I don’t know if the Republican Party’s top strategists are focused on what’s happening to the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom or not, but the business community should be paying attention. The Tories were almost exterminated in the parliamentary elections for the European Union, winning only four seats in all of England, Scotland and Wales. A new YouGov poll of a potential UK parliamentary election shows the Tories pulling 19 percent, even with Labour and behind both the anti-Brexit Liberal Democrats (24 percent) and Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party (22 percent).
The Tories will have a harder time clawing back support than Labour because they’re still expected to deliver a Brexit deal, and they probably cannot accomplish that task. The business community is looking at a Conservative Party that can no longer represent them in a minimally acceptable way. The Tories will either crash out of the European Union with no deal (as the Brexit Party demands) or they’ll cede their position as a major party. The Labour Party can adjust to the surge for the Liberal Democrats by adopting a more coherent and consistent Remain position.
In America, the Republican Party has basically been taken over by a Brexit-type mentality, and the president’s decision to ramp up tariffs on Mexican goods is going to cause the same kind of economic chaos and hardship as a No-Deal Brexit will cause for the United Kingdom.
If you think of the Republican Party as a vehicle that can carry any kind of passengers, it’s careening down the road picking up white nationalists and evangelicals while tossing out business leaders. Unlike in the UK, where the Brexit Party is threatening to supplant the Conservatives, in America the Republican Party is being transformed into the Brexit Party. Neither outcome is any good for business interests, but the American version can leave them homeless.
I doubt that Charlie Cook was really thinking along these lines when he noted that Trump has abandoned the center and given the Democrats an opening to seize the moderate vote. I think he’s suggesting that the left can screw things up by looking this gift horse in the mouth and abandoning the center themselves. But it remains true that many business leaders will conclude that their interests cannot be served by giving Trump another four years to consolidate his hold over the GOP. If given a choice between Trump and Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders, they may look to form a third party. In general, however, they will see a Democratic president as less of a risk than the possible permanent loss of a natural political home.
The Republican Party is not in the same dire straits as the Tories because it’s much harder in America for third parties to win seats or elect national leaders. The GOP is absorbing the Brexiteers rather than losing out to them. But it’s a distinction without much difference for the big business community. Their party is no longer their party.
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And there is some quiet mewling.
I suspect it is a growing cry. And Trump can’t let his tariff tweets go.
Based on that polling, these are the seat estimates:
Brexit – 246
Lib Dem – 177
Labour – 132
Conservative – 10
SNP – 53
Plaid – 14
Conservatives get wiped out because of being supplanted by Brexit, and their voters are concentrated where Brexit is strong. They’re being pincered by Brexit and Lib Dems.
Labour as you said can recover, but also isn’t wiped out like the Conservatives are despite the same polling (ain’t British political system grand?).
However, the danger here is that once Labour goes full remain, they lose a lot of seats to Brexit Party. These results never show a consistent “this is what you should do” path forward because no one has a strong majority. It’s very similar here whereby 50% support remain (now after the fiasco we’ve witnessed), 40% are knuckledraggers, and 10% throw their hands up. Yet because of where the 40% are geographically located, they have a significant political advantage.
And the problem is that the Tories have no obvious way to avoid this pincer.
They never do. I don’t see how Republicans escape their own pincer, and the answer they seem to have chosen is “subversion of counter majoritarian institutions enforced by judicial supremacy.”
Yeah, if US business leaders haven’t noticed by now that there aren’t many (any?) Rockefeller republicans left and that the Rs, much like the Tories, have been taken over by xenophobes, racists, morons and scammers, then they might not be reachable. Can’t stop trying though, I guess.
Whoops that was in reply to your comment below, sorry.
I don’t have time to find a link now, but I’ve written recently about American business leaders flirting with fascism, and how it gets more likely as the Democratic alternative becomes more threatening to them. If they think they need Trump as a protector, that’s when their patriotism gets challenged for real.
Not disagreeing with this, but Republicans are still seen as the party of low taxes (hey they’re tariffs, not taxes!), the party that is anti-union, and pro de-regulation; and the economy is still going great guns (coming out of the Bush recession). So the message that they are anti business is gonna be a hard sell. Hitting them on their strengths, though, is a good political plan (used often by the R.s, so turnabout is fair play).
What dems need as well is a strong and coherent message on the economy: Trumps tax cuts were a scam for the rich; they did nothing but put money in the pockets of people who didn’t need it.
Reasonable regulation, worker/union support, and reasonable taxes on the uber-rich are good for business in the long run: where do we get money for needed infrastructure without taxes? Who’s going to buy products if workers can’t afford them? The rich breathe the same toxic air and live in the same overheated climate as the rest of us. Destroying the environment to make a few bucks might have worked in the days of the gold rush when the damage was relatively limited, but it doesn’t work anymore. Not when the oceans are acidifying and swamping coastal cities, not when the world climate is whirling off into uncharted territory. These points need to be made again and again.
I’m thinking in terms of what business leaders will conclude and how they will respond than in how it plays out perception-wise with the larger electorate. I mean, I agree with your points, but they’re a little different from the points I’m trying to make here.
Those tariffs could function as a tax on consumers. Navarro was on CNBC this morning arguing the tariffs will bring business back to the US and or result in China reducing their prices. The hosts were not quite on board with that. When it came to Mexico those tariffs are ostensibly to make Mexico stop the immigrants from Guatemala and so were not really on products. It will directly threaten US business like auto makers in Mexico and maybe even the revised NAFTA. But they have the approval of Stephen Miller. So it is a good example of putting business on the other side of Trump. In the end I think these tariffs will impact the economy since business needs to have some degree of predictability to make investments and now it is all based on the morning tweets.
Deutsche Bank says,the stock market has lost five trillion dollars in value,over,the last seventeen months due to the trade,wars,and the market being below trend of twelve,and a half percent.
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Miller has the deadest eyes I’ve ever seen. That’s a guy who pulls the wings off of bees and lets ants tear them apart, while chuckling about being a God.
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He is one ugly psycho for sure.
I wrote about his high school days here.
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