president we ever had. It’s hard to see Bill Clinton as a Republican, though, because his very mastery of the political scene served to change what it meant to be a Republican. Liberals were the first to go, and now are virtually extinct. Libertarians like Bob Barr and Ron Paul are in the process of leaving now. But, Karl Rove worked with what he had. And that was an energized fundamentalist base, coupled with eager corporatists and subsidists. As for the rest…the Main Streeters, racemongers, and crimebusters? They all came along for the Global War on Terror ride.
But even this coalition is crumbling. The realists left along with Colin Powell. The Main Streeters hate the deficit spending and ineffectual government. The racemongers hate the President’s immigration policy. Bush is left with the fundamentalists and the diehard subsidists and corporatists. That is what this administration is: a religiously fanatical anti-science, patriarchal machine that doles out billions in no-bid contracts and dubious subsidies, and uses constant fear to hold onto a 30% approval rating.
As Bradley says:
A party is shaped by a president, and President Bush appears only to react to events. September 11 isn’t the only example. Planning is an integrative task, and he’s not good at it.
The Republican Party is essentially dead for the next generation. And it is mostly the fault of one man- George W. Bush. His governing philosophy exposed the fraud at the core of conservative thinking. His lack of planning and his incompetence have left the GOP without an heir apparent and without a popular mission.
In the 1990’s Republicanism was adrift without anticommunism to hold its factions together. On 9/11 it found a replacement in anti-terrorism, but they screwed up that cash-cow by going into Iraq.
The near term future of the Republican Party is based almost entirely on selling fear. This is particularly true because the major Republican candidates for office don’t fit into any other mold. McCain is too tough on subsidists and fundamentalists. Guiliani needs to compensate for his liberalism, and Romney has his Mormon problem.
They will sell us permawar or death. It’s all they can do. Bill Bradley has better ideas. Buy his book.
