THE GREAT REPUBLICAN DILEMMA

The midterms are over and we should not have been surprised at the outcome. Typically in this country in the first election after a new president takes office his party loses ground in the House and usually in the Senate. That happens because no matter how successful a new administration might seem there are going to be voters out there who suffer from buyer’s remorse and they take revenge by voting against lesser candidates in the new president’s party.

That was particularly true after the 2022 midterm elections. Joseph Biden, given the tone of his opposition and the economic difficulties related to the pandemic, did remarkably well. Still, simply as a personality, he failed to tug at the heart strings of some of even his most devoted supporters. He would have few of the presidential coat tails that can pull candidates for lesser offices across the finish line.

He did come across as a professional working hard at his job. And, as the midterms approached, it became obvious that the congressional candidates recruited by the Democrats were often superior to those recruited for the Republicans by Donald Trump. So, given the alternatives presented to the voters it was hardly surprising that the Democrats did better than the most hopeful of Republicans expected. The much hoped for great Republican political tsunami just did not occur!

The performance of the Republicans when the new year began, with Kevin McCarthy clearly kowtowing to the House Freedom Caucus through fifteen long votes in the House has done nothing to make Republican leadership more attractive. In fact the House Republicans have become increasingly described as a kind of circular firing squad which has left partyhood behind.

Let us think about that: To begin, political parties in the United States are different than they are almost any where else. In European party systems if new party leaders need to be chosen there will often be a vote of the party members. We can’t do that here because most voters in both parties are not even aware that there is party membership.

There certainly is party membership available. Both Democrats and Republicans would like to have people pay a membership fee and formally join their party. Some do but not many (you will get an avalanche of campaign literature if you do). The vast majority of people who will tell you proudly that they are Democrats or are Republicans actually have no connection with the political parties at all. They do identify with one of the two major political parties.

Simple party identity is a little like marriage without the ceremony. Nobody is really sure where they stand! Candidates feel that they have to campaign desperately (and expensively) to get their voters out one more time. With few active party members to go door to door, candidates feel they must rely on the media. They may hugely overspend for fear that their unattached voters will simply drift away.

For Republicans that has meant coming to rely on billionaires and huge corporate contributors (One of the oddities of our system is that corporations almost always do better during Democratic administrations but they insist on contributing almost entirely to Republicans!). To skirt our campaign laws, businesses and business groups form their own campaign organizations that can be legal so long as they have no direct connection with the parties or their candidates (If you believe that there is really no connection you may also believe in the Tooth Fairy and invest in land on the Moon).

There is another problem though: Many corporate leaders have come to believe that they have a role in dealing with problems like climate change, the fairer employment treatment of women and of minorities, and the more general welfare of the people they serve. They have become, from the point of view of many right- wing Republicans, too liberal (or as they say “too woke”).

With the newly empowered far right House members of the Freedom Caucus we are not talking about your grandfather’s Republican Party, the party of small town business owners. Voters for members of the Freedom Caucus often lack much formal education, and are angry because they sense a world filled with enemies who have left them behind. The rich well educated leaders of those big corporations are their enemies. So are foreigners who have crossed our borders and are taking their jobs.

They will send money to candidates who seem to share their anger. Think about Marjorie Taylor Greene who was removed two years ago from all her committees and was reduced to roaming the halls. She was not in a position to be very helpful to poorly off Georgians back home. She did share a lot of their imaginary enemies. Over two years she raised a reported 12,497,000 dollars and easily won reelection.

The House Republicans are testing the Biblical truism that “No man can serve two masters . . .” It is reasonable to question whether one political party can legislate with two antagonistic sets of backers? Can the majority of Republican congressional candidates successfully legislate to please more progressive corporate and foundation contributors while perhaps a quarter of their number is dependent on the kind of people who attacked the Capitol two years ago?

We saw what happened when Kevin McCarthy, who had been acting Republican House leader for months, just tried to formalize his control of the speaker’s gavel. It took fifteen long votes before the Representatives from the Freedom Caucus’s rural states decided he had been tortured enough.

The Republicans in the House seem to have no positive legislative goals. How could they? Neither side can agree to do anything without endangering the campaign money that can keep them surrounded by all that marble. They are trapped!!

H.J. Rishel 1/18/2023