The Strange Impotence of the Republican Party
Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan have the parliamentary skills but not the political authority. Trump has the authority but not the skills. Probably not the desire, either: A tight-lipped numbers nerd like Ryan must be about as congenial to the president as a tax auditor in Mar-a-Lago. Their shotgun political marriage has all the sincerity, and passion, of Charles and Diana.
.. the G.O.P.’s problems aren’t mainly a matter of personality. They’re a matter of mentality.
.. We are living in an era of party failure, especially on the right.
.. The high-toned explanation for these serial rebukes of the establishment by the base is that the former has failed to address the anxieties and disgruntlements of the latter: immigration and culture shocks; wage stagnation and the stresses of a globalized world.
But globalization, immigration and changing social mores have been with us for a long time without producing awful political outcomes. What’s new is the existence — and metastasis — of the fury factories of the right, from Fox News to Breitbart to Frontpage Mag.
.. Opinion journalism is meant to influence and inflame, and it does. Especially in an age in which civics is taught poorly (and, increasingly, rarely), people are politically suggestible. Bill O’Reilly is now the right’s historian, Mark Levin its go-to legal expert, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham its moral conscience. These are not ideas guys. They’re anger guys. Their specialty is the communication of rage to an audience prone to histrionics.
.. Should it be any wonder that a Republican Party with almost complete control of government has turned so fiercely on itself? Dominant parties often do that when they have little to fear politically from the nominal opposition party.
.. As in economics, so too in G.O.P. politics: Gresham’s law applies. Bad money drives out good. Bad Republicans drive out good ones. When nastiness sells, the worst rise.
.. Anger is an excellent emotion for pushing ratings and winning elections and a terrible one for agreeing to compromises and crafting legislation. This won’t end as long as Trump is in the White House. Whether it won’t also be the end of the Republican Party as a functional institution is another question.
Comments:
Tim C
Agree with all you’ve said here, Brett. Except for one thing: It’s not anger that’s driving those folks into Trump’s base, into Brexit, into the European far right; it’s fear. Sure, it looks like anger, but most of those folks are actually angry because they’re afraid that a globalized, digitized world has passed them by and rendered them superfluous. It’s not anger; it’s fear.