As Vermont Goes, so Goes the Nation
I've lived in North Carolina for a long time, but I'm still very much a product of the Northeast, where I grew up and went to college. For that reason, a lot of the people I associate with the words "traditional Republican" are in fact very moderate, maybe even liberal, Northeastern Republicans. I remember greatly respecting, and still greatly respect, Republicans like William Cohen, Christie Whitman, Lincoln Chafee, James Jeffords and various others. And when I stop to ask myself just how I came to grow such contempt for today's Republican Party, I remember what those people I respect are doing these days. Chafee and Jeffords got so disgusted with the Republican Party that they left it. Whitman is still in the party, but a pariah within it. Cohen was last seen in politics as Defense Secretary for the Clinton Administration. So maybe it's little surprise that I find almost nothing redeeming in today's Republican Party, or that the electoral trends show that many of my fellow Northeasterners have come to that same assessment. What is surprising is just how hard conservatives are working to make sure we continue to feel that way and thus ensure that they remain a feeble political minority.
In his book, "What's the Matter With Kansas?" Robert Frank writes extensively about how Republicans pushed the narrative of the red state-blue state divide. They upheld the South and middle America as "real" America, the pro-America America. The two coasts were portrayed as the land of latte-sipping liberals out of touch with good old American values. You still hear this nonsense today from people like Sarah Palin. And then Republicans went out and voted in ways very consistent with that narrative, apparently never stopping to wonder how long they could get away with that before people in those "elitist" states would stop voting for them completely.
The Northeast used to be a pretty Republican place. Vermont and Maine, believe it or not, used to be two of the most reliably Republican states in the Union, the only two that never voted for FDR. By the 1990s, the whole Northeast was solidly Democratic on the Presidential level, but hardcore social conservatives apparently failed to notice that it still elected a lot of Republican senators and congressmen. From 1995 to 2007, Republicans controlled Congress, but in that whole span, Democrats were never less than six seats away from control of the Senate. During that whole span, Republicans held two Senate seats each in Maine, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, and a seat in Rhode Island. They also held a seat each in Vermont and Delaware until 2001, and a seat in New York until 1999. In fact, there has never been a Republican majority in either house of Congress that wasn't dependent on seats from the Northeast.
So what in the hell makes Republicans think they can form one now?
It's not just a matter of targeting seats in those states, it's a matter of the ways Republicans in Congress vote and the image they project as a party. As of today, there are four Republicans from the Northeast in the Senate. One, Judd Gregg, is about to resign to become President Obama's Commerce Secretary. The other three (Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins and Arlen Specter) are by far the most moderate members of the caucus and have been routinely breaking party ranks to support President Obama's agenda. They were the only three Republicans to vote for the stimulus package. They, along with the only two other female Republicans in the Senate, were the only ones to support the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act for women. The rest of the caucus seems hellbent on taking positions as conservative, obstructionist and out of touch with the American mainstream and general good sense as is humanly possible.
The voting public, to its credit, is holding it against them. Some of these Republican Senators are only still around in the first place because they haven't been up for re-election in almost six years. (By contrast, there are exactly zero Republican congressmen from New England, and only three Republicans from New York out of twenty-nine seats.) There's no way Republicans hold the seat in New Hampshire in 2010 now that Gregg is retiring. Democrats will likely capture Specter's seat in Pennsylvania, too. Only the women from Maine look safe, and even then only for as long as they feel like sticking around as lonely voices against the tide. This will only put Republicans in a deeper electoral hole, and the only tools they seem to have at their disposal is more shovels. That is, the reason why these Northeastern Republicans keep losing their seats is not because they are personally unpopular, it's because the 'R' next to their name is more politically damaging than the Mark of Cain. No matter how often they break ranks to support popular legislation, they still vote for the Republican leadership, and outside the reddest areas of the country, people despise the Republican leadership.
The success of Snowe and Collins, both of whom were re-elected recently, in overcoming that handicap, should be like a flashing neon sign pointing the way back to political relevance: move to the center, act in a spirit of bipartisanship, stop pandering to the reactionary and Rush Limbaugh wings of the party, stop making everything secondary to ideology and start embracing common sense. They'd be in much better shape if they voted more like Snowe does and Chafee used to. But they're not doing that, of course. So many people have left that the party is controlled by its worst elements. The nativists, the homophobes and the Rush Limbaugh acolytes all have majorities within the reshaped Republican Party. They're in control now. The direction they've chosen has been truly and completely awful, and I wonder what exactly it would take to get them to change it. I'm sure that a move to the center will not happen easily.
Eventually, someday, hardliner conservatives will look around at how unpopular they are and realize that their current ideology is bankrupt. But for now, they're determined to, if I may borrow their phrase, "stay the course." And the rest of us are determined to keep them out of power for a good long while.
In his book, "What's the Matter With Kansas?" Robert Frank writes extensively about how Republicans pushed the narrative of the red state-blue state divide. They upheld the South and middle America as "real" America, the pro-America America. The two coasts were portrayed as the land of latte-sipping liberals out of touch with good old American values. You still hear this nonsense today from people like Sarah Palin. And then Republicans went out and voted in ways very consistent with that narrative, apparently never stopping to wonder how long they could get away with that before people in those "elitist" states would stop voting for them completely.
The Northeast used to be a pretty Republican place. Vermont and Maine, believe it or not, used to be two of the most reliably Republican states in the Union, the only two that never voted for FDR. By the 1990s, the whole Northeast was solidly Democratic on the Presidential level, but hardcore social conservatives apparently failed to notice that it still elected a lot of Republican senators and congressmen. From 1995 to 2007, Republicans controlled Congress, but in that whole span, Democrats were never less than six seats away from control of the Senate. During that whole span, Republicans held two Senate seats each in Maine, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, and a seat in Rhode Island. They also held a seat each in Vermont and Delaware until 2001, and a seat in New York until 1999. In fact, there has never been a Republican majority in either house of Congress that wasn't dependent on seats from the Northeast.
So what in the hell makes Republicans think they can form one now?
It's not just a matter of targeting seats in those states, it's a matter of the ways Republicans in Congress vote and the image they project as a party. As of today, there are four Republicans from the Northeast in the Senate. One, Judd Gregg, is about to resign to become President Obama's Commerce Secretary. The other three (Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins and Arlen Specter) are by far the most moderate members of the caucus and have been routinely breaking party ranks to support President Obama's agenda. They were the only three Republicans to vote for the stimulus package. They, along with the only two other female Republicans in the Senate, were the only ones to support the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act for women. The rest of the caucus seems hellbent on taking positions as conservative, obstructionist and out of touch with the American mainstream and general good sense as is humanly possible.
The voting public, to its credit, is holding it against them. Some of these Republican Senators are only still around in the first place because they haven't been up for re-election in almost six years. (By contrast, there are exactly zero Republican congressmen from New England, and only three Republicans from New York out of twenty-nine seats.) There's no way Republicans hold the seat in New Hampshire in 2010 now that Gregg is retiring. Democrats will likely capture Specter's seat in Pennsylvania, too. Only the women from Maine look safe, and even then only for as long as they feel like sticking around as lonely voices against the tide. This will only put Republicans in a deeper electoral hole, and the only tools they seem to have at their disposal is more shovels. That is, the reason why these Northeastern Republicans keep losing their seats is not because they are personally unpopular, it's because the 'R' next to their name is more politically damaging than the Mark of Cain. No matter how often they break ranks to support popular legislation, they still vote for the Republican leadership, and outside the reddest areas of the country, people despise the Republican leadership.
The success of Snowe and Collins, both of whom were re-elected recently, in overcoming that handicap, should be like a flashing neon sign pointing the way back to political relevance: move to the center, act in a spirit of bipartisanship, stop pandering to the reactionary and Rush Limbaugh wings of the party, stop making everything secondary to ideology and start embracing common sense. They'd be in much better shape if they voted more like Snowe does and Chafee used to. But they're not doing that, of course. So many people have left that the party is controlled by its worst elements. The nativists, the homophobes and the Rush Limbaugh acolytes all have majorities within the reshaped Republican Party. They're in control now. The direction they've chosen has been truly and completely awful, and I wonder what exactly it would take to get them to change it. I'm sure that a move to the center will not happen easily.
Eventually, someday, hardliner conservatives will look around at how unpopular they are and realize that their current ideology is bankrupt. But for now, they're determined to, if I may borrow their phrase, "stay the course." And the rest of us are determined to keep them out of power for a good long while.
posted by Ithakid | 11:32 PM
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