Sunday, November 11, 2012

Elections and the Future

The Democrats' victory in the 2012 elections--primarily President Obama's reelection but also the Democratic caucus in the senate growing by three senators*--has caused a fair amount of hand wringing among conservative circles about the future of the Republican party--the new fashion in political circles seems to be guessing which of opposition to comprehensive immigration reform, opposition to gay rights, and opposition to tax hikes for the wealthy will have been felled by the 2012 election.  I agree in large part with the long term trend of American politics, but I think it's important to keep it in perspective.





Barack Obama won the presidency last Tuesday with a resounding 332-206 electoral college victory, but it's important to view this number in context.  The electoral map this year favored president Obama; the robust electoral victory came along with just a 51-48 popular vote result, not dissimilar to the 2004 presidential election.  Furthermore this gap was due partly to the superior Democratic campaign machinery and partly to the weak Republican field.  It was also a result largely in line with what would be predicted by the state of the economy.

It is true that the Republican party will modernize because it has to modernize; my point is that it's not because of the results of what was a largely gridlocked 2012 election cycle.  The reason that the GOP will have to modernize is because it's on the wrong side of history on just about every issue that's likely to be judged unambiguously by our ancestors.  Their discrimination against gays, denial of climate change, defense  of a robust church-state connection, and mindlessly nationalistic attitude towards immigrants will not go over so well in fifty (or even twenty) years and for that reason the GOP will drift away from its positions on those issues.  But this has been true for a while.  The Democrats have won the youth vote--a leading indicator of the direction of the country--in every presidential election since 1992.  Public sentiment for gay rights has been shifting steadily in the Democrats' direction for about fifty years.  Religiosity in America, though higher than in just about every comparable country, has been dropping.  Latinos have been a quickly growing voting block in America for a while.  Rick Santorum is not going to end up being the future of the Republican party but that's been clear for a while.

Don't get me wrong, I'd much rather have a president who endorsed gay marriage instead of one who didn't really seem to give a shit about it; one who couldn't pass climate change legislation instead of one who no longer believed it was man made; one who has had some doubts about the bible instead of one who believes that a 1830s convicted fraudster spoke the word of god.  I'm glad that president Obama won.

But the need for the modernization of the Republican party has been apparent for a while, and would be true no matter who won last Tuesday's election--an election that, in a slightly different universe, could have been a victory for the GOP.

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*The Democrats gaining three seats is contingent on Sen. Angus King, an independent from Maine, caucusing with them, as he is expected to do.

9 comments:

  1. Did you leave out a footnote there?

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    1. Whoops, yup; meant to say that them gaining three seats is contingent on Angus King caucusing with the Democrats.

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  2. Do you think is it possible for third parties to become an actual thing at this point?

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    1. Unfortunately I suspect the structural disadvantages are too big--not only is there a disincentive for people to vote for third party candidates who won't win, but also people are pretty attached to their parties. Also elections in America are often pretty culture based instead of issue based which discourages lots of candidates. I'd guess that instead the Republican party moves to the left on social issues (at least some of them--gay marriage, immigration, etc.; they can keep their pro-life stance for the time being at least) and that the Democratic party continues to be center-left.

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  3. Sam -- based on recent Republican's temper tantrums, it seems they're digging their heels in even deeper. But who knows? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/15/2016-republican-romney_n_2138091.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009

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    1. Yeah there's certainly a lot of hand wringing going on in Republican circles right now in both directions--those who want to modernize and those who want to blame Romney for being unlikable and spineless. My sense, in the last few days, is that the predominant sentiment is something along the lines of "we really need to be better at making Latinos think we like them" divorced of any actual policy changes.

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  4. The ironic thing is that the Republican Party's modernization is just a resumption of what they were doing before Reagan and the conservative wing took over. I agree with your post and think the Republican Party of the future is going to closely resemble the days of Nixon and Nelson Rockfeller. Expect to see this come from moderate figures like Jon Huntsman Jr.

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    1. Yeah I agree--the early to mid 20th century Republican party, minus the racism, is probably roughly what it'll become. It'll be interesting, too, to see what they do about foreign policy; right now the two parties don't differ a whole lot which would give the Republican party the leeway to either take a libertarian, isolationist path or to take a more interventionist, we should fix broken countries path.

      Unfortunately for Hunstman himself, though, it may be another few elections before his party is ready to accept people like him.

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    2. I can tell you right now that the decision on where to go regarding foreign policy will boil down to money. If the economy is still hurting, you'll see that isolationist talk come out, pressing for nation-building at home and freer int'l trade; if not, continued building of the post-WWII "American Empire" will rage on. My hope is that opinions modernize to ones like Andrew J. Bacevich. I am doubtful this will occur anytime soon though. It's simple physics--the Republican Party has been steadily driving right ever since the staunch conservatives took power, and to reverse that momentum is going to take an even greater force (which there isn't).

      And yes, Huntsman himself won't succeed but his opinions are going to stir talks.

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