Republicans VIII

 

The Party’s Over

The party's over
It's time to call it a day
They've burst your pretty balloon
And taken the moon away
It's time to wind up the masquerade
Just make your mind up the piper must be paid.

Is the Republican Party over?

A Venn Diagram is the perfect way to illustrate the Goldilocks principle, “Just Right”, when there are three outcomes from two diametrically opposed positions. The maximum condition is when the two positions intersect, overlap, and this creates three outcomes from the total of all conditions.  The first position that does not overlap is 1/3 of the total. The area of the overlap, intersection of the first and second positions is 1/3 of the total. The area of the second position that does not overlap is 1/3 of the total. The total is thus always 1/3+1/3+1/3. The intersecting position might go by the name of Reagan Democrats or Rockefeller Republicans, etc. It is in this bi-partisan area that politics is most effective.

If one side becomes obsessed with ideological purity and refuses membership to those who would work with the other party, the total will not change. In fact the excluded members may join with the other party. In this case the first position has 1/3 of the total. The second position has 2/3 of the total; the 1/3 that did not intersect with the other position PLUS the 1/3 that did previously intersect. Excluding members because they were primaried out; were “RINOs”; spoke ill of other Republicans, etc. ........ or other tests to ensure ideological purity becomes a self defeating effort.

Why has this become a problem for the  Republican Party? It goes back to its very beginnings. No individual party member can be expected to have exactly the same position on every issue. If party membership is defined by only one issue, then there is the probability that membership would be offered to those with no other commonalities among its members. In the 1850s, the issue was the expansion of slavery into federal territories. The no-tax Whigs and the no-immigrant Know Nothings who may have had nothing in common with others who held anti-slavery positions were welcomed into the Republican Party. When slavery was abolished then the ideological position of the Party could become no-tax or no-immigrant, and those who were anti-slavery but low-tax or pro-immigrant may be excluded from the party which they founded. It has taken almost two lifetimes, but the exclusion appears to have been accomplished. A party that excludes Richard Cheney, Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger and Mitt Romney and vilifies John McCain may be "ideological pure", but it is guaranteeing its own defeat.

Lawrence O’Donnell remarked that today’s Republican Party has become a cult of personality. He observed that the policies espoused by the current Republican nominee for President whether it is by JD Vance, Ron Desantis, or even Donald Trump, Jr. are widely deplored, and yet those same policies espoused by Donald Trump, Sr. are admired by many of those same people.  He concluded that it is the personality, not the policies, that are being endorsed. And since personalities have a limited lifespan, one has to ask when Donald Trump, Sr. is no more, is the Republican Party over?