Someday, a liberal vacuum?

Salon's Brian Beutler looks at the "historical and political context of the GOP's unique predicament." Long story short: the party bet on both a wealthy white and a socially conservative base that is diminishing in electoral numbers, and now it's trapped by its own shortsighted design. The GOP is entombed by the very "ideological rigidity" of the base it cultivated, making it "hard for Republicans to appeal to voters outside of their core constituencies."

"But," as Beutler notes, "it wouldn’t be all that hard if Democrats had retreated into equally rigid reactionary leftism." And this the Democratic Party has not done.

Both parties have become more ideological over the years, but only one has become culturally extreme and inflexible. One of the consequences is that the country’s policy commitments have become more conservative than they might have been if this polarization had been symmetric. But another is that Republicans have a hard time tacking left without bumping into a niche that's already been filled.

And that leaves a political circumstance that has long interested me.

Democrats have assumed identification as the nation's de facto conservative party. At their political core is the preservation of what preceding, center-left generations accomplished (Social Security, Medicare and Medicare) while tinkering, and not all that vigorously, with marginally progressive policies once also endorsed by many conscientious Republicans (e.g. extension of unemployment benefits). On deficit spending (Keynesianism), the reactionaries have Democrats sorely intimidated.

Thus, as Beutler asks, if it is "voters outside of their core constituencies" they want, just where can Republican pols go? The Dems have a lock on any authentic conservatism, which also permits of incremental progressivism. Republicans are boxed in.

But it also opens the question of an authentically liberal vacuum, 10 or 20 years down the road. This could portend internal Democratic battles similar to the GOP's Establishment vs. tea-party brawl. Or it could launch a new party, which is particularly conceivable--in that yesterday's two-ideology system of stalwart liberalism vs. staunch conservatism is perhaps evolving into tomorrow's unsustainable disequilibrium.

 

Comments

[Peter G]

This is something I wonder about too. Forgive me for a moment if I indulge in an analysis from a management perspective point of view. How does one go about financing this hypothetical new party during its' construction phase? Since the alternative is to drag the existing Democratic party over to where you want to get to, one has to ask if that wouldn't be easier and less painful at the voting booth. Split parties lose first past the post elections.

And if you split doesn't this party fracturing decision just re-ignite a similar cycle where the two ideologies drift increasingly apart into polar obstructionism? They are always going to recruit in their cause and the only two places you can ever do that is from either your ideological opponent or the opposite fringe. I'm not pretending to be able to answer any such questions btw. But they do occur to me.