Economically, 2009 is shaping up to be more like the year 1933 than any other. Hopefully, we won’t be facing the same degree of hardship that our parents and grandparents faced back then, but the situation is dire enough to allow for large government efforts to right the ship of state. Politically, however, next year is going to be a lot more like 1961. It’s a potent combination, as we will inaugurate a youthful First Family with young children, led by the most charismatic leader since Kennedy. And that leader will enjoy large majorities in Congress, large approval numbers (a mandate), and an economic landscape that demands big solutions.
The Republicans, on the other hand, are in danger of becoming irrelevant. All early indications are that the GOP will nominate someone in 2012 that promises a return to ‘true conservatism’. It’s almost a lock that they will produce a Barry Goldwateresque opponent to run against Obama’s reelection. I don’t mean that their candidate will espouse the libertarian strain of conservatism that Goldwater favored, but that they will nominate someone who believes that the GOP needs to stick to their socially-conservative guns and rail against the big government programs that became necessary in the face of a major economic meltdown.
In other words, their candidate will run an anachronistic campaign. It will be a campaign that might have been effective against Clinton in 1992 or Al Gore in 2000, but will be seen as hopelessly out of touch with a post-2008 election world. In spite of the Eisenhower interlude, Washington was dominated by a liberal consensus from 1933-1969. Republicans railed against the New Deal and claimed that the Democrats were insufficiently robust in their opposition to communism. But it didn’t win them elections because the people knew which side was helping them to put bread on the table.
In the near term, Republicans will rail against Obama’s reforms (big government) and claim that he isn’t tough enough on terrorists, but they won’t win elections that way. In addition to the economic issues that cut against the GOP, they have demographic obstacles that they have created by allowing themselves to become an almost exclusively white party. And they aren’t going to win the culture wars, either. The younger generation is not anti-gay and trends towards tolerance in all things.
It’s true that Newt Gingrich is a student of history and that he is skilled at running insurgency campaigns. But Gingrich isn’t facing up, at least publicly, to the challenges the GOP faces. Their party has no credibility as a small government party, but that is how they still think of themselves as we enter into another era of big government (apologies to Bill Clinton). It’s a recipe for disaster.
