"Talkin' at the Texaco" - James McMurtry
Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus notices that Rick Perry is a straight up right-wing fucknut. This is significant since Marcus is generally of the Broderesque "on the one hand, on the other" centrist Village school of thought. And while my first reaction was "my what a keen grasp of the obvious you have" my second was that it is extremely important that what many of us here find to be self-evident be pointed out in mainstream circles. Moreover, Marcus is right to suggest that Perry is quite a different animal than George W. Bush, although it may be difficult for some of us to fully realize this. But, and here is where the column falls short -- Perry is not an extremist in isolation. Instead, his full-throated anti-New Deal politics (hell anti-Progressive era politics) have quietly and quickly become mainstream thought in today's Republican Party.
This was not true of Bush 43. He not only ran on the maddeningly mushy "compassionate conservative" slogan, he actually governed that way in his first term. His signature domestic achievements, Medicare Part D and No Child Left Behind were flawed, but progressive pieces of legislation, enacted with substantial Democratic support. Yes, Medicare Part D was badly structured and inefficient and a pay off to the pharmaceutical industry. But guess what -- it was also a massive expansion of the social safety net, a huge increase in entitlements, one which under PPACA will provide really good prescription drug benefits for senior citizens, which was a gaping hole in Medicare. I am not a huge fan of NCLB, but it too should be recognized as far more liberal than conservative, given its focus on a dominant federal role in education and its insistence on creating uniform national standards of expected achievement, both of which are anathema to the local control types who make up the right wing of the Republican Party. Both Part D and NCLB were calculated to increase Bush's appeal to senior citizens and white suburban women, constituencies that Karl Rove thought crucial to maintaining a Republican majority. (And remember immigration reform, which Bush and Rove also embraced before being beaten back by their base.)
This kind of coalition widening calculus has gone out the window with the Republicans since 2008. The critique of the 2008 election was that Bush was the problem because he was not a true conservative, a view that the true believers now feel was vindicated by the landslide in the 2010 mid-terms. As a result, Republicans are not in a compromising mood -- they are ready for a purity campaign, convinced, as they so often are, that they speak for a majority of Americans.
And it's not just Perry. Look at the congressional leadership in Washington, holding disaster aid hostage to budget cuts. Look at the way northern GOP governors -- a group that Broder once adored for their pragmatism -- have ruled since 2010. Governors Walker, Kasich, Snyder, LePage, and Daniels have all governed in a manner designed to alienate all but their hard core supporters. Each is making a bet that they can effectively crush their opposition early on and then smooth things over with the rest of the electorate by the time they face voters again. It is seriously high stakes poker, the opposite of the kinds of moves that even a hard nosed player like Rove attempted.
I think a couple of things are worth noting. The Republicans have won the popular vote in one presidential election in the last five -- 2004, in which Bush, a war time president managed to garner 50.7% of the popular vote and 286 electoral votes. They have not run a full on right wing campaign for the presidency since 1964 and we know how that went. Reagan, in 1980, spent the bulk of his campaign being not-Carter and not-Goldwater. He sanded down almost all of the hard edges, minimizing the culture war stuff, playing up the sunny optimism and the miracles that tax cuts would bring. (Well he did play the cold war angle in a pretty hard core way, but in the wake of the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviets, the nation was pretty receptive to a little vague saber rattling.)
I think if Perry is the nominee that Obama basically starts the election with Kerry's states pretty much in his pocket. Look at those states and see if you disagree -- is there a one in which you see Perry having a great deal of appeal? From there, Obama just has to put together one, in the case of Florida, or a couple of the other states he took in 2008 -- Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada in order to win.
Now I could be wrong. The economy looks to remain abysmal enough through 2012 that it should preclude victory for an incumbent president. But here is what I think has changed a great deal in the last 30 years. From 1966 until relatively recently, the culture wars worked for the GOP -- both because it mobilized their base and because middle of the road voters tended not to care.
I think that has changed. I think that changes in demographics and societal attitudes -- see e.g. gay marriage -- have now made the religious and social extremism of the Republican base a genuine liability in large parts of the country. Throw in the attacks on popular programs like Social Security and Medicare -- a tough sell in Florida methinks -- the usual casual racism against Blacks and Latinos, the ugly homophobia, and the ultimate indifference toward the unemployed, and I see a party that is going to have a hard time closing the deal with the American electorate -- even in a dismal economy.
At least I hope so. Because God help us if I am wrong.
