Political Parties Die from the Head Down

[Sam H]

Ship of fools

Nov 13th 2008
From The Economist print edition
Political parties die from the head down


Illustration by KAL

JOHN STUART MILL once dismissed the British Conservative Party as the stupid party. Today the Conservative Party is run by Oxford-educated high-fliers who have been busy reinventing conservatism for a new era. As Lexington sees it, the title of the "stupid party" now belongs to the Tories' transatlantic cousins, the Republicans.

There are any number of reasons for the Republican Party's defeat on November 4th. But high on the list is the fact that the party lost the battle for brains. Barack Obama won college graduates by two points, a group that George Bush won by six points four years ago. He won voters with postgraduate degrees by 18 points. And he won voters with a household income of more than $200,000--many of whom will get thumped by his tax increases--by six points. John McCain did best among uneducated voters in Appalachia and the South.

The Republicans lost the battle of ideas even more comprehensively than they lost the battle for educated votes, marching into the election armed with nothing more than slogans. Energy? Just drill, baby, drill. Global warming? Crack a joke about Ozone Al. Immigration? Send the bums home. Torture and Guantanamo? Wear a T-shirt saying you would rather be water-boarding. Ha ha. During the primary debates, three out of ten Republican candidates admitted that they did not believe in evolution.

The Republican Party's divorce from the intelligentsia has been a while in the making. The born-again Mr Bush preferred listening to his "heart" rather than his "head". He also filled the government with incompetent toadies like Michael "heck-of-a-job" Brown, who bungled the response to Hurricane Katrina. Mr McCain, once the chattering classes' favourite Republican, refused to grapple with the intricacies of the financial meltdown, preferring instead to look for cartoonish villains. And in a desperate attempt to serve boob bait to Bubba, he appointed Sarah Palin to his ticket, a woman who took five years to get a degree in journalism, and who was apparently unaware of some of the most rudimentary facts about international politics.

Republicanism's anti-intellectual turn is devastating for its future. The party's electoral success from 1980 onwards was driven by its ability to link brains with brawn. The conservative intelligentsia not only helped to craft a message that resonated with working-class Democrats, a message that emphasised entrepreneurialism, law and order, and American pride. It also provided the party with a sweeping policy agenda. The party's loss of brains leaves it rudderless, without a compelling agenda.

This is happening at a time when the American population is becoming more educated. More than a quarter of Americans now have university degrees. Twenty per cent of households earn more than $100,000 a year, up from 16% in 1996. Mark Penn, a Democratic pollster, notes that 69% call themselves "professionals". McKinsey, a management consultancy, argues that the number of jobs requiring "tacit" intellectual skills has increased three times as fast as employment in general. The Republican Party's current "redneck strategy" will leave it appealing to a shrinking and backward-looking portion of the electorate.

Why is this happening? One reason is that conservative brawn has lost patience with brains of all kinds, conservative or liberal. Many conservatives--particularly lower-income ones--are consumed with elemental fury about everything from immigration to liberal do-gooders. They take their opinions from talk-radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh and the deeply unsubtle Sean Hannity. And they regard Mrs Palin's apparent ignorance not as a problem but as a badge of honour.

Another reason is the degeneracy of the conservative intelligentsia itself, a modern-day version of the 1970s liberals it arose to do battle with: trapped in an ideological cocoon, defined by its outer fringes, ruled by dynasties and incapable of adjusting to a changed world. The movement has little to say about today's pressing problems, such as global warming and the debacle in Iraq, and expends too much of its energy on xenophobia, homophobia and opposing stem-cell research.

Conservative intellectuals are also engaged in their own version of what Julian Benda dubbed la trahison des clercs, the treason of the learned. They have fallen into constructing cartoon images of "real Americans", with their "volkish" wisdom and charming habit of dropping their "g"s. Mrs Palin was invented as a national political force by Beltway journalists from the Weekly Standard and the National Review who met her when they were on luxury cruises around Alaska, and then noisily championed her cause.

Time for reflection

How likely is it that the Republican Party will come to its senses? There are glimmers of hope. Business conservatives worry that the party has lost the business vote. Moderates complain that the Republicans are becoming the party of "white-trash pride". Anonymous McCain aides complain that Mrs Palin was a campaign-destroying "whack job". One of the most encouraging signs is the support for giving the chairmanship of the Republican Party to John Sununu, a sensible and clever man who has the added advantage of coming from the north-east (he lost his New Hampshire Senate seat on November 4th).

But the odds in favour of an imminent renaissance look long. Many conservatives continue to think they lost because they were not conservative or populist enough--Mr McCain, after all, was an amnesty-loving green who refused to make an issue out of Mr Obama's associations with Jeremiah Wright. Richard Weaver, one of the founders of modern conservatism, once wrote a book entitled "Ideas have Consequences"; unfortunately, too many Republicans are still refusing to acknowledge that idiocy has consequences, too.

[thelusiv]

I say it's time for great upheaval in the Republican Party. Get rid of the neo-conservatives, or just totally melt the party down. Neo-conservatism needs to die in a fire. There is a pretty good chance that in four years they will get beat again if Obama remains as popular as he is, especially if they nominate another neo-con. I don't think many Americans will easily forget how much the Dubya years have sucked.

[straight four]

I miss ponycar.

The latest conspiracy from work:
Where is his birth certificate. Why hasnt it been released?
Members of his Family say they were present at his birth in Kenya.
Also, the same day of his supposed birth, a Barak Housein Obama was born in Canada.

[F1james]

thelusiv Wrote:I say it's time for great upheaval in the Republican Party. Get rid of the neo-conservatives, or just totally melt the party down. Neo-conservatism needs to die in a fire. There is a pretty good chance that in four years they will get beat again if Obama remains as popular as he is, especially if they nominate another neo-con. I don't think many Americans will easily forget how much the Dubya years have sucked.

I think he's only popular now because he hasn't had the chance to mess up, plus the Obamanauts are still brainwashed with the whole "change" thing. I'm sure he'll still be popular, but I doubt it will be at the levels it is now.

[straight four]

NPR was listing some of the stats.
Obama won by 7 points amongst undergrads.
17 amongst Graduates.

Funny thing is, that is about the same lead that Bush had 4 years ago.

[Silonius]

No kidding. I really like their ideas of fiscal restraint and smaller government but their crazy uber conservative anti-freedom social views make it impossible to vote for them.

Oh, their stance on gun ownership is okay too.

Did Palin really think dinosaurs lived 6000 years ago? Really? I can't vote for that.

[straight four]

wow

http://www.wnd.com/

got that from a work colleague.

[F1james]

thelusiv Wrote:I say it's time for great upheaval in the Republican Party. Get rid of the neo-conservatives, or just totally melt the party down. Neo-conservatism needs to die in a fire. There is a pretty good chance that in four years they will get beat again if Obama remains as popular as he is, especially if they nominate another neo-con. I don't think many Americans will easily forget how much the Dubya years have sucked.

Definitely true. The Neo-Cons, especially the uber-religious are not helping the party at all.

[Hraefn]

+1

[RHennin]

Can we try to keep things civil this time if were going to talk about politics?

Coming from Ross, whose skeptical that we should allow people to talk about politics for a while on here cuz it ends up with yelling, name calling, and poo flinging

[F1james]

I'm cool as a cucumber

[Jrubins]

poooooooooppppppp!
Sorry. Had to!

[Jrubins]

The problem with the republican party is that they tried (successfully) to build a coalition from right wing economic theorists and religious wing nuts.
Those two things have very little in common, so when it comes to issues, the GOP only has the "least common denominator" that it can work to. As the past few years have shown, that LCD has gotten lower and lower. This year the republicans have basically attacked Obama as an 'elite'. Do-wha?

Attacking elites is pretty disingenuous, when you've got guys like Bill Kristol, and whole host of think-tank acolytes determining policy.

The fissure between the two sects of republicanism were evident during the primary... does anyone here really think that Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul, or Rudy Guiliani belong in the same party?

When McCain nominated Palin, I knew it was over. The 'fiscal conservatives' who supported McCain just were not the same people as Palin's supporters.
His nomination of her to be VP suggested cheap, cynical politics. It was "vote for me, I've got a chick on the ticket" and "vote for me, I've got a religious person on the ticket". I don't think that women or religious voters appreciated it... at least not enough.

It used to be the liberals came with the pie-in-the-sky ideas, but the conservatives actually made them run. Bush's incompetence even has people questioning that generalization.

And let's face it, if
Christopher Hitchens thinks that your policies = "vote for me, I'm with stupid". Then you've got a problem.