D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
July 2009
Saving the GOP from Itself
In your heart, you know they're too far right.
With all due respect to former Sen. Pete Domenici's decision to retire from Congress and step out of the political fray for health reasons, "Saint Pete" could yet perform one more service for his party and his country. The six-term New Mexico US Senator could weigh in on the current debate about the future of the Republican Party, adding his respected voice to those — such as Gen. Colin Powell and former Gov. Tom Ridge — urging the GOP to reclaim its historic role in the mainstream of American politics.
If that seems to paint too dire a picture of the GOP's current headlong self-marginalization, consider the recent analysis in the nonpartisan National Journal by Ronald Brownstein. "The Republican Party today is more electorally dependent on the South than at any point in it past," Brownstein concluded. In the House and Senate, nearly half of all Republicans hold seats in the region described by the former Confederacy plus Oklahoma and Kentucky. Here in New Mexico, of course, we went from three Republicans in our Congressional delegation, including Domenici, to zero in 2008.
With the recent defection of Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, the only GOP Senators from the Northeast are Judd Gregg from New Hampshire and Maine's Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe. Indeed, the only other Republicans in the Senate from east of the Mississippi River and north of the Mason-Dixon line are Ohio's George Voinovich and Indiana's Richard Lugar. Both Gregg and Voinovich have announced their intention to follow Domenici into retirement in 2010.
The GOP currently holds a smaller share of non-Southern congressional seats than at any other time since the Civil War except for a brief span at the height of FDR's popularity.
In presidential elections, Brownstein points out, the South has provided at least 59% of the GOP nominee's Electoral College votes in every contest from 1992 on. "That percentage is nearly double the South's share of all Electoral College votes and by far the most that GOP presidential nominees have relied on the region over any sustained period.
"Republican strength in the South has both compensated for and masked the extent of the GOP's decline elsewhere," Brownstein goes on. "By several key measures, the party is now weaker outside the South than at any time since the Depression; in some ways, it is weaker than ever before."
The harsh math for the GOP isn't limited to Congress and the Electoral College. In April, a Washington Post/ABC News poll put the share of people who identify themselves as Republicans at only 21%. Even among those who call themselves Republicans or say they lean to the GOP, according to a USA Today/Gallup survey, nearly 40% say they have an unfavorable opinion of the party.
Another Gallup poll finds that shrinking GOP minority to be 89% non-Hispanic white — in an era when the US electorate is growing ever more diverse. (Given the successes of the GOP's "Southern strategy" since 1968, Democrats might be forgiven for viewing this as reaping what you sow.) As a little lesson in what those changing demographics mean at the ballot box, recall that Ronald Reagan beat Jimmy Carter in a 1980 landslide by getting 55% of the white vote. That's the same percentage of white voters John McCain got in 2008 — but he lost decisively. It is only a little exaggeration to say, as more acidic pundits have, that the GOP is becoming "the Southern white people's party."
In a recent Time magazine column, GOP consultant Mike Murphy warns that demographics are destiny — and the defection of young voters and Latinos threatens his party with a long period in the minority. "Despairing Republican friends have been asking me what I think we should do to rebuild the GOP and begin our certain and inevitable comeback," Murphy writes. "My answer disappoints them: 'Build an ark.' I say this because I've made a career out of counting votes, and the numbers tell a clear story; the demographics of America are changing in a way that is deadly for the Republican Party as it exists today. A GOP ice age is on the way. Saving the GOP is not about diluting conservatism but about modernizing it to reflect the country it inhabits instead of an America that no longer exists."
The current ranting by some conservatives against Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama's pick for the Supreme Court and the first Latina court nominee, only exacerbates the problem — alienating Hispanics, the nation's fastest-growing group of voters. As Mark McKinnon, a senior advisor to President George W. Bush, put it, "If Republicans make a big deal of opposing Sotomayor, we will be hurling ourselves off a cliff."
The rancor over Sotomayor's nomination also dramatizes how far the GOP has
slid — off a cliff? — to the far right. She was originally appointed
to the federal bench, after all, by the first President Bush.
The current frontmen for the national Republican Party — former Vice President Dick Cheney and radio host Rush Limbaugh — would probably read President George H.W. Bush out of the GOP if he were a candidate today. After all, the first Bush was pro-choice on abortion, voted for LBJ's Fair Housing Act and backed an ultimately career-ending tax increase; he also appointed Sotomayor's predecessor on the Supreme Court, the surprisingly liberal Justice David Souter.
The Cheney-Limbaugh faction has already written off Gen. Powell, who served both Bushes but endorsed Obama. On "Meet the Press," Powell urged Republicans to perform an "after-action review" of what went wrong in the 2008 elections: "After a battle or after a training exercise, you bring all of the leaders in, and you say, 'What's going right? What's going wrong? What did we do right or wrong? And how do we move forward?'"
For those who think a more "pure" Republican Party is a better party — who shouted "Good riddance!" when Specter, facing a primary challenge from the right, jumped to the Democrats — moving forward as the party of Southern whites, Christian conservatives and devotees of angry radio talk shows suits them just fine. Like extremists on the left, for whom no candidate can ever be "green" enough, these conservative purists would rather be a hard-core minority than a compromised majority. Still intoxicated by the spirit of Barry Goldwater, they revel in the belief that "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. . . and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."
Listening to Limbaugh or the rabid mouths of Fox "News," it's hard to recall that the GOP once numbered among its ranks Thomas Dewey, Dwight Eisenhower, Nelson Rockefeller, Jacob Javits, William Scranton, Earl Warren and John Anderson. It was a Republican, Edward Brooke of Massachusetts, who became the first African-American elected to the US Senate by popular vote, in 1966. Another Republican, Margaret Chase Smith of Maine, was the first woman to be elected to both the US House and the Senate.
Although Pete Domenici was never a "Rockefeller Republican" and cast many votes moderates would bemoan, he largely avoided the belligerence and fear-mongering that characterizes the Cheney-Limbaugh GOP. Tellingly, when Domenici retired, his protege — Rep. Heather Wilson — was defeated in her bid to replace him by the much more conservative Rep. Steve Pearce, who went on to lose the seat to Democratic Rep. Tom Udall.
Some political observers, however, look to New Mexico as a place to jump-start a Republican resurgence. Given the scandals shadowing the Richardson administration and Democratic state officials (see "Pirates of the Roundhouse," March), the GOP can run on a promise to clean up the mess in Santa Fe. As political blogger Heath Haussamen has suggested, "capitalizing on the scandals plaguing the party that controls virtually all of state government appears to be a key to the race" for governor in 2010.
It may be tough, however, to tar Lt. Governor Diane Denish — thus far, the only announced Democratic candidate to replace Richardson — with that brush; moreover, she's already raised more than $2 million for the race. As NMSU government professor Jose Z. Garcia pointed out on Haussamen's blog, "New Mexicans tend to vote for the person, not the party, and so that gives Republicans some hope. The problem is they have to find the right person." The GOP primary could well feature a Wilson-Pearce rematch, in which again Wilson would likely be the stronger November candidate. Garcia added, "She never got so far into adulation of George Bush that she forgot her constituents."
The conservatives who tend to dominate GOP primaries, however, would likely back Pearce — and their party would fumble its chance to make a comeback in New Mexico.
An alternative scenario has been playing out in another Western state, Utah. There, Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. won wide popularity by blending conservatism with support for Obama's economic-stimulus plan and civil unions for same-sex couples. He also pushed through a liberalization of the Mormon-dominated state's archaic liquor laws. Recently picked by the president to be ambassador to China, Huntsman will burnish his foreign-policy credentials — possibly with an eye on the White House in 2012.
Domenici could do his party a favor by urging the GOP — both in New Mexico and nationally — to follow the Huntsman path rather than continuing toward the cliff's edge. That would be healthy not only for Republicans but for the country, which needs a vibrant two-party system. (Indeed, New Mexico can be seen as exhibit A for what can go wrong when one party dominates.)
In doing so, perhaps "Saint Pete" could remind his fellow Republicans that when Abraham Lincoln joined the fledgling party, he described it as "composed of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements."
Or he could quote from the rest of that famous "extremism in the defense of liberty" speech at the 1964 Republican convention by our former neighboring senator, Barry Goldwater. "This Republican Party is a Party for free men, not for blind followers, and not for conformists," the Arizonan also said. In words Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney might want to heed, Goldwater went on, "We must not see malice in honest differences of opinion, no matter how great, so long as they are not inconsistent with the pledges we have given to each other in and through our Constitution."