If, as expected, John McCain pulls away from Mitt Romney in tomorrow’s Super Tuesday primaries making his nomination inevitable, a legitimate question will arise as to who really wields power in the Republican party?
That’s because the movers and shakers we would ordinarily think control the party (or are able to influence it heavily) would have failed utterly and completely in derailing McCain’s Straight Talk Express. Most of the rightosphere on the internet as well as talk radio giants lined up behind Romney while the establishment politicians have swallowed whatever misgivings they have about McCain and sided with him.
Guess who wins that war?
The fact is the Republican party - like the Democratic party - is not one, single entity but rather a host of smaller parties united by electoral expedience. There is the Electronic Conservative Republican party - the aforementioned internet and talk radio bloc. Then there is the Traditional Conservative Party or Main Street Republicans who are closely allied with the Evangelical Republican Party but place less emphasis on social issues. There are Libertarian Republicans, Intellectual Republicans, even Extremist Republicans - smaller entities but present nonetheless. Then there is the Congressional Republican Party and the Presidential Republican Party that make up most of the party establishment.
The glue that held all of these separate parties together was supposed to be conservatism. The problem now is that I believe the Republican party is in a definitional crisis as to what exactly “conservatism” represents. Is it an ideology? Is it simply a label that we use for any pol who mouths allegiance to some core issues like abortion and the war? Or have many Republicans simply “moved the bar” and decided for themselves that being a conservative means supporting campaign finance reform or Kennedy-McCain immigration?
I speculated about this last week in my PJ Media column:
It could very well be that what we are seeing in the Republican party is a redefining – or perhaps more accurately, a “readjustment†– in how people identify themselves as conservatives.
Part of it could very well be based on issues. There may be many moderate and moderately conservative Republicans, as Jennifer Rubin muses in The Observer, who wish the party to do something about climate change despite the adamant opposition of many in the base. It could very well be that there is close to a majority of Republicans who want to solve the illegal immigrant problem by closing the border and then granting some kind of path to legality to those already here.
The proof is in the pudding, friends. John McCain supports those positions and is the presumptive nominee. All other GOP candidates opposed those positions and are toast.
While these positions would have been seen as “moderate†8 years ago, those McCain supporters who identify themselves as “somewhat conservative†may also hold positions on continuing the mission in Iraq, fiscal responsibility, pro-life, anti-gay marriage, and other issues where they would find agreement with the base.
In other words, the party itself may have been gradually moving toward the center over the last eight years. It is not inconceivable that there remains broad agreement on a host of issues while many conservatives have moderated their views on others.
How else do you explain McCain’s support among conservatives? So many people can’t be that ignorant of his record - not when it is has been plastered all over every media outlet for almost a month and not since Romney went on the offensive against him. We are just going to have to face the fact that a sizable number - perhaps a third - who believe themselves to be “conservative” support McCain’s stance on the issues - despite the fact that most of us can find two or three “deal breakers” when it comes to McCain’s positions on those issues.
The power in the Republican party is gravitating toward Senator McCain and his more moderate supporters. And I think we can almost guarantee that any McCain administration would give the deep freeze to conservatives when it came to cabinet appointments and other key policy positions. This may cause Rush Limbaugh to pop a blood vessel but there is little he or anyone else can do about it.
A political party and what it stands for is not set in stone. In my lifetime, Republicans have re-invented themselves twice; once in the 1950’s when the party of the isolationist Taft gave way to the internationalist Eisenhower. Then again in the 1970’s as the seeds planted by Barry Goldwater bore fruit and blossomed into the Party of Reagan.
Could such a shift be happening again? Unless you want to believe that millions of primary voters who will cast their ballot for John McCain tomorrow are idiots and don’t pay attention to what’s going on, you must accept that there has been a fundamental shift in the balance of power in the Republican party away from the old Reagan coalition and toward a still forming mass of more centrist, less doctrinaire conservatives.
4:57 pm
With regards to the PJ Media column, can you really put “continuing the mission in Iraq” and “fiscal responsibility” in the same sentence? That would imply both can be accomplished concurrently. It is impossible to claim “fiscal responsibility” while we spend $120+ billion in Iraq annually and are running a $400+ billion budget deficit. The only way to achieve “fiscal responsibility” and maintain our presence in Iraq is to cut $400+ billion in domestic spending. What is the chance that is politically feasible?
4:59 pm
or could it be that conservatives are simply coalescing behind the candidate that they think can beat the Democrat? I think electability is the silver bullet here not a shift in ideology.
5:04 pm
If McCain represents the mainstream of the GOP as you content it will be most interesting seeing your explanation of his defeat at the polls come November. When a party’s leadership ignores the will of its members its defeat is predictable. Exactly how does McCain represent the will of the GOP?
Did the GOP embrace McCain’s Gang of 14? Did it embrace his amnesty? Did it embrace his decision to renounce tax cuts? I for one would rather vote for Osama or the Hildabeast. Better a real Marxist than a closet one.
5:11 pm
If the party wants to be known as a conservative party, then actually being conservative might be a good place to start.
Otherwise, all I see is GOD GOD GOD! GAY GAY GAY! ABORTION ABORTION ABORTION! Followed closely with massive hypocrisy.
Republicans had almost total control of every branch of government for almost seven years. If they were enacting their ideals in that time, the fruit of that labor certainly doesn’t align itself with any form of conservatism I’d like to be a part of.
All it does is make me feel disappointed and bitter and totally betrayed because I actually voted for some of them. Sigh.
5:30 pm
THIS is why I started calling myself a reactionary a few years ago…
5:35 pm
There definitely has been a shift, and its net effect has been to emasculate the shrinking herd of those that can be called American Conservatives, those that strongly believe in either governmental or economic conservatism, in favor of foreign-policy-based European conservatism with just a dash of social conservatism. First, every candidate who has espoused a smaller, federalist, Constitutionally-bound government, from Fred Thompson to Ron Paul, from Duncan Hunter to Tom Tancredo, has been summarily rejected by the GOP. All of them except the blind-to-history Ron Paul have realized this and departed the field, and Paul won’t win because his foreign policy is modern European liberalism.
Now, the target is the last person who can be considered an economic conservative, Mitt Romney. Even though his only contested win has come as a result of a move toward socialism (beyond the massive socialism that MassachussetsCare represents), and he cannot possibly be credibly called a small-government type, that is not enough for the big-government socialists that have taken hold of the masses. He dared to speak the American Conservative language throughout, even as he both campaigned in the past and governed as a centrist.
Even social conservatives aced themselves out of the process. In their rush to join in the bums rush on the remainder of the American Conservative movement to claim “top dog” status, they failed to recognize that the alternatives either hate their guts (McCain, Giuliani) or are outright socialists who display rank incompetence in foreign policy (Huckabee).
In sum, while there is still one last major difference between Republicans and Democrats (the War on Terror), 70 years of almost-unchecked growth of government and vilification of “Big Business” have successfully crushed the small-government tendencies of America and its attendant side issues.
Welcome to Europe.
6:14 pm
I think the party is headed for the kind of purging that happened in the Goldwater revolution, which laid the stage for Reagan and broke the grip of the northeastern RINOS. The latter, as hardy as cockroaches, look to regain the levers of power once again meaning the house must once again be burned down to drive out the vermin. As for your larger point, I think a lot of Republicans — God bless ‘em — believe McCain’s lies about what he’ll do to control illegal immigration.
6:23 pm
Some of us are old enough to remember what being a Goldwater Republican means. As a result, I’m very disappointed with the entire lot of them.
6:57 pm
I really do believe that a substantial portion of the Republican base does not pay attention to the issues very closely. It’s not that they’re idiots. It’s more that they only hang around the edges. I see this day after day after day when I speak to people who I know are Republicans. It always surprises me how many of them know so little about how liberal John McCain really is. Most Republicans I know couldn’t tell you who were the champions in the Senate standing up against the amnesty forces. They don’t know who Jim DeMint is or Jeff Sessions. They’ve heard of McCain-Feingold, but they’re not sure what the problem is with it. The Gang of 14, didn’t that have something to do with judges?
Most people aren’t immersed in politics like you are, Rick.
7:17 pm
I think the term ‘fiscal responsibility’ in relation to Conservatism is about not spending tax dollars on stupid stuff like Woodstock Museum for LSD-flashbacking millionaires or offering rebates to bail out anyone who faces bankruptcy while at the same time obtaining home improvment loans or breast inlargement boobs.
Provide support and funds to defend America against foreign and domestic enemies is required under the Constitution.
‘then actually being conservative might be a good place to start’
-I haven’t seen GAY,GAY,GAY since what’s-his-face caught toe tapping toes in public bathroom but that wasn’t as big as The Foley Scandal,
-the GOD,GOD,God I see coming from a progressive Leftist former Preacher whose governing indicates he is not Conservative.
-you do have a point with the ABORTION,ABORTON,ABORTION; but what the heck that issue will never be resolved when there are Methodist ministers endorsing politicians(Obama) who voted to continue stuff like partial-birth abortion practice.
Rick
I have noticed for sometime now about the Centrist Party, I think it goes back to the Happy America under Clinton. The Republican Establishment figured that for a Republican to win against Gore and the medias bias towards Republican, triangulation would worked better than Conservativism.
It worked, Bush had to offer the Prescription Drug Plan in order to get the the largest voting block in America and a guest worker program for the Open Border Corporatists and their social justice activists.
Side note: over the last several years is has been interesting to see anti-Global anarchists and open border Socialists marching on behalf of Global Corporatists slave trading cheap labor.
7:18 pm
Not sure how the line-out happened, not intentional.
7:25 pm
“Unless you want to believe that millions of primary voters who will cast their ballot for John McCain tomorrow are idiots and don’t pay attention to what’s going on…”
I don’t know Rick, this seems a rather plausible theory to me. Wasn’t it you who posted the blurb on AT about all the Brittons who believe Churchill was fictitous, and Sherlock Holmes a real person? What do you suppose a similar survey in the US would show?
8:00 pm
Why do you think that McCain will give the deep freeze to conservatives in the cabinet? He may not have a whole lot of support from the electronic conservatives, but he’s got plenty of support from conservatives in the Senate and among the governors.
I agree with Ray Coppola; McCain’s win reflects realism on the part of the party. McCain is the most conservative candidate who can win. This is not shaping up as a good year for the GOP, and those who ignore that are just begging for a fiasco like 1964.
And you know, it would help if the people griping that McCain’s not conservative enough actually had a pony in the race. The idea that Fred Thompson or Mitt Romney is a “real” conservative and John McCain is not is ludicrous. If you really wanted a rock-ribbed con, why didn’t people support, oh, Sam Brownback? Because he wasn’t going to win?
10:02 pm
tHePeOPle,
I like you have the distinct feeling that I was betrayed be those that were elected to shrink the size and scope of the Central Committee. They didn’t do what they were supposed to and the election of 2006 was a total repudiation of the RINOs. I don’t think the message went far enough and if McCain is the nominee, I think you will see another, more resounding, message sent to the Republican Party.
6:00 am
I read an interesting article at
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/691uddvk.asp
about the makeup of the voters who identify as conservative.
“McCain is probably the only Republican who can win as Reagan did. In 1980, in a three-man race, Reagan won 26 percent of Democrats and 30 percent of independents. In 1984, in a two-man race, he won 26 percent of Democrats again, plus 63 percent of independents. Nor did Reagan by any means always govern from the right. He often wisely bent his sincerely held conservative principles in order to get a legislative half-loaf, a partial regulatory rollback, and so on.”
7:25 am
[...] Rick Moran is absolutely right. There has been a shift in power. The power in the Republican party is gravitating toward Senator McCain and his more moderate supporters. And I think we can almost guarantee that any McCain administration would give the deep freeze to conservatives when it came to cabinet appointments and other key policy positions. This may cause Rush Limbaugh to pop a blood vessel but there is little he or anyone else can do about it. [...]
8:03 am
Great. Now I have to add “definitional crisis” to my web lexicon.
*sigh*
9:19 am
Somehow I’m thinking that the McCain rush may be more of a function of name recognition and time in grade than an ideological seismic shift.
Now the more pressing question: where’s a physically fit, anarcho-libertarian nihilist supposed go? I didn’t leave my party; it left me.
9:33 am
tHePeOPle,
I agree the republicans blew it. They were elected to shrink the size and scope of the Central Committee and they didn’t do it. They acted just like their ‘brither’ across the aisle. The 2006 election was a repudiation of their lack of courage and will. I think if McCain is the nominee there will be another, more substantial, message of discontent to the Republican Party.
JMHO
10:36 am
J, if you are so worried about the $120 billion/year being spent in Iraq to secure a nation that would be an ally in the war against terror smack dab in the middle of the Middle East, then perhaps you would not be against offsetting that cost by no longer giving billions ($7 bil a year in Texas alone) to illegal immigrants that we spend to provide them with medical care, housing, food stamps, WIC, TANF,education for their kids and the extra costs to police departments, jails, our court system and our prisons when they commit crimes?
But I always find that those who complain about what we spend in Iraq never mention what we spend on illegals. Why is that? Why do you resent what we spend on a people that were oppressed by a dictator but do not seem to resent what we spend on those who seem unwilling to make their own nation better and are free to do so?
If McCain takes the nomination, it will be fun to watch how the NYTs, the LA Times, the Boston Globe and other left leaning media turn on him as he goes up against the Democratic annointed one. He will no longer be the “favorite son”, he will be the road block to the D’s trip to the Oval Office. And they will slaughter him.
The Republican Party has been trying for the last decade to become the party of inclusion; you don’t agree with us? Fine, we have a seat at the table for you and so we will not convert you, we will become like you so you feel more at home. This policy is what Reagan changed. But Reagan is gone, and the powers think it is time to go back to a kinder, gentler party, the party that gave us Gerald Ford and Bob Dole, both losers.
Either way, with HillBilly/Obama or McCain, those of us core conservatives will lose.
Now McCain is saying on TV that he will get OBL. If he has the knowledge of how to do that, why has he not shared that with President Bush? Is it not his duty to give closure to all the families of those who died on 9/11? My guess is McCain is so vindictive he would really withhold information from the adminstration to further his own career.
No, I will not vote McCain. Not on March 4 and not in November.
11:18 am
You know, I enjoy your blog, but often find your analysis to be off base. McCain is benifiting from non Republicans voting in open primaries or registering as Republicans in closed primaries to vote for him (the latter being a credit to him). Romney has pulled almost as many primary votes AND leads McCain far and away among core Republican votes. He just can’t overcome the independent influence on the primaries. The Republican establishment gravitating towards McCain really isn’t proof of underlying McCain support. It is just proof that the party apparatus wants to try to win an election and sees McCain as the best vehicle to do that.
It is a reminder of something that Jonah Goldberg writes about often. The purpose of the party is to win elections. The purpose of the idealoges is to win the arguments. The conservative movement is adrift because those of us who care more about the issues, have made two fundamental mistakes.
1. We accepted almost anything and anybody with an “R” associated with it as a conservative. Bush has been as far away from a conservative during his time in office as any President since Nixon. Bush’s expansion of government powers, his expansion of goverment influence in education and health care, his overall reckless spending, and his failure to enforce the immigration laws are a far cry from conservative. And, of course his aggressive foreign policy isn’t conservative either (although I support him on it). And, don’t get me started on the pork whores in congress. Bush and that crew have surrendered the Republican claim to “fiscal responsibility” forever.
2. We were afflicted with BDDS - Bush Deranged Defense Syndrome. We didn’t attack Bush when he started doing stupid stuff - far ahead of 9/11 because we felt defensive towards him in the aftermath of Florida and rabid partisan attacks from day one. We allowed our oppostion to the democrats to push us closer to Bush as he drove the Republican Bus off of the cliff.
3. We accepted the “half loaf” the administration offered. Good judges, guns, stem cells, and lower taxes were offered up while the government wasted trillions of dollars and expanded the welfare state and the entitlement mentality, putting us one step further down the road towards socialized medicine.
So, what do we have to do? If McCain is the nominee, then we need to seriously consider sitting out the election. The Republic can survive 4-8 years of either the shrew or the Manchurian candidate. But the party couldn’t survive a President McCain. A gigantic defeat of a McCain while the conservaties sit on their hands and sit out the election would be just what the party needs in the form of a reality check.
11:28 am
[...] What Would A McCain Nomination Mean To The Republican Party? Be SURE to read Rick Moran who is one of the best conservative bloggers on the Internet (whose stuff would also be great on newspaper op-ed pages, if newspaper editors were wise enough to pluck talent from blogtopia…and you know who invented that word…) [...]
1:00 pm
Juan said: “Some of us are old enough to remember what being a Goldwater Republican means. As a result, I’m very disappointed with the entire lot of them.”
This is an important concept. Goldwater was an insurgent against the Rockefeller-type establishment. So was Reagan. Nixon was practically a socialist when compared to the current conservative ideal (price controls, massive govt. social programs). The ‘conservative movement’ got alot stronger with the Reagan presidency and later the ‘94 congressional takeover, but modern conservatives have never owned the party. Bush 41 was not a ‘movement conservative’ and Bush 43 really isn’t either, though they both embraced some of the movements principles.
BTW, John Bolton is the only contemporary Republican I’ve heard refer to himself as a ‘Goldwater conservative’, though I’m sure there must be others.
1:32 pm
The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the - Web Reconnaissance for 02/05/2008 A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day…so check back often.
2:13 pm
“…you must accept that there has been a fundamental shift in the balance of power in the Republican party away from the old Reagan coalition and toward a still forming mass of more centrist, less doctrinaire conservatives.”
If McCain (a budget hawk rather than a tax cutter) makes us the “balanced budget” party, that’s all for the good. If McCain keeps us in a place where a strong, aggressive defense manned by a smart and powerful military and is an essential part of our national policy, that’s all for the good. If we wind up muting the shrill cries of the Al Gores of the world by balancing environmental and commercial concerns instead of treating the issue as a zero-sum game, that’s all for the good. If we wind up with a compromise package on immigration reform, that’s certainly better than what we’ve got now! And if McCain somehow gets us past the electoral cul-de-sac that is abortion, that’s all for the good (I don’t think that’s within his capabilities, though).
3:49 pm
This morning here in NYC at my gym I overheard three elderly women discussing who to vote for. They’re Democrats (clue: we don’t want eight more years of the last eight years, of course it’s only been seven years) who apparently do not a have much love for either Clinton or Obama. One recommended voting for McCain, her reasoning was that McCain is old and “would croak over dead in this first term” which would mean in 2012 they get a better Democrat selection. Another agreed saying “especially if he selects Huckabee as his VP”
I don’t believe Democrats are all that united around either Democrat choice and are simply basing all their hopes on McCain dying in office. Rather sick reason to vote, but I think this is what’s happening; they’re voting for the old guy so they can get this election over, the Clinton’s out and begin campaigning for 2012.
4:19 pm
I believe that the first part of Rick’s last paragraph is unfortunately more accurate than that the party is shifting. It is not really stupidity, but it is a lack of knowledge or any desire to get informed. I’m a news/political junky conservative Christian. Most of the people I talk to don’t even want to discuss politics. One or two points and that’s it. Then it is on to “Well, who is going to win the Super Bowl, American Idol?” or worse yet…”Did you know Macy’s is having a big sale today?” I get so frustrated so I spend my time hanging out reading sites like this where people are informed and want to have some kind of intelligent discussion. But in the Republican party we ARE in the minority. Most Democrats I know don’t know anything about issues either, but they are all excited about being the party that elects the “American Idol” candidate, i.e. Barak Obama.