Episode #457 of “robots will take your job”: Today, journalists.
Scientists are looking for effective regulation of their genetic research.
Human evolution is continuing, perhaps even accelerating. Where is it heading?
Dispatches from the fringes of Europe’s first failed state.
Ben Bernanke explains his quiet split from the GOP.
Is the Marxist far-left a trap for minorities? A critical look at Cornel West.
How much power will it take to support quantum computing?
Few periods in life are quite as emotionally intense as the years when you are starting your family. Will it be a boy or a girl? Will he have your eyes? Will she be okay? Marked by anticipation, anxiety, sleeplessness, joy and occasional heartbreak, the rewards are closely linked to the massive personal investment it demands, an investment that stretches into your soul.
For many people, this is the experience that completes their transition to adulthood. Taking on these responsibilities means becoming more than merely independent. Assuming this duty to protect another life reveals a broader pattern of obligations that were always there, but many of us fail to recognize prior to that transformation.
In many ways, “growing up” means becoming bigger. By contrast, building a family means becoming quite small. Where not so long ago the shape of my day reflected the outline of my own personal wants, ambitions and needs, now my life became richer and more complex. As my world grew, my own place in it shrunk in relative terms. That new perspective came to influence everything, including my politics.
What my wife and I experienced as we tried to have children gave me a deeper perspective on reproductive issues. That very personal brush with larger political forces was a kind of wake-up call, a transition toward grown-up life which left me feeling a burden to see the world with more humility and compassion. In the midst of a fierce struggle to have children, we discovered how difficult it can be to get an abortion.
Our first child came with the half-intentional ease of youth. Having another would not be so simple. My wife faced health issues that would complicate childbearing under the best of conditions. We were not facing the best of conditions. As her second miscarriage loomed, we realized we would need to end her pregnancy.
About nine weeks into the pregnancy it became clear that the fetus had died. There was no heartbeat and hormone levels associated with a developing fetus, which should be surging, had begun to decline. As disappointing as this was, it wasn’t the worst news. My wife was very ill. Cramping, severe nausea and bleeding were complicating other health conditions and still the miscarriage did not occur.
As days wore on the situation became more serious. Her doctor explained that she needed a removal procedure which is also commonly used to perform an abortion. Religious restrictions at the hospital where our doctor operated made it very difficult to perform that procedure in their facilities under any circumstances. My wife could not get the procedure she needed without stronger proof that the fetus had died. Until proof was available in the form of a certain hormone level dropping below a set threshold, the facility would not allow the procedure. And even then additional approvals were required. When might that happen? Could be days. Could be weeks.
In theory, an abortion (if that’s what it should be called in this case) was still an option even without our doctor, but the reality was far more complex. If the hospital, or more specifically the hospital’s religious sponsors, would allow the procedure, our doctor could have put an end to that suffering the same afternoon. In the hands of a doctor who understood her broader set of conditions and with the resources of the Texas Medical Center at her disposal, the procedure would be safe, her recovery would be simple, and she would have been back on her feet in a couple of days.
Without access to her doctor, the situation was very difficult. We could wait for a miscarriage to happen in due course, but the risk of complications was growing. She was incapacitated and miserable. Her illness was beginning to trigger a wider range of conditions. There was no reliable prediction for how long this might persist.
We could find another provider, but even with a referral that was not a simple matter. One does not simply stride into an OB/GYN’s office one afternoon like breezing into the grocery store. A few calls made clear that no relief would be coming from that direction for quite some time.
That left us with the option of going to an abortion clinic, but that was not a straightforward matter. Her complications presented a set of circumstances they do not normally see. Then there was the cost. We discovered that our insurance might not cover the procedure under those circumstances, from the available providers. Even if it would, we would have to find the money up front then fight for repayment.
We weren’t poor, but we weren’t exactly liquid either. I was starting a career and she was just finishing her master’s degree. We lived in a two-bedroom apartment with our young child who needed his mother. Our options were sorely limited and the danger was rising.
Trapped in a situation I never could have imagined before, politics was now intruding on my family’s future. While my wife laid bleeding and vomiting on the bathroom floor and our two-year son wondered what was going on, a collection of preachers, priests, and politicians had substituted their ignorant opinions for the insights of our doctor.
Politically, I had always thought of myself as a Texas conservative, an heir to the state’s “Come and Take It” tradition of militant individual liberty. Abortion was not a major concern of mine, though I casually opposed the practice. Thanks to others who shared that political tradition, my family’s most intimate medical needs were now subject to the ignorant whims of a few religious bigots, certain that their interpretation of scripture was more relevant than a doctor’s opinion.
For us, this episode ended about as well as it could. After a few days scrambling to find an alternative, nature took its course and she had a miscarriage. It took a few months to recover from some of the unnecessary complications of the prolonged process, but she recovered. In time we had another child.
It was an eye-opening, humbling experience. If a family with our resources and education found it this difficult to get the basic gynecological care we needed, what must this be like for others? As a Republican in Houston I was used to hearing abortion defined by hysterical extremists. Like the rest of the hysterical extremes that mark life in Texas, from the weather to the people, I had learned to tune it out.
After that experience it became harder to ignore those extremes and their implications. By sustaining a relatively detached opposition to abortion, I was participating in a political movement with implications I never understood. Those implications were not hidden. I just lacked the curiosity or compassion to discover them until they barged through my door.
Abortion wasn’t the only subject that started to inspire unease. It was becoming clear that there were serious, material consequences to living in a place where public life was steered by bigoted religious mullahs. From textbooks to transit, raising my children in a climate dominated by fundamentalists would impact their lives in ways I had never considered.
It’s a free country. Leaving home, especially a home tied to such deep roots is painful, but I don’t live there anymore. That said, you can’t solve every problem by running.
In 2013, Ohio’s Republican Senator Rob Portman announced a change in his position on same-sex marriage, citing his experience with his son who had come out as gay. He was criticized for the narrowness of this position, for only recognizing the damage his previous positions had caused once he had personally experienced their impact. That criticism hits home.
I had no interest in abortion rights until the matter invaded my own living room. Even then, what we experienced is relatively trivial. The misery endured by so many others who struggle under the worst of conditions to secure their right to control their own bodies is an unnecessary travesty.
Recognizing how badly wrong I was on this issue has inspired a great deal more caution and humility on other issues. I have experienced the power of markets and commerce to deliver improvements in the lives of ordinary people. I have also experienced the potential of bigotry to spread pain and misery. Those two insights create a constant tension. On the one hand, I feel tied to the Republican Party’s emphasis on growth and prosperity. On the other hand, the rest of the party’s increasingly bizarre agenda leaves me frustrated and occasionally frightened.
Being an adult inspires more than independence. We come to recognize our myriad dependencies. Being grown-up involves seeing our vital role in sustaining a community older than ourselves with a longer future than our own. Experiencing the realities around reproductive rights in a very personal way helped inform a wider perspective on other issues. It helped me see the wider consequences of my own choices.
I already left Texas. I’m not leaving the GOP without a much longer, more determined fight. I won’t lose another home.
Whenever the country suffers from a mass shooting, in other words – every few weeks, we hear a familiar line from the minority of Americans who oppose stricter gun laws. My “freedom” is more important than your right to live.
If my freedom to own an arsenal of deadly weapons with no insurance requirement, qualifications, or tracking is vital to the preservation of liberty, then why stop with assault rifles? What right does my government have to block my access to landmines?
From a prior post:
Would landmines pose a threat to neighborhood kids, dogs, and postal workers? Maybe, but what price are you going to place on my liberty? What ever happened to individual responsibility?
Sure, some kid might miss the skull & crossbones markers I place next to the sidewalk. They might drift into the wrong spot in pursuit of a stray Frisbee and lose a leg. It happens. Freedom isn’t free. How is that different from the school kids, movie-goers, cops and church members regularly gunned down by super-armed psychos using guns? That’s right, there is no difference.
If Americans didn’t possess nearly half the world’s total inventory of guns in private hands it would be harder for the occasional lunatic get his hands on a weapon and mow down a Bible study group. So what? We need those weapons to protect our liberty from the gangs of roaming thugs who want to oppress us. And from Obama.
The rest is here. When these events stop happening so close together I’ll stop re-posting the same pieces.
Look, I really, really like guns. I learned to shoot in my back yard in East Texas. My kids learned to shoot there too. Guns were an everyday part of life. And in my opinion, they still should be.
We have allowed our enthusiasm for guns to bleed over into our deep stores of racial paranoia, creating a toxic and politically intolerable blend. Our refusal to embrace the simplest measures to limit the spread of firearms is building up a terrible backlash. In a previous post I described a proposal to require liability insurance as a condition for gun ownership. Believe me, if we continue down this path much longer, gun owners who once found that proposal appalling will look back on it as a lost opportunity.
In an effort to keep up with the cool kids, this blog now has something of a social media strategy. There are extensions of GOPLifer available now on Facebook and Twitter.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BuildingABetterGop
Twitter: @GOPLifer
Maybe someone can cook up a Pinterest angle for the blog at some point, “cocktail ideas for a government shutdown,” or “tips for decorating your Obama Pinata.” Recipe ideas inspired by the Food4Patriots 25-year food storage packs being sold using Mike Huckabee’s mailing list could be a hit. Stay tuned for future developments.
The Texas State Legislature is a living museum of political lunacy. It features a taste of every offering off the far right menu. Gold freaks, fundamentalists, racists, conspiracy theorists, guns nuts, if it has ever shown up in a Facebook post from your wacky great-aunt, it has an enthusiastic sponsor among Republicans in Austin.
Despite holding a massive legislative majority and controlling every statewide office, most of the wildest ambitions of Texas Republicans have thus far been thwarted. Unlike Kansas, where unbridled Tea Party enthusiasm has delivered a government gripped by crisis and an economy in tatters, Texas remains minimally functional.
As bad as recent Legislatures have been, they could have been a lot worse. A decade ago a revolt by “moderates” deposed a fanatical House Speaker. He was replaced by Joe Strauss, a relatively rational Republican leader who derives much of his support from Democratic legislators. As our Congressmen in Washington look to replace John Boehner as House Speaker and climb out of the mire of hyper-partisan dysfunction he helped create, the Texas Model offers a lesson in how parliamentary politics can emerge from the swamps of extremism.
Boehner’s Congress may be the most broadly hated major political institution in our history. Every ounce of that vitriol has been richly earned. Unable to shepherd even the most banal legislation, Boehner prioritized his personal political survival over national priorities. The House under Boehner devolved into a disaster factory, yielding nothing of use to either his own party or the country at large.
Complicating Boehner’s term as Speaker was persistent discontent from his right flank. A third of his coalition was aligned with the Tea Party and unwilling to compromise not only with Democrats, but with Republicans or with any other force of politics or nature. Determined to refight the Civil War through legislative gridlock, this solid core of congressmen were committed to nothing so much as obstruction.
Under Boehner, Republicans in the House continued and even expanded a principle developed under the previous Republican speaker, Denny Hastert that blocked efforts at bipartisan lawmaking. Under the Hastert Rule, the use of Democratic votes to advance legislation was taboo. Almost nothing was allowed to pass unless it could be passed on the strength of Republican votes.
What Boehner failed to appreciate was that in a body of 435 members, a 70-member coalition of Tea Party nutjobs is not a majority. He was a prisoner of choice. There was a solution available that would not only have allowed him to pass reasonable legislation in the public interest, but might have helped him rescue the Republican Party from its own self-immolation. The Texas Model was available all along.
Texas’ experiment in bipartisan leadership has its origins in a rebellion by a small cohort of pragmatic Republicans at the opening of the 2009 legislative session. Democrats and Republicans alike were frustrated by the incumbent House Speaker’s autocratic, personally disrespectful, and ideologically batty leadership. Republicans held only a 2-seat majority in the House. By peeling away votes from eleven Republicans and enlisting the near-unanimous support of the House’s Democrats, the rebels succeeded in electing Joe Straus Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives.
By breaking the informal rule against electing a Speaker with bi-partisan support, Straus has built a remarkable power base. The Tea Party has consistently targeted him both in the Legislature and in his home district in suburban San Antonio. State Republican platforms have consistently targeted him with provisions designed to undermine his authority. He may be the most publically despised and privately cherished figure among the state’s Republican politicos.
In national terms, the Legislature under Straus’ leadership has been a bastion of extremist politics, but the results have been nowhere near as wild and disastrous as they might otherwise have been. Straus’ leadership helped to halt a bizarre effort to challenge the TSA’s security rules that threatened to shut down the state’s airports. Since he took leadership the House has softened an earlier law that would have made Bible classes in public schools mandatory. It has blocked efforts to repeal the Dream Act, the nation’s first law granting in-state tuition to undocumented children.
His leadership helped the House block efforts that would have begun the privatization of the state’s public schools, removed all gun-licensing restrictions, paid a $2000 bounty to anyone who apprehends a transgender person using the “wrong” public restroom, and asserted the state’s right to invalidate certain federal laws. More importantly, he has been able to maintain the basic functional integrity of a body infested with bizarre characters.
In the US Congress, the numbers and atmosphere are right to foster a Texas-style revolt. A potential Speaker who could line up significant, though perhaps not unanimous support among Democrats, perhaps 170 of the 188, would only need the support of 48 Republicans to win the gavel. There is no modern precedent for such an effort, but there is also no modern precedent for such a catastrophically ineffective Congress.
Constructing an effort like this might take time. However, this style of parliamentary politics embraced in the unlikeliest of places points to a nearly inevitable future in Congress. As the extremes in both parties harden their determination, the House will not likely return to proper function until the Texas Model prevails there.
Changes in the way our political system operates mean that one-party legislative rule is probably doomed to futility. As the parties themselves decline in power there is no reason to expect that they can continue to exercise such dominant influence in our legislative bodies.
We refer to “Tea Party” congressmen without a hint of acknowledgement of what the moniker implies. It is, in fact, a sub-partisan faction whose members deserve to be treated less as members of the majority party than as allies in a multi-party coalition. The Tea Party is probably just the beginning of an emerging collection of well-branded, publically acknowledged sub-partisan institutions. The Texas Model offers a method for House leadership to manage this evolving political reality. The structure of our system forces us to operate through dual parties, but it does not prevent coalitions among sub-parties across those party lines.
Boehner’s Congress was a whopping failure because neither he nor its other leadership figures were willing to countenance the end of binary, two-party legislative politics. Our next effective Speaker of the House, regardless which party they claim allegiance to, will probably preside over a sub-partisan, not bi-partisan coalition, even if everyone in it claims an “R” or “D” label.
He or she will be elected to their position by members of both parties. They will appoint committee chairmen from both parties. They will pass legislation using a shifting coalition of members from both parties. Being Speaker of the House in an atmosphere of fractured partisanship will be a tough job; considerably tougher than it used to be. Though, it still will not be as difficult as John Boehner made it look. If this model can impose some semblance of rationality in Texas, it can work anywhere.
Four years ago this week, I posted the following piece explaining what we could expect from the 2016 race. Just sayin’. Original post is available at this link.
Republicans are an orderly bunch. For all the excitement generated by the 2012 nominating race, we pretty much know how it ends. Unless there is a political disruption so large as to challenge the Party’s continuing viability, Mitt Romney is going to be our nominee.
Why Romney? There are lots of great personal and policy reasons, but those don’t determine the outcome. He’ll be the nominee because he’s the guy who finished second last time. Except in races where the previous second-place finisher declined to run this is a pattern that stretches back unbroken for generations.
Why does it work that way? This preference tends to produce a nominee with the stamina, the experience, the fund-raising heft, and the general gravitas to represent the Party for the long haul. It means that a GOP nominee has years of vetting and seasoning before he takes the big stage.
Look at the Democrats’ experiences with Obama, Carter, and McGovern, and you get a sense for why the GOP leans in this direction. Better yet, look at the lone recent exception to Republican Party’s second-place rule, George W. Bush, and the wisdom of the process shines through.
Surveying the 2012 field leads to a terrible realization: with Pawlenty out and Huntsman oblivious to what he’s walked into, there is no credible adult competing for the slot of ‘next in line.’ Daniels and Christie still aren’t answering the phone. The well has run dry.
The triumph of the fundamentalist/Neo-Confederate axis inside the Party is apparent in this startling checkmate. Even if we get a solid nominee this time, the presumptive frontrunner for the GOP nomination in the next cycle is pretty much guaranteed to be a loon.
Apart from Romney there is not a single candidate in serious contention who even pretends to have any interest in the reality-based community. With their warnings about government injections being forced on little girls, FEMA re-education camps, secession, the tyranny of paper money, the Islamic takeover the of the US, and the ‘weaknesses’ of the theory of evolution, where are we going to look next time for a candidate who isn’t a cartoon character?
If you think this year’s nominating field is ugly…
The GOP’s leading candidate for the White House has staked out a position that ties autism to vaccines. None of the candidates have firmly supported action in response to climate change and almost all of them express doubt that it’s real. All of the leading candidates have taken a hardline stance on illegal immigration and even expressed skepticism on legal immigration. Republican Presidential candidates are tripping over each other to grab the most extreme conceivable positions against abortion, gun control, and culture war compromises. Unsurprisingly, not a single one them has a credible path to the White House.
Previous posts have laid out a potential roadmap toward a saner, more politically relevant Republican future. Some might view that roadmap with skepticism in light of the party’s apparent mood. Perhaps the party could modernize its positions on a host of issues to attract new voters, but what are we supposed to do about the current Republican base? How can you hope to win new voters in new geographies and demographics while today’s Republicans are screaming their insistence on an ever more insane political agenda?
Here’s a little known fact that might surprise a lot of people, especially people who have been working in Republican politics for the past decade or so. Republicans are not crazy. In fact, Republican voters are no more bizarre or outrageous than their peers on the Democratic side. This crop of candidates is not just out of touch with public opinion in the country, they are out of touch with public opinion among Republican voters.
How we came to this strange state of affairs is a subject explored in detail by The Politics of Crazy. The book also offers some explanation of the forces that led to Republicans being more influenced by our crazy extremists than the Democrats, at least for now. In summary, the wildest extremes of the conservative movement have been driving the Republican Party because they have enjoyed better organization, stronger personal involvement, and higher levels of motivation. The good news is that they are wildly unpopular, even inside the GOP. Checking the rise of the far right in the GOP will be like kicking down a rusty door. Someone just needs to decide to do it.
Laying the groundwork to support a modernization of the GOP through institutional steps like creating new think tanks and donor networks will be critical. Those steps are described in previous posts. With that infrastructure in place there’s really nothing to stand in the way of reality-based Republicans in their campaigns for sane policy. The wildly extreme Republican policy templates we hear discussed in public are surprisingly unpopular even among Republican voters. When it comes to a more rational, nationally relevant Republican Party, the old adage holds true: Build it, and they will come.
Polls indicate that most Republican voters favor every single one of the following political positions vehemently opposed by nearly all of our leading candidates:
– Avoiding a government shutdown over funding for Planned Parenthood
– Background checks for private gun sales
– A federal database to track all gun sales
– The details of Obama’s Executive Order on Immigration (so long as Obama’s name isn’t attached to the plan)
– Federal subsidies for solar power
That’s not all. Remember Obama’s terrible, job-killing, unilateral actions to fight climate change? Those proposals are supported by 52% of Republicans – in South Carolina! In the same survey, almost 60% of South Carolina Republicans favor limits on carbon pollution. Most Republicans would be less likely to support a candidate who claims that climate change is a hoax.
A majority of Republicans under 45 and almost two thirds of Republicans under 30 support a right to same-sex marriage. Only a quarter of Republicans support the universal abortion bans proposed by our Presidential candidates.
Half of Republicans support a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. Less than a third of Republicans support the deportation plans being proposed by our leading candidates. Needless to say, an overwhelming majority of Republican voters disagree with our leading candidates and support mandatory vaccinations.
In order to appease the extreme far right, Republicans have endorsed an entire public platform that ranges from mildly unpopular, to patently insane. Very few of the most public elements of the Republican agenda enjoy majority support even among Republicans.
Inside the rightwing media bubble support for these positions is appears to be universal. That is a product of the better organization and funding enjoyed by the party’s extremes. But this is a manufactured unanimity, stage-managed via carefully limited access to media outlets. Provide credible channels for the rest of the Republican voting base to express their sincere opinions and the hollowness of that agenda will become readily apparent.
What happens to the Republican Party if the hardest of its hardline conservative base threatens to split away? There is no greater gift we could ask for. An independent, national Tea Party would rescue the GOP. We live in a two-party system. The Republican far-right is a wildly unpopular fringe that cannot even begin to compete politically anywhere outside the Deep South and few empty western states. An independent Tea Party, or some other fractured branch of far-right weirdoes would be a road to nowhere. Their departure would free Republicans to pursue sane, humane, market-oriented solutions to policy questions that could be remarkably popular all over the country.
There is no rationale for letting an unpopular political bloc set the policy agenda for the entire Republican Party. It’s time for someone to take an aggressive, unapologetic stand for a 21st century Republican platform.
Republicans have no candidates who represent the party’s sane majority because no one with enough courage has assembled the organizational base it would demand. That political space lays open, waiting to be developed into a successful movement. Build it, and they will come.
Labor leader and Civil Rights activist Asa Philip Randolph met with President Roosevelt in 1940 to urge him to end discrimination in defense jobs. Roosevelt expressed support for Randolph’s goals then issued this challenge, “I agree with you. Now go out there and make me do it.”
Though probably apocryphal, that story offers a helpful insight. Our system of government places serious constraints on the ability of our elected officials to press the public in a new direction.
If we want to have Republican candidates who support sane, responsible public policy, then we have to create conditions on the ground that will support them. Developing that environment may call for collaboration with sitting officials and candidates, but the bulk of the work has to happen in the precincts. Gaining the support of candidates and elected officials is the final step, not the first, in any campaign for party reform.
Successful politicians rarely, if ever, truly lead on policy questions. Only a decade ago, Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton, and Mike Huckabee held substantially the same public position on same-sex marriage. The change we experienced did not originate with our elected officials. It emerged from the public at large. When it comes to policy, the voting public leads and our candidates follow.
There are rare instances in which a politician endorses a position unpopular with their base and ‘takes one for the team.’ President Johnson’s decision to press for meaningful Civil Rights legislation and the first President Bush’s tax hike stand out as prominent examples. Neither of them served a second term. These are exceptions that prove the rule.
In thinking about the role of candidates in rebuilding the GOP, It might be helpful to start by resolving a few persistent myths about life as a politician. Foremost among these is the strange notion that people run for office to get rich. Let’s be absolutely clear about this for it will be critical when recruiting candidates – there is no money in politics.
Once again, just for emphasis – there is no money in politics.
Yes, there are a handful of exceptions. The Clintons stand out as a popular counter-example, but once again they prove the rule. Politics bankrupted them. The real money started flowing when Bill Clinton left Washington. The Clintons would almost certainly be wealthier today if they had never entered public service.
The claim that politicians make lots of money resembles claims about people earning six-figure incomes selling Mary Kay or Amway. A handful of people manage to do it, but anyone who can make a living doing that would probably earn ten times more if they’d pursued a real job.
It is true that your Congressman earns over $170K a year. So does your accountant at the peak of her career, and she doesn’t have to balance the demands of three quarters of a million people. For the kind of people with the talent, resources, connections, and education that are generally required for the job, Congress is almost always a pay cut. That pay cut becomes seriously taxing for State Legislators and local officials.
If that weren’t enough, being in politics costs a fortune. Your Congressman must, on that low-six-figure salary, maintain at least two households while traveling constantly. Many of them live in dorm-like settings with other officials in Washington while their families stay behind in their home districts. At the state level this means practically living in your car as you log mile after mile back and forth to the capital and covering every corner of your district.
And it gets worse, because the work itself is pretty miserable.
Your job may frustrate you with its TPS reports and multiple, overlapping bosses, but elected officials face far worse. A relatively benign paperwork mistake can expose a politician to a whole range of exposures up to and including potential criminal penalties. They are barraged with incoherent demands from the kinds of people who leave you tapping your foot in the grocery store check-out line while they search for the right coupon. Their chosen career leaves them at beck-and-call all day and all year with no real escape or respite. All that before you factor in the constant drumbeat of character assassination, partisan hostility, and random death threats from tinfoil-hat-wearing wingnuts.
Why do people agree to perform this grueling job? First of all, hardly anyone does. Most of the best qualified people refuse to even consider the possibility of public service. That’s a concern about the shape of our system that was expressed from the very outset by men like Alexander Hamilton and George Washington.
Those who do choose to run for office generally either have a pressing desire to serve others, a powerful drive to feel loved by lots of people they don’t know, or a touch of the crazy. Most politicians possess all three characteristics in some blend. As political conditions have grown worse, the overall contribution of “crazy” to the mix has grown.
It is rare to find a politician who possesses a deep interest in public policy. In fact, for most politician an interest in policy is a liability. Running for Congress is not substantially different from running for student council. Think back to your senior year of high school. What were the most pressing policy questions driving the election for class President? You probably don’t remember because there weren’t any.
The winner was the person that possessed the broadest network of relationships that were the most generally positive in sentiment. That is also, in almost every case, how you win a race for state legislature or Congress. And the farther down the ballot you go, the less influence policy positions have on outcomes. While they may feel deeply about one or two policy questions, most elected officials absorb the bulk of their political platform from the network on which they depend.
Good politicians focus their energy not on policy ambitions, but on elections. Politicians do not keep their job in politics by writing the finest laws. They keep their job by winning the most votes. There are examples of elected officials who have used their office as a platform to promote policy templates beyond the mainstream. Bernie Sanders and Ron Paul are prominent examples. That model is rare because it can only be sustained under unique circumstances with the benefit of a niche electorate. It also tends to compromise one’s ability to actually participate in shaping legislation. Neither Sanders nor Paul has experienced any success whatsoever in seeing their policy interests become law.
When do we get politicians who lead? When someone opens up new ground on which to build a base of support, and a smart candidate recognizes the existence of that new space and exploits it. Reagan is the textbook example.
He recognized an emerging, unserved opening around law and order issues at home and the Soviet threat abroad. Reagan spent twenty years working at various levels to further develop and expand that base before riding it to the White House.
By contrast, John McCain failed in 2000 because the ground on which he wished to build a campaign had not yet been prepared. His campaign attracted a lot of enthusiastic support from voters, far more than Bush was receiving, but like some of Reagan’s earlier efforts, there was no institutional base to support his run. He was not attracting enough of the grassroots activists likely to vote in a primary, donate money, and promote his campaign on the ground.
McCain failed again in 2008 because, unlike Reagan, in the years after 2000 he did not work with grassroots activists to build institutional support around the voter base he had begun to attract. Instead, he tried to inherit and pander to the existing Republican base. That was not enough to carry him in a general election.
Republicans badly need another version of McCain’s 2000 campaign, but we aren’t going to get it until we’ve worked through several of the other steps described in prior posts. First, we need to build a simple statement of beliefs that can form the core of a hyphenated-Republican appeal. Then we need to assemble donors and think tanks that can support the policy and campaign sides of an effort to activate new voters. Once that is in place, we can expect to have success in recruiting candidates and passing legislation.
There is some good news. It is not necessary to build new candidates from the ground up. Existing candidates will do. In the early stages this may include outreach to existing or former Republican officials, especially in the north and near urban areas, who are frustrated by the dilemmas they face. They can be extremely helpful in knitting together the organizational structure we need.
What we cannot ask of them, at least in the early stages, is for them to take the lead in building a new structure for the party. That quote from Roosevelt should echo in our minds. It is up to us to prepare the ground on which rational, competitive candidates can begin to build their campaigns.
At the highest levels of the ballot, by 2024, our best shot at victory may be someone who got trounced in primaries 2016 or 2020 (Marco Rubio, I’m looking at you). Take a reasonably competent figure who struggled to gain traction in an environment that required humiliating, miserable pandering. Give them a chance to run on a platform they can respect, with just enough of the institutional support they need, and watch McCain’s 2000 campaign play out in way that matches the results from Obama’s 2008 campaign.
That’s what this blueprint is meant to achieve. While recruiting great candidates is part of that blueprint, it probably happens last. There are Republicans out there in prominent positions who would embrace a reality-based template for governing. It’s our job to make them do it.
Behind the Blue Wall, 2014 was a very difficult year for Republicans. In Illinois, the party needed to pick up one seat in the State Assembly to break the Democrats’ super-majority. We failed. The party’s candidate for the US Senate was routed. Our candidates for statewide office lost, except for one.
In the midst of a deep slump, Republicans were able to elect Bruce Rauner to the Illinois Governor’s office. Looking closely at both his successes and his failures in 2014, a pattern emerges that shows the way forward. The road to a Republican renaissance runs through America’s biggest cities.
A return to relevance starts with a candid understanding of the burdens a Republican faces in urban areas. Republicans, not Democrats, built the Blue Wall. Through a steadily intensifying focus on the fears of aging white voters, particularly in the South and rural West, the party’s brand has become toxic in America’s cities. In 2000, there were Republican mayors in half of the country’s ten largest cities. Today Republicans govern only five out of the country’s 30 largest cities.
For a party premised on commercial and professional interests, our absence from meaningful urban influence is a bizarre distortion screaming to be corrected. A 21st century economic boom is emerging from our big urban downtowns. Eight big cities accounted for more than 75% of all new venture capital investment in the US in 2014. They are all governed by Democrats.
Rauner’s campaign attacked this problem head on by distancing themselves from the national party’s rhetoric and campaigning aggressively in Chicago. That strategy relied on this critical understanding – the marriage between urban voters and the Democratic Party is loveless.
Cities are electing Democrats because their voters feel, with complete justification, that the Republican Party is vigorously hostile to their values and interests. In places like Chicago, Boston, and Seattle, a political program based on Olde Tyme Religion, slashing government investment, and stoking white racial fears is not merely unappealing, it is a nightmare. Big cities vote Democratic because they have no realistic alternative.
That preface is vital to understanding what did and did not work in the Rauner campaign and, by extension, to recognizing what Republicans can expect from urban outreach. Review a newspaper story about Rauner’s win and you’ll probably read that his campaign in Chicago’s black neighborhoods was the key to his success. That claim is true, yet dangerously misleading.
Rauner’s appeal to Chicago’s black community did indeed unlock new support, but not among black voters. Outreach to the black community accomplished three goals, 1) dampening Democratic turnout, 2) developing longer-term openings to black voters in future elections, and most importantly 3) helping Rauner dramatically outpoll other Republicans in Chicago’s more affluent wards. In other words, the most important impact of Rauner’s African-American outreach in the 2014 Election was felt in white neighborhoods.
For all the effort, Rauner failed to win black voters in any numbers. People do not switch parties easily. African-American voters maintain remarkable solidarity at the polls for very good reasons. Persuading them to break ranks will take more than one candidate in one election making a few hopeful moves.
Rev. James Meeks, an African-American former state senator and pastor of a South Side megachurch was the keystone of Rauner’s outreach. Meeks and several other black political figures campaigned enthusiastically with Rauner in Chicago. The Governor earned only 3% of the vote in Meek’s Chicago Ward, about as close to zero as statistics will allow. Results among black voters elsewhere in Chicago and the state were little better.
Meanwhile, Rauner racked up strong numbers among other voters in Chicago, as evidenced by results from affluent, predominantly white, Lincoln Park. The previous GOP nominee for Governor in 2010 earned barely over a third of the vote in Lincoln Park’s 43rd Ward. Rauner won half. The Republican US Senate at the top of the ballot with Rauner was a social conservative in line with the national party. He earned less than a third of the vote in the 43rd Ward.
Turnout was soft in Chicago. Again, Rauner’s outreach to the black community was key. Much of what drives Democratic support in major urban centers is the fear of living under ideologically rigid, socially conservative, and no so subtly racist Republican leadership. Consistently seeing Rauner on the evening news next to black supporters on the South Side may not have been enough to win droves of Democratic voters, but it was enough to ease their fears. Knowing that the state would continue to be dominated by a Democratic State Assembly and recognizing that Rauner was not the usual white Republican curbed Democratic enthusiasm just enough to weaken his rival.
With an eye on 2018, Rauner has continued his efforts in the city. He has named prominent black Chicago Democrats to powerful (and lucrative – this is Illinois) state offices. He has stuck to his campaign promises, focusing his efforts in Springfield on budget issues and government reform. There is a chance that his efforts could, in time, start to build new openings for Republicans among black voters, particularly the growing black middle class in Chicago’s south suburbs.
Amid all the success, Rauner’s failure to win votes in black neighborhoods in 2014 points out some of the weaknesses of his strategy and the burdens any Republican faces. Perhaps most importantly, Rauner’s campaign was undermined by the need to lean on black leadership figures who were already isolated from the core of their political base.
Rev. Meeks is just one example that illustrates this point. His willingness to cooperate was extremely helpful, but if the campaign had enjoyed a little more time they might have been able to recruit allies among black figures with a stronger reputation who would better fit the campaign’s platform.
Meeks had become alienated from the Democratic Party over a combination of his own frustrated ambitions and his virulent anti-gay, anti-abortion rhetoric. Meek’s strident social conservatism, while in line with the national party, would have been catastrophic for Rauner. As a consequence Meeks was relegated to a relatively minor, though consistently visible role in the campaign. It was an awkward alliance with limited capacity to bear fruit.
Voters in Lincoln Park who know little about politics in black communities might have been impressed by seeing Rauner appearing with Meeks. Voters on the South Side were seeing a more cynical picture, perhaps more cynical than Rauner’s campaign even realized.
A more sustained effort to build partnerships with black communities could yield considerably more value for Republicans. To work, those efforts must be premised on listening, not just giving speeches. Unfortunately, Republicans lack the simplest foundations of access to black neighborhoods. Across much of the country, GOP figures at all levels would struggle just to find phone numbers of relevant black political leaders. A great deal of work lies ahead to build the simplest connections from which the beginnings of political coordination might be constructed.
Making those efforts bear fruit will require Republicans to resist a terrible temptation. Thus far, every form of Republican outreach has been premised on a search for “the good Negro” willing to endorse the party ‘s wildest extremes without complaint or dissent. They are elevated to token roles in the hope of assuaging minority concerns. Despite our willingness to put them on stage, Republicans have demonstrated absolutely zero patience if they ever question the party line.
Our problems in minority communities are deeper than marketing or messaging. The core premise of our political program will have to be re-evaluated in light of what we learn in America’s cities. Instead of recruiting pliable tokens the party will have to start engaging in honest, sometimes painful dialogue with minority voters.
For a party that grows ever more burdened by racist rhetoric, there is no path back to relevance that does not include some uncomfortable conversations. As outlined in the first post on this subject, a reform effort will have to center on a clear statement of beliefs that breaks with current orthodoxy. Only when we are ready to reckon with disconcerting realities and make room in the party for black voters to participate on an equal footing will we start to see gains.
This reality is why an entire post premised on attracting new voters has not yet used the word “Hispanic” a single time. That is not because Hispanic and Asian voters have the same interests as the black community, or that any of these communities can be successfully addressed as a monolithic bloc. Their issue with the Republican Party doesn’t stem from their unique political interests. Their problem with the Republican Party is the way the Republican Party treats them. They way the Republican Party treats non white voters is the biggest single obstacle to winning in cities.
Solve the institutional problems that prevent a Republican, any Republican, from winning 25% of the vote in a black neighborhood, and you will have simultaneously removed the institutional liabilities that have doomed the party among other non-white voters. With that liability lifted, the party’s appeal among white urban voters will also bloom. Become competitive in black neighborhoods and the Blue Wall will crumble.
Our road back to national relevance starts by learning to partner with African-American voters. It begins with precinct leaders and activists making efforts to contact peers in the black community to and listen to them.
Rauner’s very visible willingness to run outreach in minority communities, paired with his similarly visible refusal to indulge in culture war rhetoric, convinced just enough urban voters to give him a chance. With more time and a concerted grassroots effort, Republicans could engage in a more courageous outreach deeper in black, Hispanic, and other communities from which we have been alienated. That effort could break the Blue Wall, but only if we are willing to let these new voters play a role in changing the Republican Party.
Thanks to Gov. Abbott (I guess), Obama failed to conquer Texas with his Jade Helm gambit
From the Atlantic, What College Football Means in the South
Best Simpsons reference of the day: Why Bernie Sanders’ radical economic ideas could be disastrous for America
Full text of Bernie Sanders’ speech at Liberty University
GOPLifer flashback: Peak Farmland
GOPLifer 