The Long Road Back

It Is Going To Be Hard for the GOP to Oppose Sotomayor

In several of the interviews I did today on the historic Sotomayor nomination, I got asked what it will it will do to the GOP if they oppose the first Hispanic Supreme Court pick.  Before giving my answer look at what Adam Nagourney just published in the online edition of the NYTimes:

But some Republicans warned that the image of Republicans throwing a roadblock before an historic nomination could prove politically devastating. Republicans saw a dip in Hispanic support in 2008, after eight years in which former President George W. Bush and his political aides had made a concerted effort to increase the Republican appeal to Hispanics, the nation’s fastest-growing group of voters.

“If Republicans make a big deal of opposing Sotomayor, we will be hurling ourselves off a cliff,” said Mark McKinnon, a senior adviser to Mr. Bush and a long-time advocate of expanding the party’s appeal. “Death will not be assured. But major injury will be.”

Matthew Dowd, another one-time adviser to Mr. Bush, said that in 2000, he calculated that Republicans needed to win 35 percent of Hispanics to beat Democrats. He said that given the steady increase in the number of Hispanic voters, he now believed Republicans needed to win a minimum of 40 percent to be competitive with Democrats.

As a result, he said, barring any revelation about Ms. Sotomayor’s background, Republicans could doom themselves to long-term minority status if they are perceived as preventing Ms. Sotomayor from becoming a judge. He argued that the party could not even be seen as threatening a filibuster.

“Because you’ll have a bunch of white males who lead the Judiciary Committee leading the charge taking on an Hispanic women and everybody from this day forward is going to know she’s totally qualified,” he said. “It’s a bad visual. It’s bad symbolism for the Republicans.”

“Republicans have to tread very lightly,” he said. “They can’t look they are going after her in any kind of personal or mean way. There’s no way they can even threaten a filibuster; I think a threat of that sort would be a problem, even if they didn’t do it.”

Pretty definitive statements from two smart guys.  And I basically agree.  After years of demonizing Hispanics as a matter of national policy, it will be very hard for today's GOP to oppose without mounting a very compelling case against her.  The cost to their party for this strategic demonization has been extraordinary.  If this nomination is not handled delicately, and respectfully, it could get much much worse.

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Boehner On CO2 Emissions Just Another Case of Long Road Back for GOP

We've written extensively on the utter bankruptcy of the Republican Party, and this morning on "This Week," House Minority Leader John Boehner was absolutely full of it on climate change. Courtesy of Politico:

"The idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment, it is almost comical," Boehner said. "Every time we exhale, we exhale carbon dioxide. Every cow in the world, when they do what they do, you have more carbon dioxide."

Let's add this to the list of all the other things that resemble "what cows do" that the Boehner led Republican Party has tried to peddle to the American people this Congress, along with a bogus stimulus plan, an "alternative budget" without numbers, and a joke-of-a-budget that proposes an across the board spending freeze (at the worst possible time for the economy). Unfortunately for the Republicans, there does not seem to be a credible leader or policy idea, at least at the federal level (and the hopes for the future at the state level seem to shoot themselves in the foot every time they open their mouths).

As one smart Democratic communications operative said to me about Boehner's line on carbon dioxide emissions, the Republicans have already established how out of touch they are on economics (and established their complete lack of interest in working with the president to fix the economy). Energy policy is really one of the last few places where, perhaps, the two parties could work together. Boehner on the morning shows spewing such irresponsible, unscientific untruths shows yet another example of how long the road back is going to be.

Boehner leads a minority up against some of the hardest political times in the history of the party. One of its top strategists on Friday said that its insistence on religious tests risks long-term political viability, and the Republican Party continues to demonstrate just how ill suited they are for actual governing. (As if the last eight years weren't enough.) Unless something changes for the party quickly, it's leaders' days in those roles are likely numbered, and its relevance is likely to continue to diminish.

Congressional GOP's Numbers Drop Some More

The weekly Daily Kos poll is in.  The trends continued unchanged - Obama still very popular, Democrats significantly more popular than the GOP, Congressional Dems continue to tick up a bit, Congressional Republicans continue their free fall.   As of today the Congressional Republicans have an 18 percent approval rating - 18 percent!  Obama 69.  As DemFromCT writes

Tune in next week to see if John Boehner can make himself and his Republicans any less popular. He's -11 himself since the first poll 1/5-8, and the Congressional GOP is -12 (in contrast, Nancy Pelosi is +2 and Congressional Dems are +5.) 

The net-net on the battle over the Recovery Plan? Congressional Democrats gain 5 points, the Congressional GOP, in an already catastrophic position with the public, drop 11.  

It will be interesting to see how Bobby Jindal interprets these numbers in prepping for his Tuesday response to President Obama. Will he really carry the water of the wildly discredited and out of touch Washington GOP? Or distance himself from them, carving out a more constructive position in the national debate? Will be interesting to see. 

Steele, the GOP and Confronting the Southern Strategy

Michael Steele had a lot to overcome. One of his opponents, the sitting GOP Chair from South Carolina, had just resigned from an all white country club and admitted that he became a Republican in reaction to his personal experience with desegregation. Another opponent, Chip Saltsman, sent out a wildly racist CD to RNC Members which included the now infamous Magic Negro and Star Spanglish Banner songs. Saltsman was so battered by his out-of-touch comments that he withdrew from the race before the balloting began. But Katon Dawson, the SC Chair, went all the way to the final ballot before losing to Steele.

What a stark choice this was for the Republicans: an avowed disciple of the Southern Strategy era of racial politics vs. an African-American candidate from that awfully liberal, pretty far north state of Maryland. That Steele won, defeating Saltsman and Dawson, is a hopeful sign that the GOP has begun to confront its shameful exploitation of race as a national political strategy over the past 44 years. But the road back to power for the Party Mr. Steele has chosen to lead is a hard one. As I recently wrote:

Their recent success as a national Party was built on an approach towards race that spoke to a different racial reality in America, an American one where could get away with magic negro songs, and much much worse of course. But that America - a white/black, majority/minority America - is now an historic relic, and is in the process of being replaced by an America that has 3 times as many minorities as it did just 44 years ago, and is on track to be majority minority by 2042 (for more on this historic demographic transformation see here). But for many in the GOP, including ones who might become their Chairman, they know no other politics than this Southern Strategy era politics, a politics that has been rejected once and for all by the American people of today's America.

It is important that the leaders of the GOP have begun to confront its shameful racial past. But their problem has no simple or easy fix. It will require a complete refashioning of their politics around a very different set of 21st century demographics and a much more tolerant understanding of race in America - and a complete and utter repudiation of much of their domestic agenda for the past half century. Which is major reason why I think their road back is such a long one - many of their leaders came to power by becoming expert in this kind of politics; it is the core play in their playbook; it is the foundation of their domestic agenda; and they know little else. Their old Southern Strategy dogs aren't going to learn new tricks - for the GOP they will have to slowly, over time, replace their anachronistic leaders with ones schooled in the modern governing challenges, modern media and technology and modern demography of our day. The process of watching this generational replacement take place will be one of the most interesting political stories of the next 10-20 years, and of course has become all the more necessary in the age of Obama.

Recall that one of Mr. Steele's predecessors as RNC Chairman, Senator Mel Martinez of Florida, resigned in 2007 after less than a year on the job because of the lingering intolerance of the Party of Saltsman, Tancredo, Limbaugh and Dawson. So these tensions in the GOP - and the nation - will continue to play out for some time as old attitudes and people give way to new racial attitudes and a new America.

Just yesterday, Mr. Steele showed how hard this adjustment would be for the GOP. As Huffington Post's Sam Stein reported, Steele was asked on Fox News whether the GOP's position on immigration had alienated the Latino vote for a generation. His answer? No, of course. Hispanics really agree with our position calling for continued exploitation and demonization of Hispanics, but we just didn't message it very well. Score one for the nativists.

So, all in all, Mr. Steele's election is a hopeful sign for the GOP and the nation. His Party not only chose a new path in electing him their new Chair, they rejected candidates who would have sent a very bad signal about the values of the GOP in this new age of Obama. But as we saw with the irresponsible House stimulus vote last week, old ways die hard, and the choice of Steele alone does not a new Party make.

The Long Road Back, Part One

Absent huge Democratic mistakes in the next few years, the Republican Party's road back could very well be a long one. They just suffered their worst Presidential defeat in 44 years, and have now suffered crushing defeats two elections in a row, a rarity in American history.   The Democrats have more ideological control of Washington than any time since the mid- 1960s. The Democrats themselves have thoroughly modernized in the past few years, building a very 21st century and potentially durable coalition, discovering the first new electoral map of this new century, employing the very latest and very potent tools to speak to and engage the American people, and have become fully focused on the big issues the American people now face. The center-left movement is also regenerating, and has created an investment and entrepreneurial capacity that has a very good chance of building a truly powerful and modern ideological movement to complement the modernizing Democrats. And of course, the Democrats are led by a thoroughly modern man, America's first true leader of this new century, Barack Obama, who so far has shown uncommon leadership potential for a man so young and so new to the national stage.  

The Republicans, on the other hand, seem unnaturally comfortable sticking to their once successful but increasingly anachronistic ways of the 20th century. Their politics has become more reactionary than conservative, as if their party's great task has become to nostalgically but angrily fight against the emerging realities of the 21st century rather than embrace them. Their coalition no longer works in the changing demography of the day, and is dangerously old; their Southern Strategy, so critical to their ascension, has become a relic of the past; their tech and media tools have not kept up with the times; their ideas have become spent and discredited; their leaders, particularly in Washington, seem content to ankle bite rather than lead. They are an aging and frayed bunch, living off the fumes of a day and politics gone by.

At this point, I really believe there is a strong argument to be made that the GOP is further from power, more discredited and more out of touch with the American people than any time since the days of FDR and Truman. The GOP's challenge isn't a moderate-conservative one, a North-South one, a black-white-brown one - it is a forward/backward one. They succeeded in dislodging the Democrats in the late 20th century. They blew their shot in this decade to build a durable majority. Their government failed at a level that has done grave and lasting damage to their brand, and their leaders seem firmly grounded in an old politics that is simply no longer credible in this new day. They are going to have to go through a total overhaul. They will have to develop a new argument that meets the emerging challenges of the new century head on; a new electoral map; a new coalition that at some point begins to accept our fast-growing, non-white population; and competency in a whole new set of media and tech tools. They will have to shed the exploitation of race that has been at the core of their domestic politics; shed their raging intolerance of people not like them; of their comfort with politics and theater over governing; of the binary simplicity of the Cold War and the limitations of free market fundamentalism; and of a whole generation of leaders from Karl Rove to Mitch McConnell to Grover Norquist, who were schooled and evangelized in this breed of politics. This task is a big and complex one, harder perhaps than anything the right has had to do since the founding of the National Review in 1955. 

And certainly one cannot expect this new modern leadership to come from the remnants of the old failed order that still controls the all too comfortable offices of the modern GOP and conservative movement. Rather, look hard at those governors on display last week in Miami for clues to the future of America's center-right. But as able as those governors are - Pawlenty, Jindal, Crist, Palin - one did not see an obvious President there, someone ready to take on Obama in 2012, and lead their Party from a deep and dark wilderness. Interesting folks, but no FDR, no Reagan, no Clinton, no Obama. Despite their claims, the GOP farm team seems awfully thin now, at least for the short term.   

For the GOP it sure looks like a long road back. 

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