In a column for Policy Magazine, Robin Sears asks this question. He points to an article in The New Yorker:
A marvellous piece of analysis, by revered American political journalist, Nicholas Lemann, wrestles with the unpleasant options now facing the Republicans. In a lengthy New Yorker essay, he describes their choices as the “Remnant, Restoration and Reversal scenarios.”
The Remnant caucus would hang on only to the narrow Trump base, keep it stoked with anger and motivated to vote, through relentless attack. Then they’d take a page from the work the Heritage Foundation and its conservative think tank cousins did for Reagan, and draft a real socially conservative and economically nationalist program through the creation of new Trumpian think tanks.
The Restorationists would attempt to inject new life into the old Reagan-Bush policy agenda – internationalist, sensible on immigration reform, on economic growth, and with a focus on the importance of character in leadership. He cites figures such as Karl Rove and former UN ambassador Nicky Haley as members of this troop.
The Reversal gang, in Lemann’s lens, would essentially build out a stronger version of the demographic base that has emerged under Trump, while abandoning more affluent white shoe Republicans to the Democrats. As the party of the poor, the rural, the poorly educated and the angry white working class urban voters, they would cut the party’s ties to corporate America deliberately and be more genuinely populist, even economically interventionist, in their demands.
Sears concludes that none of the three Republican camps represent a realistic take on the post-pandemic world. He then goes on to speculate on what Biden's election means for the international order.
It's a piece that is well worth reading.
Image: texomashomepage.com
8 comments:
We need to ask what have Republicans learned from the election? Here are some of the messages they will take away.
First, there's no price to be paid for ignoring political norms. Running a farcical impeachment trial without calling evidence, refusing to take up a House Covid relief bill, and hypocritically rushing through hearings for a far-right Supreme Court nominee just before the election came at no cost to Mitch McConnell, Lindsay Graham and other Republican senators.
Second, it's possible to run on white supremacy and expand support among Latinos and Black men. The GOP post-mortem after Romney's loss called on the party to reach more Hispanics and Blacks or face demographic extinction. In 2020, Trump got substantially more support than Romney in those communities, especially among men.
Third, white suburban women, even Evangelical ones, are not put off by a candidate who's a confessed groper, has over twenty women accusing him of sexual assault and who slept with a porn star while his wife was nursing their newborn. They're also not put off by politicians forcing their kids back to unsafe schools during a pandemic. In fact, white women increased their support for Trump by three percentage points in 2020, even with a woman running for VP on the Democratic ticket. The polls showing loss of support among white suburban women were completely wrong.
Finally, Republicans learned that they don't need to change their message, they need to improve their voter suppression. It's much harder to suppress the vote when there are many opportunities to vote before the official election day. Look for the GOP to reduce advance polls and mail-in voting.
Those are the lessons I believe the GOP learned. I won't be at all surprised to see massive obstruction to anything Biden tries to do from McConnell and judges he railroaded onto courts across the nation. US democracy remains very much on the ropes.
Cap
I agree that democracy is still on the ropes, Cap, Biden will have a really long and tough row to hoe.
A terrific opinion piece, Owen. Thanks for the link. You and I are skeptical whether the US is already past the point of no return. There are conservative Republicans such as David Frum and Max Boot who question whether the only hope for the Republican Party is to burn it to the ground and start all over.
I don't have a lot of confidence that what ails America will be cured in Washington. It may, instead, play out in the 'burbs and small town America and that could be messy. It would be foolish to believe that a Biden/Democrat victory will miraculously disarm what the FBI and NSA warn is the greatest terrorist threat facing that country - domestic terrorism. The US has an insane amount of fire power in the hands of disturbed and volatile people, the sort who plot to kidnap governors and put them on "trial." It's worse that American law enforcement seems sympathetic to these thugs.
It sounds preposterous but America has become less governable after 9/11 than it has been since the Civil War. I don't doubt that Biden will do his very best to deal with the rifts, the fault lines but first he'll have to stop them from worsening and that might be a very hard sell for the xenophobes, racists, white supremacists and gun thug militias who remain "locked and loaded."
Could this mutate into an insurgency? Can it be ruled out? Don't forget, the Bolshies had a following of not more than 23,000 yet managed to put the Czar, his family and his ministers to the sword. They ruled the country and terrorized the world and the people of the Soviet republics for 80 years after seizing power at the muzzle of a gun.
It is not impossible to imagine Trump inciting some form of unrest even if he winds up in a jail cell. Hell, half these loons already see him as a martyr, the victim of a resurgent Deep State. Cracking down on these militias only feeds Trump's narratives of the Dems moving to dismantle the 2nd Amendment, the radical right's favourite fetish.
Add to this unrest the stress multipliers of climate change, inequality, the rise of authoritarianism in an increasingly destabilized world, challenges to American hegemony from China and elsewhere, Thucydides Trap and the prospect of armed clashes, Covid-19 and the hazard of more pandemics and viral contagions - all or any of them - and Biden's chances of restoring peace, order and good government to the United States look bleak.
(BTW, Owen, have you heard from our friend, Lorne? I sent him an email last week but no reply.)
Trump is still a clear and present danger, Mound. He still has a huge following. They are as demented as he is. I noted that during his last public rant, most of the television networks cut away, acknowledging that he was spouting lies. The smaller his platform and megaphone, the more impotent he becomes. A lot depends on the people who allow themselves to be manipulated by him.
I haven't heard anything from Lorne. Dealing with the family dynamics he faces isn't easy. Let's hope he's fine. Perhaps he'll read this.
As for the issue of American law enforcement, fiercely pro-Trump, aligning with the gun thug militias, there's this from the New York Times.
https://youtu.be/Sa9_hJVmav8
It suggests how easy it would be for Trump to incite unrest after he's thrown out.
Truly disturbing, Mound. Those automatic rifles with large magazines are clearly not designed to go moose hunting.
What will the republicans do?
This for starters, expect more..
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-gsa-letter-biden-transition/2020/11/08/07093acc-21e9-11eb-8672-c281c7a2c96e_story.html#comments-wrapper
TB
Thanks for the link, TB. These folks will do everything in their power to sabotage Biden.
Post a Comment