For all the talk about division among Democrats througout the primary season and its aftermath, a look at the Texas Republican Convention this weekend underscores the fact that the GOP may have a much bigger problem with party unity. On one hand, the libertarian wing of the party, currently represented by Ron Paul, feels that the party has gotten away from what they see as its core values of limited govermment and fiscal conservatism. They're also unhappy at being marginalized within a party that has been dominated for the last few years by neoconservatives and evangelicals. At the convention this week, as they have at earlier state conventions, the Paulites registered their discontent by using parliamentary procedure in order to throw a monkey wrench into the proceedings, using parliamentary inquiries and points of order to bring the convention to a near standstill and cause sessions to run hours later than scheduled. These folks are not happy campers:
In a passionate and well-received speech, Robert McDonald, a Ron Paul supporter and candidate for the Republican National Committee, warned delegates that, “It’s time to stop demonizing Democrats and to start figuring out what we stand for.” He said, “Some seeds have been sown here [that] if not addressed will bear a bitter harvest.”
Ron Paul has conceded defeat in the race for the Republican nomination, but he still hasn't endorsed John McCain yet and probably won't. Another disgruntled Republican, Bob Barr, has abandoned the party altogether and is now the presidential nominee of the Libertarian Party. Paul hasn't indicated whether or not he will endorse Bob Barr, or is considering doing so, but whether or not he does, it's not hard to imagine a sizeable percentage of the Paulites voting for him this November, if for no other reason than to register a protest vote.
This represents a real problem for the Republicans, much more than the overblown threat of Hillary Clinton supporters voting for McCain or staying home. Most of Hillary's supporters have begun lining up for Obama, and a lot of the ones who haven't done so sound so much like Republicans that it's hard to imagine that many of them ever seriously planned to vote for a Democrat this fall. Don't take my word for it - if you have the stomach, wade through the rancid pool of filth at former CIA spook Larry Johnson's blog and get a load of the way that the people there talk about not just Obama, but Democrats in general. There aren't a whole lot of Democrats who throw around the label "Marxist" the way that these people do so casually. In the end, much of the "division" exhibited in the Democratic nominaton process this time around was an extended and overhyped version of what both parties go through every four years for the most part. It was made a little more complicated by the fact that the last two Dems standing were an African-American and a woman both taking their own shot at making history, but most Democratic voters realize that putting aside Hillary's vote for the Iraq War and the debate over health insurance mandates, there's very little real policy difference between the two - what really set them apart was their approach to political process, and that's not going to be enough to tear the party apart at the seams, like some in the media have suggested.
The Republicans, on the other hand, are divided along philosophical lines, and those kind of divisions are much more dangerous to a party's electoral prospects - especially in an election cycle where the general level of dissatisfaction is running so high. And they're facing this problem on more than one front - evangelicals are also beginning to grow frustrated with their standing in the GOP, and they have been among the party's most dependable voters. Part of this is based on the party's nominee of choice this election cycle. McCain has always tried to promote himself as a "maverick," and on some occasions he's done so by speaking out against extremists like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. Of course, he's still a panderbot, and he's tried to reach out to evangelicals by actively seeking the endorsements of people like John Hagee and Rod Parsley. But he also knows that, especially because of the threat of thousands of Ron Paul supporters voting Libertarian, he's going to need the votes of independents and right-friendly Democrats to win the election. That's why he ultimately ended up repudiating the endorsements of Hagee and Parsley when some of their more noxious past statements came to the public's attention, and he'll have to continue walking this tightrope throughout the election cycle. Many evangelicals understand this, and they're not too happy about not being the center of attention:
“Obviously, the base of the party is not really excited about John McCain,” said Tim Lambert of Lubbock, who heads the state’s largest home-school organization. “I think he’s not reaching out to the base, not reaching out to the evangelicals. Bob Dole made that mistake in 1996.”
This week’s state GOP convention underscored how much work Mr. McCain needs to do if he hopes to rally Christian conservatives. Many delegates explained their support for Mr. McCain in terms of their opposition to Barack Obama.
“I’m going to support McCain and try to help people see the reality of the total picture and how dangerous Barack Obama is,” said state Sen. Dan Patrick, a conservative talk-radio host with a strong evangelical following. “There is no other choice.”
[...] Mr. McCain has had a bumpy ride with evangelicals this year.
He jettisoned the endorsements of two prominent megachurch pastors, including John Hagee, over past controversial statements they’ve made.
This week, some Southern Baptists have questioned the McCain campaign’s absence at the group’s annual meeting. Four years ago, the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign hosted a reception at the event.
Perhaps the nation’s most influential Christian right personality, James Dobson, has served notice he won’t vote for Mr. McCain.
McCain is effectively juggling with burning torches, having to address the concerns of three different groups of Republican voters - libertarians, neoconservatives, and evangelicals - and any misstep he makes could cost him the election this fall. He faces a huge challenge in picking his running mate, which runs the risk of alienating one or more of these groups that he needs to win. Picking Mitt Romney, for example, might win him points with fiscal conservatives, but it will surely provoke the ire of evangelicals, partly because Romney is a Mormon, but mostly because they want one of their own - preferrably Mike Huckabee - to get the nod. But if McCain picks Huckabee, he runs the risk of further alienating libertarians, who are already poised to jump ship, because of Huckabee's dominionist religious leanings; and fiscal conservatives see Huckabee as little better than Democrats on economic issues.
But ultimately McCain is not the main source of the GOP's problems. Evangelicals seem to have started waking up to the fact they they routinely get sold a bill of goods on social issues in election cycle after election cycle, and young evangelicals in particular have begun to place less emphasis on sexual politics and focus more on the morality of economic and environmental policy. Libertarians, on the other hand, are dissatisfied with the neoconservative approach to the war against terrorism, which involves decades of protracted, expensive warfare in the Middle East and a casual disregard for civil liberties and the rule of law. They are also frustrated at the growing general proclivity of their party toward pork-barrel spending, graft, and corruption. Witness, for example, the considerable discontent among Texas Republicans over Rick Perry's road to perdition, the Trans-Texas Corridor, as well as David Dewhurst's idea of requiring fingerprints on state IDs:
Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, attuned to the anti-corridor sentiments among the grassroots, condemned the project in his speech to the convention on Thursday. “You can’t build toll roads in rural Texas,” said Dewhurst, who, in 2003, pushed the Trans-Texas Corridor legislation through the Texas Senate and has done little since to change it. “And, for heaven’s sake, don’t mess with Texas’ private-property rights!”
(Dewhurst was lustily booed later in the speech when he proposed putting Texans’ fingerprints on drivers’ licenses. We can’t remember the last time an elected Republican was booed at the state convention.)
Many delegates are still angry over Gov. Perry’s effort to mandate the HPV vaccine last year, and, the expanded business tax that Perry pushed through the Legislature in 2006.
Democrats had a contentious fight over the presidential nomination the last few months, but the nomination is settled now, and most of us are waking up to the fact that our differences are largely cosmetic in nature. The divisions in the Republican party are centered on ideology, and they aren't going to go away after the election this November.
Recent Comments