Reconciling the GOP before it's dead

 

The Republican Party is in a crisis. Or at least, it will be soon.

 

This isn’t just about losing a presidential election. Mitt Romney’s campaign had too many missteps, almost from the beginning, to stand much of a chance against the well-oiled machine that was President Barack Obama’s campaign. And the status quo in the Senate and more importantly the House was largely maintained, which can be considered a win for the GOP.

 

And yet, there seems to be a feeling in the air that the writing is on the wall for the party of Abraham Lincoln.

 

Demographics are not on the GOP’s side: The party’s base is older, richer, white, churchgoing males, a group that is shrinking more and more all the time. Blacks and Hispanics tend to vote Democratic; in the case of the latter group, many are alienated by almost xenophobic immigration stances from some within the Republican Party. But it’s not just along racial lines: As more and more families fall down the socioeconomic ladder, more and more voters are looking for someone to help them and not the folks ordering layoffs. Worst of all for the GOP: Young voters are almost overwhelmingly voting Democratic. While Winston Churchill likely wouldn’t be surprised by that fact and might argue that as these voters age they may drift rightward, more modern political theorists have argued that if a voter consistently votes a certain way for the first three or four major elections of his life, that voter will begin to consider himself a Democrat or a Republican, depending on that particular leaning. If there’s even a chance that theory holds any water, then Republicans could be at risk of seeing Generation Y turn away from them for good.

 

Soon, the Republicans could find themselves without ample constituency to exist even as a viable opposition party. I, as a fiscally conservative, socially liberal, moderate independent with some libertarian leanings, fear a Democratic supermajority — that is, 60 seats in the Senate, a majority in the House and a Democratic presidential administration — with which they won’t need to compromise or in any way temper their bills to satisfy anyone but the far left.

 

Such a stranglehold on power by any one party is a dangerous situation, because power corrupts. At the very least, the lack of an effective opposition party leaves the ruling party unchecked. The dangers of such a situation could be seen in the first six years of George W. Bush’s administration, leading to the Iraq war among other issues, and the first two years of the Obama administration, during which a Democratic-led effort to overhaul the nation’s health-care system resulted in a fairly unpopular mandate for all individuals to purchase insurance.

 

Unfortunately, if the Republicans don’t overhaul some policy positions to appeal to more voters then they will be relegated to irrelevance, powerless to provide the sort of checks and balances the framers of the Constitution envisioned, rather than being a healthy, viable opposition party. The first step toward preserving some of the Republican Party is to reconcile its various factions by finding what’s truly important.

 

One of the biggest problems facing the Republican Party is how fractured it is now. Between the Religious Right and the Tea Party and fiscal conservatives and moderates, there are many voices fighting for dominance within the party, or even just to be heard. In our current political system, both parties are more like coalitions, with several factions banded together under some common threads. However, the Republican coalition appears far less united than the Democratic one, and that’s a problem. As it is now, the Tea Party, the Religious Right, a number of civil libertarians, and various other factions are fighting for influence among Republicans. Until they can unite on common ground, Republicans can’t speak with one voice, which is important. If they don’t find common ground, they risk fracturing further, possibly even to the point of breaking apart, as the Whigs did when the Republican Party was created in the mid-18th century.

 

Most, if not all, of those factions can probably agree on one thing: smaller government. For decades, the GOP focused its rhetoric on lower taxes and less spending. Now, it has drifted away from that somewhat, with a focus on social issues and unpopular foreign policy. But if the various Republican factions can find some common ground to bind them together — and fiscal conservatism is the ideal place to start looking — they can form a stronger core to move forward and begin drawing in new voters. However, that would be only a starting point.

 

Another serious problem the Republicans face is alienating large swaths of voters with both policy positions and hardline rhetoric on a number of issues. One of the fastest-growing segments of the population is Hispanics. For many Hispanic voters, immigration reform is a very important issue. Many of the louder elements in the GOP spend so much time, money, and effort speaking forcefully against immigration reform, or even worse, they advocate for tighter immigration laws, with some state legislatures even passing immigration-enforcement laws that border on racial profiling. Such laws and rhetoric drive away Hispanic voters in droves, even voters that otherwise would fall squarely in line with Republican ideology. Gay marriage is another singular issue that similarly aligns voters — not just homosexuals, but the growing proportion of heterosexuals who sympathize, or at least are tolerant of, the gay-rights plight. Hardline positions on gay marriage aren’t just pushing voters away; they’re also quickly becoming an unwinnable battle. More and more states are approving same-sex marriage, with a few even passing the practice through popular vote. The Religious Right’s insistence on fighting same-sex marriage tooth and nail alienates voters in the same way that other Republican factions’ positions on immigration alienate Hispanics. There are other issues and positions that push voters away from the GOP as well, ranging from special treatment for the richest Americans to wars abroad. The other key to saving the GOP as a viable opposition party, then, is to figure out which of those battles to fight, and maybe find new ways to fight them.

 

Ultimately, the GOP is at a crossroads. The fractured party can continue on the path it’s on now: Favoring the shrinking upper class at the expense of the middle class and the growing lower class, fighting battles on a number of issues that are appealing to fewer and fewer voters, pushing to take part in wars in other countries, and watching voters slip away. Or it can try to unite its bickering factions on the common ground of fiscal conservatism, and either toss aside or tone down other, less-important issues in an effort to attract more voters from the middle. It may never be enough to retake most power, but it is necessary for surviving in any form to influence legislation and policy.