The Republican Party's virtual collapse has left neo-conservatives discredited and facing policy extinction.
Neo-conservatives used the Republican Party as a vehicle to promote and employ their policies of muscular nation-building overseas. But like the parasite that eventually kills its host, the Republican Party's virtual collapse, in large part because of the failed nation-building adventure in Iraq, has left neo-conservatives discredited and facing policy extinction. Unfortunately, neo-conservatism will probably live on by changing hosts.
Throughout American history, the structure of the political systems has ensured that only two major parties would be viable at any one time. They haven't always been the Democrats and Republicans. They have always been the Democrats and one other party. First, it was the Federalists, then the Whigs, and finally, from just prior to the Civil War to the present, the Republicans.
The Republicans started out as a regional party of the Northeast. The only reason they ever took power away from the Democrats, the only true national party at the time of the Civil War, was because the Democratic Party split into northern and southern wings over the slavery issue. Thus, the Civil War was essentially caused by the fracture of the Democratic Party. Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 election with only 39.8 percent of the national popular vote, beating two Democrats and one minor party candidate. Southern states, fearing a Republican's potential policies on slavery, didn't even wait until Lincoln's inauguration before they began to secede from the union.
Ironically, today, the Republican Party, which once had hopes of becoming the majority party in the country, has followed George W. Bush over a cliff and has once again been reduced to largely a regional party of the old South and a few other conservative states. As long as Democrats in more libertarian mountain states stand up for gun rights, most states in that entire region are ripe for permanent status in the Democratic column. The most telling moment in the 2008 election was when Arizona, the Republican nominee's home state, was too close to call. It would have gone Democratic had a native son not been running.
If the Republican Party doesn't now move to extinction like its Federalist and Whig predecessors, it is likely to remain only a regional party for a long while. Its intolerant conservative social views scare most other Americans. More important, the one issue on which many Republican conservatives differed from President Bush — immigration — could be the death knell of the party. When the party alienated Hispanics (including even some Cubans, who were previously one of the most loyal Republican constituencies), the fastest growing minority in the United States, with nativist diatribes on immigration, other minorities, such as Asians and Native Americans, realized that they could be victimized too. In the 1990s, Republican Governor Pete Wilson made California overwhelmingly Democratic with his immigration policies. The same has just happened at the national level. After the immigration debate in the late Bush years, it will be hard for the Republican Party to ever woo back Hispanics.
Does the long-term demise (and maybe extinction) of the GOP leave the neo-conservatives up the creek without a paddle? Not necessarily.
The neo-conservatives started out as liberals and socialists in the Democratic Party. They were never really that conservative on economic policy, only belligerent in foreign and defense policies. And in those two latter policy areas, the Democratic Party is still dominated by their close cousins, the liberal Wilsonian interventionists. Although the liberal Wilsonians — such as Hillary Clinton, Richard Holbrooke, and Madeleine Albright — are less unilateralist than the neo-conservatives and are much more in love with international organizations, they share the neo-conservatives' passion for armed social work and nation-building. Besides, when you're deep in the wilderness and your horse is dying, you can't be too concerned with pimples on your new steed. The neo-conservatives will probably eventually realize that the Republican Party is dying, and will seamlessly re-infest the Democratic mother ship to preserve themselves. And again, they will probably severely debilitate their host.
Republished with permission from the Independent Institute.
“Its intolerant conservative social views scare most other Americans.” Aside from the fact that polls show that most people are pro-life, and Prop 8 passed in liberal California, and defense of marriage initiatives passed in nearly every state in which they were put up for a vote, this statement is true.
In a nutshell the author simply wishes that Republicans were more like Democrats. Well, that worked out real well with McCain, didn’t it?
Mr. Eland has proven to know very little about drives hispanics, particularly Cubans, to or from parties.
Want to know who drove Cubans away from the Democratic party and why? JFK for lack of air support in the Bay of Pigs.
Want to know what keeps Cubans away? The Democrats tolerance to far left ideology and embracing of leftist dictators and communists.
Also why would Hispanics feel alienated by an immigration policy that serves to legitimize and protect their citizenship? Or do you mean it alienates the illegals who shouldn’t even be voting to begin with (to put it nicely)?
“the Republican Party’s virtual collapse, in large part because of the failed nation-building adventure in Iraq, has left neo-conservatives discredited and facing policy extinction.”
This could have been written by Harry Reid.
Newsflash: it’s May 5, 2009. The Iraqi Republic yet stands.
WE BUILT A NATION. Face it. The other nation? Still a work in process. As for this being an “adventure,” once again: face it. Iraq and Afghanistan together represent our decade’s Moon Program. Warts and all, this is our greatest accomplishment.
Yes, we should have decapitated Saddam like Sonny Chiba decapitating a coke bottle – leaving the bottle upright beneath it. Even this would’ve been a lesser accomplishment – Iraq, for the next 20 years under a “kinder” authoritarian military rule – Ba’ath without the rape rooms. Instead, we achieved something better. Several successful elections; a constitution; Saddam duly tried and executed by Iraqi due process.
We neocons erred in not insisting that the American public know the name of that woman with the purple dye on her upraised fingers. We never knew the names of the Baghdad Police. Yes, we all gave love to the American troops. But our allies remained lost in a brown Muslim mass. And so we lost the argument about the war.
It should never have been possible for a sensible person to argue “They’re just having a civil war over there.”
Straight off the heels of praising Barack Obama, the one trick pony returns to his one trick…claiming the war is lost. Why this site continues to publish this clown is beyond me.
Big sigh! Once again Eland is counting his chickens too soon.
Eland shows a fundamental misunderstanding (or deliberate misconstruction) of American political history, the Civil War and its causes, and the Republican base. The Republicans did indeed have their main strength in the Northeast, but also had considerable support across the rest of the north and even into border states; as cannot be marginalized as narrowly as Eland makes it. The Democrat Party split was a result of intensifying regional differences going back many decades that led to splits within all parties, demise of the Whigs, and across regional boundaries; a split from which it never really recovered. The fracturing of the Democrat Party, then, was merely an eleventh-hour prelude to secession. That it occurred prior to the larger split merely reflects last-ditch realignments and attempts at prevention. The Democrats held together only as long as the Whig Party survived. With that gone, northern-Democrats no longer felt constrained to the party of Jefferson and Jackson; a party they no identified with wholeheartedly. Eland further ignores the American Civil War was not the first time succession was tried. He also ignores both the name and composition of the new Republican Party were Democrat in origin, because the new party absorbed the many splinter groups too whom the Democrats had become ‘too stodgy’ (i.e., conservative). The new Republican Party included some ex-Whigs (abolitionists), but also many radical-Democrats. The very name ‘Republican’ was stolen from the Democrats (Republican was original name of Democrat Party under Jefferson).
New England started movements to bolt the Union four times between 1803 and 1843 for much the same reasons the South bolted later; which cannot be a result of a Democrat split. Likewise the Missouri-Kansas-Nebraska violence came dangerously close to a Southern secession before the split. Even our American Revolution was a secessionist movement; underscoring the fierce independence Americans felt in that era. The wonder, then, was not the union failed in 1861; the wonder was it held together that long against intense regional frictions and non-conformism. The main friction was slavery in the territories and retrieval laws creating intense worries amongst northerners slavery would be made the standard in all states. On the southern side, the battle over slavery was compounded by the punitive tariffs and a rapidly growth of north threatening to leave the South without political influence. The decision to secede in 1861, then, was a calculation the power shift had already happened, leaving the south vulnerable in defense of slavery and way of life. An old way was being overtaken by new ways so fast that violence seemed, to many, unavoidable. So, once again, Mr. Eland has mistaken effects with causes in a feeble attempt at explaining away reality. Both party split and secession were results, Mr. Eland; not causes.
Worse than all this, Eland misses that the composition of early-19th century, late-19th / early-20th century, and late-20th century Democrat Parties are entirely different group representations; belying the continuity and strenth he supposes. DP demographics are so vastly different we cannot call it them the same things or assume it promotes the same or similar principles. Whereas the early-19th century DP was agrarian-libertarian, the middle-period DP was fractured, fractious, incoherent, and groping for causes. The modern variant is almost entirely urban, socialist, statist, and anything but libertarian; and so far removed from either earlier demographic as to be meaningless.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_the_American_Civil_War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Party_System
Eland claims “If the Republican Party doesn’t now move to extinction like its Federalist and Whig predecessors, it is likely to remain only a regional party for a long while. [because] Its intolerant conservative social views scare most other Americans.”
Boy, he sho has us pegged! Here I am smack dab in a middle of Liberal La-La land. Little did I reelize we wus deep in corn-servin’ territory. An, I never wud uv guessed them coogar country librals was gun-nuts. I wuz always told gun-nuts is us redneck corn-servers. Wrong, Eland. It is anti-conservative bigots like you who spook “most Americans” into believing conservatives are scary and intolerant. That’s just you projecting your own anti-conservative bigotry. In fact, “most Americans” are conservative even when they don’t realize it. They only vote Democrat when conned into believing you libs are no worse and no less ‘libertarian’, but we know your statist claws have been temporarily sheathed – don’t we. The problem is, they have no means of discovering what you Democrats, faux-libertarians, and radical-socialists have been up to creating a poisoned image of conservatives, or they’d bolt your sleazy protection-racket in a heartbeat.
I would like to see Eland’s numbers and sources for his voter demographics. I am confident he pulled his Cuban ‘factoid’ out of thin air or off the front page of NYT. I had difficulty finding a voting breakdown even by race, much less country of origin; and those are just unsubstantiated (wishful) exit polls. The most recent election for which we have actual breakdowns is 2006. Eland is simply misreading a Cuban-American shift on the embargo as a stampede leftward. There is no doubt there has been some shift on minor issues, but not much. Cuban-American attitudes on socialism remain essentially unchanged. Right now, Obama has high CA ratings, but that will not last longer than it takes Cubans to realize they traded access to homeland for us becoming more like the Cuba they fled.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/voting/cps2006.html
http://www.iri.org/lac/cuba/pdfs/2009-01-15-poll.pdf
http://havanajournal.com/cuban_americans/entry/cuban-american-national-foundation-calls-for-new-us-cuba-policy/
Perhaps he should be talking to a Cuban-American at his own Independent Institute:
http://canf1.org/artman/publish/home_page/Should_the_Cuban_Embargo_be_Lifted.shtml