For the Republican Party establishment, the only meaningful lesson to be learned from 2012 is rhetorical. Sure, polls show Americans rejecting the GOP line on every major issue, but, the argument goes, that's only because the party has failed to come up with persuasive sales pitches. Republicans believe they have a rhetorical problem, not a policy problem.
But just outside the establishment, there's a fair amount of discussion among Republican pundits, strategists, and thinkers about their party's systemic challenges and what the GOP should do about them. It's led to some thoughtful critiques from the likes of Ramesh Ponnuru, Kathleen Parker, Michael Gerson and Peter Wehner about how to "save" the Republican Party.
But it was this item from Bloomberg's Josh Barro, a self-identified "reluctant" Republican, that really got me thinking.
I don't want a Republican Party that's just like the Democratic Party, even though some people on both the right and the left see that as the upshot of Republican critiques like mine.
Political parties should differ on normative questions. They ought to strive for agreement on positive questions -- questions such as, what policies cause gross domestic product and median incomes to rise, how unemployment insurance affects the unemployment rate, or how global temperatures are changing. Currently, Republicans make a lot more errors on these kinds of questions than Democrats.
Correcting errors on positive questions should cause conservatives to revisit some of their top policies.... Conservatives say tight money and lower top tax rates would enrich middle-class families. But that's wrong, and if they figured that out, they might stop supporting tight money and lower top tax rates.
And that, right there, that very last sentence, helps shine a light on what I believe plagues the Republican Party more than anything else: they've abandoned empiricism, leading to a governing philosophy that puts ideological goals over pragmatic ones.
Barro presents a claim that seems self-evidently true: partisans and ideologues should be prepared to correct their errors. In this case, he points to monetary policy: Republicans are simply and demonstrably incorrect, "and if they figured that out," they'd adopt different policies.
But therein lies the rub. They really wouldn't.
Long-time readers may recall that I've been kicking around this thesis for many years (maybe I'll write a book about it someday), because I think the asymmetry between the two major competing governing philosophies helps drive so much of contemporary debates.
At a surface level, it seems some commentators see a landscape in which the left prefers a bigger government and the right prefers a smaller one. This is overly simplistic, of course, and it also happens to be wrong -- for most liberals, the size of government isn't especially important at all. What matters are progressive policy goals -- whether those goals are reached through more or less government intervention is irrelevant.
As I've argued many times, for the left, political objectives relate to policy ends. We want to expand access to quality health care. We want to make investments to create jobs. We want to lower carbon emissions to combat global warming. We want to see the civil rights and civil liberties of Americans be protected. We want to reform the lending process for student loans so more young people can afford to go to college. There are competing ways to get to where progressives want to go, but the focus is on the policy achievement.
And with that in mind, the left invests most of its energy in pushing for policies that would lead to the desired results. Would an energy policy lead to fewer emissions? If yes, we want more of that. Would an economic policy lower unemployment and produce broad prosperity? If yes, sign us up.
For the right, it's backwards -- the ideological goal is the achievement. Remember this Jon Chait piece from 2005?
Liberals only support larger government if they have some reason to believe that it will lead to material improvement in people's lives. Conservatives also want material improvement in people's lives, of course, but proving that their policies can produce such an outcome is a luxury, not a necessity.
The contrast between economic liberalism and economic conservatism, then, ultimately lies not only in different values or preferences but in different epistemologies. Liberalism is a more deeply pragmatic governing philosophy -- more open to change, more receptive to empiricism, and ultimately better at producing policies that improve the human condition -- than conservatism.... [I]f you have no particular a priori preference about the size of government and care only about tangible outcomes, then liberalism's aversion to dogma makes it superior as a practical governing philosophy.
Conservatives tend to prefer a different approach that decreases the role of government, not to achieve specific ends, but because decreasing the role of government is the specific end.
This, of course, affects nearly every debate in Washington. When it comes to job creation, for example, the task for Democrats is pretty straightforward: let's do more of what's been the most effective, and less of what's been the least effective. Again, it's about pragmatism and results based on evidence.
For Republicans, it doesn't work quite that way -- they have ideological ideals that outweigh evidence. GOP leaders could be shown incontrovertible proof that the most effective methods of creating jobs and improving the economy are aid to states, infrastructure investment, unemployment insurance, and food stamps, and they'd still refuse. Why? Because their ideology dictates the response.
The left starts with a policy goal (more people with access to medical care, more students with access to college, less pollution, more jobs, less financial market instability) and crafts proposals to try to complete the task. The right starts with an ideological goal (smaller government, more privatization, more deregulation) and works backwards.
For Barro, if Republicans "figured out" that their mistaken policy assumptions were, in fact, mistaken policy assumptions, they'd change direction. I wish that were true, but all available evidence points in the exact opposite direction.
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Steve Benen, good job on Ed's show last night. Now I know what you look like!
The thing that amazes me about Republicans is their inability to see reality. Why would they choose to hurt the American people by putting the wealthy's interests ahead of everyone elses? Closing a few loopholes, such as tax subsidies to the oil companies, would be so much more humane and practical than putting the burden on the vulnerable people of this country. Yet they refuse to do so.
Surely their constituents are comprised of the elderly and the working poor, and yet they favour the upper .01%. It just seems like political suicide to me.
I realize they are bought and paid for and self-interest comes first, but how long can a party remain in power which forbids essential revenue, needed to run a country. This is madness!
And what do they do when confronted with the obvious? They double down on their insane ideas! What's the matter with Republicans?
India,
It is madness that has worked for their party and contributed to their personal bank accounts for decades. What makes sense to you and me would require the party hacks in the GOP to bite the hand that feeds them.
Reminds me a bit of the last days of the USSR, when the Communist Party hacks staged a coup against Gorbachev in order to stop reforms and protect their privileged positions within society. Anyone with half a brain saw the move as desperate and self-defeating, but it was all they knew how to do.
It is not as though one can expect party hacks to hold down real jobs and get by on a typical wage. They have places to go and mistresses to support, and that means they need their grossly compensated phoney baloney jobs. The rest be damned.
John, I remember that about the USSR. I was at NOVA University and attended a lecture from Vladimir Posner, prior to the "fall" of the USSR. They were indeed desperate, and as intractable as ever. They just could not face reality.
Posner was bemoaning the fact that one couldn't even get a pair of decent shoes!
Just like the GOP!
Dare we hope for a similar outcome?
India: As long as they think that self-interest comes first, they will not reform their ways. Our government was framed by men who believed in Reason and Enlightenment. The first tenant of Right Reason is to know ones place in the scheme of things; to know that we are part of a larger whole and that everything is interconnected. The point is that I do best when my community thrives.
This whole idea of rugged individualism is total non-sense. We are not leopards; we are primates and we survive by living in groups. As we have evolved through history, our groups have become more complex and more inter-dependent. We invented governments and laws so that we can better work together and cooperate. All of our great inventions -- language, writing, printing, radio, television, the Internet -- have improved our ability to work together.
Bflynch,
Rugged individualism is fine until something goes wrong.
And something always goes wrong.
Per Upton Sinclair:
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
That is the heart of the matter right there, its not that they don't know they're wrong, what happens is that sadly they make a very good living out of championing the ideas of the few. You can take a horse to the water but.......
More than that: it's easier to get re-elected because (another butchered quote) never underestimate the ignorance of the American voter. Or, for that matter, the power of self-deception.
The Republican Base has been sold the whole dogma, and isn't going to vote for anyone who doesn't recite the orthodox liturgy.
"To me, fiscal conservatism means balancing budgets – not running deficits that the next generation can't afford. It means improving the efficiency of delivering services by finding innovative ways to do more with less. It means cutting taxes when possible and prudent to do so, raising them overall only when necessary to balance the budget, and only in combination with spending cuts. It means when you run a surplus, you save it; you don't squander it. And most importantly, being a fiscal conservative means preparing for the inevitable economic downturns – and by all indications, we've got one coming." —Michael Bloomberg 2007.
I am a fiscal conservative. I am also a Republican. I view government most closely with the view expressed above. I do have a liberal tendancy in my views. I am anti-abortion philosophically, but I would never try to impose my view on a woman. I don't want to overturn Roe v. Wade, I just hope someday women will just stop needing to invoke it. I will never condemn a woman for making the choice and am eternally gratefull I, as a male, will never be forced to make that choice. I disagree with many of President Obama's policies (notice I still defer to him as a sign of respect the title President and refuse to call him Obummer or anything else of that ilk). I agree with him on some. While I hate the idea of deficit spending, as a pragmatist I realize the government can best help the economy by investing in the future now, instead of wallowing in a problem later. Austerity has a it's place; now is not the time. Bonner (notice the complete lack of respect I have for that mass of cells whom wishes to be defered the title of Speaker or even "man") has sold himself and his "party" out to both sides and the middle. Craven politics have dominated Congress for years. To me, real fiscal conservatives in Washington (how precious few there are) should be looking at the state of the economy and saying "we need to stimulate, wisely." The economy would improve with a $10T dollar stimulus. The fiscal conservatives should be trying to innovate and improve a stimulus package down to $1T dollars. The Republicans in Congress are more for "let's stimulate the economy with some nonsense rhetoric as that always works." I cannot call myself a Democrat for real (not imagined) polical ideological differences. However, for the past decade I have felt ashamed to call myself a Republican. If true fiscal conservatives (not the tea-party deficit hawks) could be found to replace the mentally challenged idiots in Congress, and a balanced approach could be found to improving the economy (not quid pro quo tax and cut BS) I believe the U.S. could once again attain it's economic dominance over the world markets. My youngest son believes in the Tooth Fairy. I'm pretty sure I have a better chance of meeting the Tooth Fairy. My advice: Democrats, liberals, progressives, independents, if the district you live in absolutly won't elect one from your side of the aisle, it behooves you to find candidates who adhere to these views as Republicans and help them get elected. Primary the idiots out of office. If R's gerrymander, stack the legislature with R's who may be D's in wolf's clothing. The time for political discourse is over as one side is refusing to listen. It is time for geurrila warfare. Rant over, thank you.
They've said this explicitly -- they don't live in a reality-based world. Their worldview isn't falsifiable. They said Clinton's plan would destroy the economy. They said W's would unleash the greatest economy ever. But being exactly and entirely wrong only made them more convinced they can't change.
it's not that they can't change...it just convinces them that they haven't changed enough. The are essentially on a downward spiral of positions that become more and more conservative until we have reached a point where neo-confederats and crypt-anarchists have gained ideological traction in conservative America.
Through a process of social, cultural, and informational isolation conservative America is effectively distilling Anger and frustration over their loss of broader influence into genuine hatred for the system of government that has allowed that loss. Basically if it seems like Conservatives are becoming more and more radical in their thinking it's because they are.
Liberals figured out a long time ago that marching in the streets carrying pictures of Chairman Mao doesn't help your argument...the Republicans haven't learned that and now they are carrying pictures of Ayn Rand.
Sorry I am a sociology geek, and I tend to go on
"But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao
You ain't gonna make it with anyone anyhow"
How do we update the lyrics for Ayn Rand and John Galt?
I don't know yet still working on it
If a big part of the GOP base cannot accept readily observable facts, such as the age of the universe being much greater than 10,000 years, that pumping tons of soot into the air causes respiratory problems (duh), or that President Obama was born in Hawaii, then why would anyone expect them to accept empiricism related to economics (aka the Dismal Science)?
Have we forgotten the exemplar GOP Congressman and Committee Chair, Dan Burton?
Good point, John. I guess they never heard of carbon dating. They need a class in anthropology.
Or simply look through a large telescope (or accept the images from the Hubble telescope). The Andromeda galaxy can be readily seen with a earth-bound telescope and is 2.5 million light years away, meaning it must have existed more than 2.5 million years.
Once one realizes the sky is full of galaxies, and that each of those galaxies is made of billions of stars, one must accept that those galaxies are very, very far away. Far enough away that what we see today is light that left those galaxies billions of years ago, and that the universe is much older than 10,000 years.
Or, one can go to the Grand Canyon and count the layers in a small section of rock, say a foot deep, then multiply it up to what must be in the 6000 feet of exposed rock in the canyon face. Again, the result is much greater than 10,000 years.
Of course. We are seeing stars today that have been dead for millions of years, and yet the light has just reached us. Republicans seem to see, as the Bible says, "through a glass, darkly".
In Boehner's case, a glass of single malt Scotch. LOL
John: and if one looks at those pictures from the Hubble telescope, say as published in Sky and Telescope or Discover, they are incredibly beautiful, which is proof to me that what ever creative force that is out there that brought this whole thing into being is a much greater artist than "the Lord God of Isreal" who is a jealous God and who has enemies.
Not if God created the galaxies 6,000 years ago with the light from them already in flight.
Never underestimate the ability of a true believer to rationalize away something that disturbs their already-decided world view.
Phil,
Well, if you want to believe in 'God the Deceiver'...
If God created the light-images in the night sky 6000 years ago, then how do we know there are galaxies at all?
Or that anything else exists? Your computer could just be God creating the image and sensory inputs for you to interact with, and everyone you meet could be dangling on the strings of the celestial puppet-master.
Welcome to the Divine Matrix. Once one goes down this particular rabbit hole all rational thought is abandoned.
Wait. You mean it isn't?
" they've abandoned empiricism"
They haven't done empiricism since before St. Ronald of Alzheimer's. This is what faith based philosophies will get you. It doesn't matter whether or not it's political, religious, economic, or whatever. When faith trumps reality, then you have problems. As someone once said, Reality is real. That's kind of its key feature. It doesn't care if you don't like it. - Rock Diva
And reality owns the slot machines so there is no way you are ever going to beat the house.
Mass delusion can keep reality at bay, however, as some mass media moguls and religious charismatics understand very well.
Harry Truman (a wild-eyed socialist by modern standards) once put it very succinctly when asked how he'd know if his economic policies would work. He said: "We'll try them, and if they don't work, we'll try something else."
MichMan, If only we could get the GOP to accept Truman's philosophy! He was nothing if not pragmatic.
Well, they'd never follow the example of a Socialist dictator like Harry Truman. LOL
I think, honestly, that they've gone down the rabbit hole for good.
" failed to come up with persuasive sales pitches."
Something Big Tobacco tried, year after year, in the face of scientific evidence that their product killed people.
How long before we finally stop the Trickle Down Theory?
When those doing the trickling finally zip up.
As Laura's post below demonstrates, Republicans seem incapable of learning. Republican State Legislators are still insisting on vaginal probes even though several rising Republican stars, such as Virginia's McDonald, have watched their careers go up in smoke backing them.
I don't know if Republicans are stupid or lazy. I suspect both. Remember ignorance can be cured and lazy can be overcome, but stupid goes all the way to the bone.
Where empricism is absent, the so-called cultural issues take up the slack. So gun ownership, for example, becomes an end in itself, GOP politicians denounce science as the work of the devil, and cretins like Ted Nugent and Sarah Palin are promoted as embodying true American values. Where does it all end? I see David Frum has just posted a film of Pickett's Charge, which is not a bad analogy for where this mentality can get you.
They have worked hard over the years to dumb down education in this country, so that as time goes on, increasingly uncritical and clueless voters could be manipulated by propaganda outlets like Fox to vote for totally ridiculous platforms and ideas. By and large, it has worked, but demographics is now threatening to make the strategy ineffective. That is why they have moved to the next level, manipulating the vote with extreme gerrymandering and election fraud. Even that will eventually fail, and the dinos of the repub party will finally go extinct.
Not as long as the authoritarian character that's at the core of the problem goes extinct. And there are no signs of that.
Vokoban,
Or that precious commodity: Koch money.
There are always going to be elements on the right that are authoritarian, whether they wish to acknowledge the fact or not. And money is going to continue to be a factor as long as Citizens United stands. However, we saw that the money didn't help the repubs in the last election because people could see what idiots they were. Now, if they nominate candidates that are slightly less insane, that might work, but so far it looks like repubs are confronting their insanity by becoming even more insane. If I was going to worry, it would be when the authoritarians in the party collude with the money guys to stage a coup. As far-fetched as that may sound, it did occur during FDR's presidency, when some of the top corporate heads discussed just such a thing. Fortunately, the general they had picked to lead the coup backed out and blew the whole thing up. One of the conspirators was George W. Bush's grandfather.
Liberals need to learn to tell the conservatives from the pseudo-conservatives who are fascists at heart and id. They need to tell the Frums from the Becks.
And then they need to drive a wedge between them so conservatism can heal and pseudo-conservatism has to creep back to the mental abyss where it comes from.
A sane country needs reasonable opposition.
Do you think America is a sane country? Historians might disagree.
Future historians will definitely disagree.
it's not that difficult to figure out. i should know because i'm the only liberal in a family of conservative republicans. Republicans don't trust anyone who isn't like them. they don't believe facts because they tend to be a group of people who are religious so to them beliefs are more important. their faith also dictates the majority of their actions. they want to feel important and powerful so they carry themselves that way whether or not it's true. they don't believe in paying for somebody else, in gay marraige or a woman's right to choose. they're quietly racist and yet use illegal immigrants for manual labor. they watch fox news, football and 2 and a half men. they bottle up they're emotions only to unleash them later when it's boiled over the surface. they are selfish, inconsiderate and hateful. plain and simple. well honestly it's not simple but it's also not very deep. they're just afraid. of change, of retribution, of being wrong.
The gullible,baffled by bull and enamored by arrogance march in lockstep to the chest beating neanderthals who whoop and holler with an air of superiority. These radio jockeys and foxian story tellers must be smart for they make money(off of gullible fools too ignorant to see they are not)
Speaking of radio jockeys, Limbaugh came out against Boehner on the sequestration yesterday. Said he can't understand what he's thinking and why he is trying to hurt the economy. That from Rush. They are really hurting now.
Excellent essay, Steve. This is the best summary of the nature of Washington's "gridlock" that I have ever read.
The defense budget and the reluctance to eliminate inefficient loopholes proves that the "ideologues" really aren't motivated by government size. It's just another messaging strategy.
I am put out with Republican Constituents for not giving Senator Mc Cain heck for trying to politically intimidate Chuck Hagel in his Confirmation Hearing on his opinion on the Iraq war and the long ago surge. Are Republican’s brainwashed by the Fox News Channel spin on the GOP’s Iraq wonder-war, or what?
Senator Mc Cain has used holding support for Chuck Hagel’s appointment as Secretary of Defense to try to intimidate the White House for more information about Benghazi. There were two major cuts to Foreign Security in 2009 and 2010 that top Republican Congressional House leaders insisted upon in the budget, which most Republican Congressional leaders approved since the two wars were winding down, which could have affected the unfortunate outcome at Benghazi. How can Senate and House Republican leaders not own up to their part in it the budget that affected the security lapse but also demand answers?
At worse, if the White House also put out a directive for the U.S. Department of State to hold back on borrowing money, this too, could have had an affect on the lack of security in the U.S. Benghazi incident. Since then, Congress and The White House have directed more money to Foreign Security. (My opinion as to why The White House gives little detailed information is because, maybe, we do not want our other U.S. Embassies around the world to appear financially vulnerable…to terrorists.)
According to the media, the Iraq war cost 3 trillion dollars, which is about how much the whole nation pays in Federal Taxes in one year. That is how much money we are behind in the deficit in the year after year accumulation of borrowing and paying the bills through, and after, the years of the Iraq war. Even if the economy were booming this year like never before, we would still have a huge deficit to deal with.
I do understand Senator Mc Cain and Senator Graham questioning the Benghazi incident because it is not like the United States not to act in immediate defense in such a case. However, will not Republican leaders even recognize the financial crisis that the government is in and that the management of the Benghazi incident was probably a product of it escalating to a world scale? We simply need better management ideas from our leaders regarding our money, not more criticism about who is to blame.
(However, I have a question for the constituents of both parties, and the media. Do you think it might have crossed the top appointed Congressional Republican leader’s minds that their deep cuts to Foreign Security could have proven unfavorably to White House policies in National Security where the GOP might capitalize politically? Would not ‘that‘ call for an investigation?)
(I should have said…My opinion as to why The White House gave out little detailed information about the Benghazi incident, at first, is because, maybe, we did not want our other U.S. Embassies around the world to appear financially vulnerable…to terrorists.) Since then, Congress and The White House have directed more money to Foreign Security.
I love my country.
If they won't accept reality, they won't stop being the Stupid Party.
I think the Stupid Party is the talking point all progressives and Democrats should use.
The GOP is the Stupid Party and we should shout it from the roof tops!
It's all true as far as it goes. But, Republican members of Congress won't change for fear of their foe in the next primary.
How can we help? Let's tell them this. Democrats will protect you. If you lose your next primary because you broke ranks and voted a compromise into law, Democrats will embrace you as an Independent or Democratic candidate for your seat.
This is a great explanation of something I've been trying to articulate for years--conservatives see small government AS the goal rather than a means TO the goal.
Does not the Benghazi crisis fit into tight money problems and no excuse for lower tax rates on the Republican side?
Well, Mc Cain and Graham were right; the government was hiding something…from terrorists…our prior Foreign Security budget and maybe our borrowing directives, too. Too bad Mc Cain and Graham have nothing to show in taking the responsibility for voting to cut too much from Foreign Security.
A Democrat, A Republican, and a Sunday Morning Talk Show Host go deer hunting (yes there are Democrats that hunt). After days wandering around in the woods, minutes before the season ends, they spot a deer. The Rebulican shoots first and misses 10 feet to the right, then the Democrat shoots and missed 10 feet to the left, The Sunday Morning Talk Show Host yells out WE GOT IT - WE GOT IT!!!!
I wrote a song about this topic.
http://dropsy.bandcamp.com/track/republicans
(Not trying to sell it here -- you can stream it for free. Hope you enjoy it.)
Just before I came onto this blog, I posted a comment to Martin Brashir's blog requesting that someone from MSNBC do a story or program on what a liberal is. Thus I was really glad to see this article when I opened The Maddow Blog.
Limbaugh and his ilk have made the word "liberal" a dirty word. We need to stop letting the right wing nuts make us ashamed and reclaim our title. I am proud to be a liberal which means being pragmatic and solving problems and facing reality. In my opinion reality is much more beautiful than the Conservative's fantasy.
"Yea shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free."
The Republican Party has two constituencies:
1. People who so fearful of the world as it is that they construct a platitudinous shared fantasy reality in which they are both the heroes and the beleaguered victims of malevolent forces, the sense of victimization being the essential defense mechanism that allows them to beat back the frequent intrusions of objective reality. Data, news from sources of than Fox and Limbaugh are all rejected because they're propaganda fabricated by their evil enemies as a pretext for further persecution.
2. People who make money off of, or because of, the first constituency. Murdoch and Clear Channel and the theocrats make their money feeding the delusional fantasy world. Employers pay lower wages because the people in the first constituency divide themselves from those with whom have the most in common with the economically. Wall Street and banks make money because people in the first constituency can so easily be manipulated to hate and fear government generally and regulation specifically.
A party without a constituency isn't a party. (Hence the dismal failure of No Labels and America Elects). So where, pray tell, is the constituency for this new, improved, empirical Republicanism?
and then defend that fantasy from the intrusion of objective reality no matter how many new fantasies they have to add to the inherently unstable false reality
What does it say that the GOP has noticed they lost the presidential election, but are continuing to ignore consistently low Congress approval ratings...