A story that popped up in my news feed this morning provides a good take on the underpinnings of the current Republican fracture and ably assesses the possibility of a fundamental breakdown of the Republican party into distinct subgroups. In particular, it notes that the classic Republican/conservative/libertarian attitudes (yes, libertarian – there was a time when libertarians were called classical liberals, and classical liberal philosophies are found in the roots and throughout the history of the GOP) are increasingly at odds with the values that have driven the Trump surge. The latter include nativism, economic protectionism a nationalistic attitude towards many traditional allies and friendlies, and a callous disregard for both liberty and limited government. The policy prescriptions that these elicit are quite often the direct opposite of what old-school Republicanism stands/stood for.
Aside from the obvious prime driver of Trump’s appeal – the illegal immigrant issue – there is a whole lot of anti-free-trade rhetoric that is far scarier to me than the nativistic bombast I find repugnant. Trump and his supporters have deluded themselves into thinking that free trade harms America, and that things like NAFTA (supported by House Republicans 132-43 and by Senate Republicans 34-10) should no longer be part of the GOP philosophy. Trump is advocating massive tariffs to “bring jobs back home” from places like Japan (huh?) and Mexico, ignoring both the basic truth that such tariffs will benefit a relative few at the far greater expense of many and the history that tells us trade wars destroy economies.
Illogic aside, it is irrefutable that a substantial chunk of the GOP has embraced this nativism. As the referenced op-ed notes, such a viewpoint is wholly incompatible with that of the chunk of the electorate that believes in free trade, strong respect for liberties and free movement of people. Not all those in the latter group are Republicans, but many indeed are. The last matter – free movement of people – is yet another sticking point, because Trump’s remaining challenger, Ted Cruz (sorry, John Kasich, one state victory and 11% of the delegate tally does not a contender make), is also beating the nativist drum. Cruz also stands at the fore of those who identify first and foremost as conservatives and those motivated by their religiosity and the policies it prescribes.
Over on the left, which is structurally more unified because of the “free stuff” foundation the op-ed notes, there are nevertheless grumblings of discontent. The real “free-stuffers” are with Bernie, and are all-in on having a go at his new-but-same-as-ever flavor of socialism. The more cynical and perhaps more skeptical of the bottomless gravy boat promise are backing Clinton, who’s less scary and whose name suggests a revisit of the Bill Clinton “glory days.” But, there are also the working class whites, who have suffered quite a lot at the hands of big-government Democratic policies, and who are slowly waking up to the reality that the party to which they’ve pledged their fealty for decades is the cause of much of their distress. I expect that many of these voters are liking what Trump is telling everyone, and I expect that many of them will pull the lever for The Donald in November. As I’ve noted before, I expect Trump to win it all, I don’t believe that the polls that speak of massive GOP abstention reflect either the ultimate outcome (many of those professed abstainers will hold their noses and vote for “their” party simply to deny Clinton the WH) or the heavy cross-over votes I think he’ll get from the aforementioned working class voting blocs.
Finally, there’s the big matter of war. Sanders and Trump are notably less hawkish than Clinton and Cruz, and this posits yet another non-traditional divide in the pack.
The question for today is – what happens next to the political parties? The GOP has three discordant wings: the big-government nativists (i.e. the Trump crowd), the smaller-government nativists and hawks (the Cruz crowd) and the libertarian-leaners. Obviously, the last group was unable to advance its candidate (Rand Paul) in the face of the massive nativist movement that motivated the two front-runners, and based on that we could very well assume that this group is insignificant, but Paul himself lost many libertarians with some poor choices, and polls still suggest that libertarian-leaning voters make up 9-25% of the electorate.
The Democrats also suffer from some discord. Bernie’s supporters tend not to trust the big-government cronyist “establishment” that is the Clinton crowd, and the blue collar fly-over country Dems have been pretty much abandoned by the party with its war on domestic energy and domestic industry. The Dems are trying to buy those voters back with promises of massive minimum wage hikes, but that’s much more likely to appeal to the Dems in the service industry in big cities (already Democratic strongholds). Coal miners in West Virginia aren’t going to be appeased by such a thing when the party is gleefully killing their entire industry.
A substantial realignment looks to be a distinct possibility. Ditching labels for a moment, we can sort voters into several groups:
- establishmentarians, aka moderates, who support business as usual (though they’ll not freely admit that). The middle-of-the-road folks will land here, as much out of distrust of any of the more “extreme” outlooks that are the next four categories.
- socialists, including the free-stuff voters and the elitists who salve their consciences through redistribution. Many fervent anti-war people will land here.
- populists/nativists, who envision America vs The World, and embrace both economic and immigration protectionism. This group isn’t interventionist except in matters of terrorism, where they tend to a nuke-em-til-they-glow absolutism.
- conservatives, including social conservatives and evangelicals, who want smaller government in some policy areas but like the power of government in others. The biggest hawks are here.
- libertarians, including those who don’t like the label and won’t wear it but are nevertheless in favor of less government, easier immigration, more free trade and less war.
Whenever one makes categories, it’s certain that many people will straddle the dividing lines. In addition, the relative sizes of these categories is both hard to determine and ever-changing. Holding off on those realities in favor of the question of the moment, we now wonder how these groups might realign and coalesce into two parties? Which group will dominate each, and what will the outliers choose to do? Already, a greater fraction of voters don’t identify strongly with one party or the other – will that trend continue or will there be a re-settling? Those of us used to the “normal” political landscape might tend to believe that very few will apostasize and jump to the other team, but we tend to be getting older and older, and the ways of these young’uns don’t make sense to us. I discount the chance of a third party arising from the ashes, simply because both the infrastructure and underlying mechanics of our winner-take-all system strongly favor a two-party outcome.
This realignment isn’t something that will resolve itself in this election cycle, but in the following years as the outcome of this election reshapes the nation’s politics. I could guess which way things’ll go, both under Trump and under Clinton, but things are just too weird right now to do so with any confidence. One thing seems very likely, though. Neither party will look in the next few years the way it did a few years ago.
One thing’s for sure – it’s going to be a spectacle. Sadly, there’s a reason that “may you live in interesting times” has long been professed to be a Bad Thing. No matter the outcome in November, things are going to be very… “interesting” over the next few years.
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