How To Fix Republican Party Dynamics

It’s time for a little controversy. The media loves to portray the Republican Party as a narrow group of extremists. They love to accuse the party of being all white, male, rich, ultra-religious and angry at everything. Of course, none of this true. What the media has done is to pick out the most extreme voices from the various wings of the party and filter them through their own preconceived view of the party as fascist, intolerant, racists, and theologically based.

Hence, idiots like Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson, (D-Fla.) say asinine things like “Republicans want you to die quickly if you get sick,” when in fact it will be the Democratic plan that causes people to die for lack of available treatment. And toads like Gore Vidal say:

“Obama believes the Republican Party is a party when in fact it's a mindset, like Hitler Youth, based on hatred -- religious hatred, racial hatred. When you foreigners hear the word 'conservative,' you think of kindly old men hunting foxes. They're not -- they're fascists.”

Never mind that Obama and the Democrats are the closest thing to fascism this country has seen. Never mind that Obama is the first President to try to make people into non-people for legal purposes, or that the Democrats want to send you to jail if you don’t buy health care. They are the party of speech codes, of thought crimes, and forced association. They support confiscating private property for the public good and forced volunteerism in schools. They believe in industrial policy, the doctrine of too big to fail, the bailout, and of government seizing control of private corporations. They declare protesting against the government to be unAmerican, and they are big on indoctrinating children. The Republicans opposed all of this. So who are the fascists?

Who Are The Republicans Really?

Nevertheless, I find myself dismayed at the current state of the party. The party seems incapable of coming up with a coherent set of principles and it seems incapable of making headway with the 60% of voters it should be grabbing. Why is that? It’s called party dynamics.

Let me by cynical for a moment. The Republican Party is made up of six or seven groups that hinder each other. You would think they would be bound together by some common principles, but that’s not entirely true. Let’s look at the various groups and then talk about how they fit together and what this means for the party.

Here are the groups. But before anybody gets upset, realize that I have defined these groups according to the behavior of their leaders, not necessarily their members. And I did this because it’s the leadership that matters, because that’s what people use to judge the party, that’s what drives the agenda, and that’s who the party looks to when trying to satisfy the members of that group.

• Big Business -- This group consists primarily of the representatives of large businesses. In sheer numbers, this group is infinitesimally small, but their ability to donate vast amounts of money to political campaigns has made them extraordinarily powerful. Unfortunately, they hold few, if any, Republican beliefs. Indeed, this group is concerned almost entirely with the issue of business regulation and trade, and they have little loyalty to the United States or the party. They will favor regulations that weaken their competitors and oppose regulations that weaken their own business, all without a thought to the effect on the rest of the country. This group also is notorious for giving equally to Democratic candidates.

• Religious Right -- The other group that dominates the party leadership is the religious right. This group has significant influence far beyond their numbers (polls tend to show 3-6% of the population) because they provide a large number of the volunteers that staff the campaigns. They are concerned primarily with abortion and the relationship between Christianity and the public sphere, though they have recently begun to advocate environmental causes as well. This group tends to advocate increased government involvement rather than decreased government involvement, and often displays a tin ear for politics.

• The Small Business Wing -- Usually standing in direct opposition to the Big Business group is the Small Business Wing. This is a good sized group within the Republican Party, though not nearly as influential as the Big Business group or the Religious Right. This group favors lower regulation and low taxes, though they are not above lobbying to preserve government subsidies.

• Libertarians -- In many ways, this group is the polar opposite of the Religious Right and the Big Business wing. However, this group has all but destroyed its own influence within the Republican Party by leaving to form its own party (where they typically get around 2% of the national vote). This group favors smaller government, isolationism, and limited (or no) government involvement in social matters. In the last few years, this group has been obsessed with drug legalization, Iraq, and fearing the creation of a world government.

• The Country Clubbers -- This is the group that dominated the Republican Party for decades. This group consists of people with no particular guiding philosophy and they were quite happy to be the minority party. They viewed the party largely as a social gathering rather than a political party, and these people tend to be rather moderate/left liberals. This group often expresses embarrassment at the other members of the party and is notorious for endorsing Democratic candidates.

• Foreign Policy Hawks -- This group first appeared under Reagan, after the Democrats went soft on communism, taking on the label of neocons. Their numbers increased again dramatically after 9/11 when the Democrats chose to surrender to the terrorists. Apart from supporting a strong, interventionist foreign policy however, this group typically shares few other Republican beliefs.

• Populists -- This group is relatively new to the Republican Party, and likely won’t stay within the party. This group is marked by a severe anti-intellectualism and is currently awash in all manner of conspiracy theories.

• The Middle Class Values Wing -- Finally, we come to the largest group within the Republican Party. This group easily dominates the party membership, but has little influence within the party because it has no leadership and its members don’t volunteer. This group generally favors smaller government, less regulation, a strong foreign policy and defense, and limited government involvement in social matters. However, this group is not doctrinaire and will go against each of these beliefs whenever it thinks that the particular cause is a good one. Thus, for example, it will favor regulations that it sees as protecting the public and it will support tax increases for pet projects. Moreover, this group cuts a middle ground between the Religious Right and the Libertarians on social issues. Thus, for example, this group generally dislikes abortion and will impose restrictions, but does not favor banning abortion.

This is the group that competes for power within the Republican Party, and therein lie several problems.

Why Is This A Problem And How Do We Fix It?

So let’s talk about the problems posed with this alignment. First, this is hardly a unified group. On almost every issue, there is direct disagreement within the party. You want lower taxes? Big Business doesn’t, the Middle Class Values Wing doesn’t if it means they don’t get a new highway, and the Religious Right doesn’t if it means we need to cut aid to the poor. Want a strong foreign policy? The Libertarians and the Big Business guys don’t. And so on.

Far be it for me to tell the Republican Party what to do, but let me suggest that sometimes less is more. And when some of your members are keeping you from developing your philosophy, particularly where those members have proven themselves not to be loyal to the party, you should cull them:

• Drop the Big Business Wing. They’re whores -- they don’t love you. Trust me on this, they will still give you vast amounts of money even if you stop acting like their lap dogs. And right now they oppose everything that every other Republican group supports.

• Drop the Country Clubbers. They’re in the wrong party, they don’t like you. There is always room for dissent within a party, but there is never room for treason, and these guys are treason personified. Anyone who ever endorses a Democrat should be banned from any representative position with the party.

Further, a party cannot let itself be associated with the crazies or the unacceptables. Just as the party had to force out the racists in the 1980s, i.e. David Duke, the party needs to disassociate itself now with the populists (and the crazier libertarians) before they become associated with the party brand. If the party does not do this, it will lose the middle class, the educated class, and the sane. The populists have discredited every single movement they’ve ever infiltrated, dating back to the 1890. This time won’t be any different.

At the same time, the party needs to bring back its natural allies. In this regard, the party should woo back the Libertarians. Don’t bring back the kooks, but bring back the rational ones. And how to do that is simple. The Republican Party needs to rethink its recent total disregard for civil liberties. The left has handed us a wonderful chance to become the party of free speech, free religion (all religions or even no religion), free association, and rule of law. We can become the sole protectors of private property rights, and the other rights delineated in the Constitution.

The party also needs to learn that because it does contain competing views, taking an all or nothing approach is unacceptable. The party has become unbalanced in its power structure and it must re-learn the art of coalition building and consensus if it hopes to build a stable party and to attract the full 60% of people who consider themselves conservatives. To choose the beliefs of one group over the rest as THE beliefs of the party will doom the Republicans to remaining a minority party.

Indeed, what we need right now more than anything is a leadership (not leader but leadership) (1) that can create a credible strategy for attracting the 60% of voters who fall into the conservative category and can explain the wisdom of that strategy to each of the groups identified above and get them to see that wisdom, and (2) that is not afraid to stand up to these groups when they overreach (and to throw out the ones mentioned above).

We don’t have that right now. In fact, we’re not even close. Most party leaders fall into these categories themselves and can’t see the bigger picture. If they can’t do this, then it’s time we auditioned some new leaders.