Looks Like It's Game Over For The Failed Republican Party of NO
Crap Detector
Officially A Visible Minority Across The USA - Dick Morris
Divided Republicans struggle to find balance
JOHN IBBITSON
WASHINGTON ? Rush Limbaugh's ratings have practically doubled in the
last week, thanks to Barack Obama.
Ever since White House operatives decreed that America's most popular
talk show blowhard was the de facto leader of the Republican Party,
the GOP has been tearing itself apart.
Michael Steele, the telegenic new chairman of the Republican National
Committee, called Mr. Limbaugh's tirades "ugly" and "toxic," then
grovelled an apology. There are calls from within his own ranks for
Mr. Steele to step down.
The party of Lincoln, of Eisenhower, of Reagan is in disarray. Its
leadership is divided, its base of support is shrinking, every poll,
statistic and projection points to a looming permanent Republican
minority.
Voices within the conservative movement are deeply conflicted. For
some, it means moderating the party's stance, especially on social
issues. But others believe Republicans must rediscover their inner
steel. They must purge their thinking of wet, centrist apologias. They
should become men again.
"The Republicans need to take a step back from the big-tent
philosophy," said Tom McClusky, a vice-president of the Family
Research Council, a bastion of social conservatism. "All a big tent
does is attract a lot of clowns."
This is why Mr. Steele is so at odds with the grassroots. The former
lieutenant governor of Maryland became the first African American to
chair the RNC in February, with a mandate to modernize the party and
broaden its base.
But he has been unable to counter a White House campaign that has
repeatedly painted Mr. Limbaugh as "the voice and the intellectual
force and energy behind the Republican Party," as chief of staff Rahm
Emanuel put it.
At first, Mr. Steele dismissed Mr. Limbaugh's antics as
"entertainment. Yes, it is incendiary. Yes, it is ugly."
But he reversed himself - "In no way do I want to diminish his voice.
I do apologize." - in the wake of a torrent of criticism from Mr.
Limbaugh and his supporters.
The whole affair prompted Ada Fisher, a member of the Republican
National Committee, to send an e-mail to committee members Thursday
calling for Mr. Steele's resignation on the grounds that he had
created "a Republican horror show."
Mr. Steele's abrupt reversal reflects the challenge that he and his
party face in broadening his party's appeal while retaining the
loyalty of a base that grows more strident as it shrinks. An NBC News/
Wall Street Journal poll released this week shows the Republican Party
at a historic low in public support, with only 26 per cent of
Americans viewing the GOP favourably, compared with 49 per cent who
are favourably disposed to the Democrats.
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who was a senior adviser to John McCain during
his presidential bid, pointed out at a forum last month that
Republicans are rejected by most people under 65, by most women, and
by majorities in every region of the country except the South and the
Plains states.
"It was thoroughly depressing to me, as the policy director, to look
at polling data that suggested not only did the American public think
Republicans weren't for health-care reform, they actually think that
Republicans didn't want people to have health insurance," Mr. Holtz-
Eakin bemoaned.
"We need to be more appealing and open to a broader demographic," he
maintained.
In every part of the electorate that's expanding, Republicans are
increasingly unpopular. Both young (under 30) and Latino voters now
prefer Democrats over Republicans by about two-to-one.
The Republicans are reaping the fruits of the so-called Southern
Strategy, adopted in the 1960s, that successfully swung the
segregationist vote from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party,
as Gary Segura, a Stanford University political scientist who studies
minority voting trends, observes.
That vote used to coalesce with northern moderates and with blue-
collar "Reagan Democrats." But in recent years, northern moderates
have become increasingly Democratic, and the white vote as a share of
the total population is in steady decline.
The base of the Republican Party now consists of a shrinking number of
white voters, most of them from states that used to practise
segregation, and many of whom are anti-immigrant, in a society where
immigrants and their children are an increasingly dominant voting
block.
"If you're asking, how does the Republican Party move out of that? The
answer is, I don't know," Prof. Segura said in an interview.
But there are conservatives who do have an answer, and it consists of
two words: Prop 8.
On election day, 52 per cent of Californians voted in support of
Proposition 8, which amended the state's constitution to prohibit gay
marriage. The California Supreme Court is hearing an appeal, but is
expected to uphold the result. Black and Latino voters heavily
supported Prop 8. For Mr. McClusky of the Family Research Council,
that means future Republican victory lies in attracting minority
voters by embracing strongly conservative positions on abortion, gay
rights, sex education and other "family values" issues.
"Once you dig down ... the American people are more conservative than
what the Democratic Party is representing," he believes.
"Instead of throwing away your ideas and standing for nothing, you
need to stand up for something and give the reasonings behind it."
For economic conservatives, the secret to Republican revival is for
the party to purge itself of George W. Bush's big-spending, big-
government ways and return to the ideas and principles of Reagan
Republicanism.
"The idea of limited government is hard work," said Grover Norquist,
prominent leader of Americans for Tax Reform. "It isn't easy for
politicians to remember that protecting the freedom of the individual
is paramount."
Success for the Republican Party, he believes, lies in restoring and
entrenching that philosophy, and then waiting for the Democrats' plans
for massive economic and social reform to collapse from their internal
contradictions. In the next election, Mr. Norquist believes, the
mantra will be: "Not Obama. Not again. No more."
William Estrada agrees. He's the 25-year-old director of Generation
Joshua, which seeks to win young voters over to conservatism.
"As Republicans, we need to be devoted to limiting the size of
government and empowering individuals to fix the problems which are in
our country," he believes.
Events, eventually, will conspire to help the Republicans. President
Obama's 60-per-cent-plus approval ratings will fall to earth, as this
scandal meets that embarrassment. If hard times stretch into 2010, it
will become a Democratic recession, not a Republican one. Mr. Norquist
observes that there are 46 seats in the House of Representatives with
Democratic incumbents in which a majority of voters supported John
McCain.
Nonetheless, to the extent future elections hinge on the young and on
the growing Latino vote, the road is hard. In polls that he has
conducted, Prof. Segura has found that, yes, Latino voters do tend to
be more conservative than many white voters on issues like abortion
and gay marriage.
But what matters, he says, is that those things are not their issue.
"Their issue is education and their issue is jobs and their issue is
crime in their community - bread-and-butter issues. And on bread-and-
butter issues, they see themselves being better served by the
Democrats."
The Republicans will come back when voters tire of the Democrats'
activist agenda, with Big Brother government, with the waste and
corruption that eventually attaches itself to any party in power.
But the Republicans will also have to grow, to attract at least some
of Barack Obama's core constituency: the young and minorities.
It's anybody's guess what year, what decade, that will be.