I spend very little time thinking about the future of the Republican Party or its political health. But if your vocation is policy or politics, you do have an interest in the overall viability of the American civic infrastructure. The Republican Party represents one-half of the political infrastructure that determines the governance of the United States, and the Republican Party of 2016 is institutionally dysfunctional.
The American political system presumes two factors are always operational: consensus and compromise. This means that America is governed from the center out. It’s clear to even the most unobservant that we no longer have a consensus on any important public policy question – not the economy, not education, not climate, not anything. Because of this lack of consensus, there is no institutional ability for compromise. This political paralysis is primarily a product of Republican political dysfunction.
In January of 1919, William Butler Yeats wrote a poem, “The Second Coming,” that perfectly captured the beginning unraveling of the world order that was starting in the second decade of the 20th century. As I think about the end of the 2016 presidential campaign and what the country might look like on November 9, I am drawn to the imagery of Yeats’ poem.
“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold,” Yeats writes. And: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” These lines written nearly 100 years ago sum up the current political predicament of the Republican Party.
If the 2016 presidential campaign established nothing else, it established there is no longer any consensus on the governing philosophy of the Republican Party. The establishment Leadership is still pushing tax cuts, few regulations and free trade. The rank-and-file base is consumed with economic and social populism. These positions are irreconcilable; the Republican center will not hold.
With some notable exceptions like Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush and Lindsey Graham, the Republican establishment gave up the pretense of principled conservatism quicker than butter melting in a hot skillet. They pushed the women and children overboard to ensure they would have a place in the Trump lifeboat. Their craven concession to personal advantage at the expense of supposed party principles made a lie out any claim they had to integrity-based leadership.
Organizations can survive honest, incompetent leadership, but no institution can survive unprincipled leadership. The fact that somebody with Trump’s political inexperience, intellectual shallowness and flawed character could so easily capture the Republican Party is evidence of the moral and political bankruptcy of Republican leadership. It’s the cowardice of Republican leaders who know better, but wouldn’t do better, that has brought us to this moment.
While I won’t make Hillary Clinton’s mistake of offending bourgeois sensibilities by characterizing Trump supporters, I don’t think anyone can disagree that “basket of deplorables” accurately describes many of them. I would argue the rank-and-file Republican base has been emotionally unhinged since the 2008 election of Barak Obama. This raging lunacy is not the result of principled policy differences about what’s best for the country, it’s about what the presidency of Barak Obama says about the America that’s evolving in the 21st century. The Republican base feels left behind by globalization, alienated from American culture by social change that has come too fast and gone too far, and abandoned and betrayed by American elites that no longer represent or even consider them. There is merit to their sense of grievance.
The election of Obama was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. The Obama presidency robbed them of their special place in the American narrative. If a black man could be POTUS, then they could no longer be special just because they were white, and being white is what they had left. Donald Trump is product of the political dysfunction of this moment.
Trump’s candidacy – saying out loud what much of the Republican base has been thinking since at least 2008 – provided content for prime-time entertainment shows that masquerade as cable news programs. There was never any serious examination of his capabilities relative to policy understanding, executive execution or character. Had there been, he would have joined Herman Caine on the list of political jokes who have run for president. Instead, he dominated “news” coverage for 18 months. Because Republicans are a captive of Fox News, they were trapped in the clown car with Trump, a causality of the ratings war.
As we approach November 8 and wonder what this election in this environment will mean for our collective future, Yeats’ last lines provide interesting insight: “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,/ Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
Mike Jones, who has held senior policy positions in St. Louis city and county government, serves on the St. Louis American editorial board and the State Board of Education.
