Realignment: The Populist Connection
A week ago, while I was pondering our approaching constitutional crisis, I asked if Bush really could sustain this level of deception and stubborness with the American public for two more years. Given how condensed the news cycle is now, there are at least a dozen stories I could be following on a given day. Successful bloggers are able to keep up with all those conversations. I cannot, which makes me unsuccessful by my definition. But the point is that a lot of this news leads right back to the president and Iraq. Bush is taking a beating. Josh Marshall encapsulates it nicely in this brief post. Bush's approval rating has been in the 30s for well over a year, occasionally hitting a ceiling somewhere in the 40s. His unpopularity gave Democrats control of Congress and has demoralized Republicans. Conservatism has become difficult to define. All of this adds up to an unpredictable situation for the next two years. Can Bush really stay in Iraq for two more years? And if he tries to, what will be the Democratic response? In all liklihood, Bush's support will come from a fraction of the most hardcore of conservative Republicans, Joe Lieberman, and the handful of neocons who defined his presidency.
I guess what I'm asking is whether a modern US President can actually do his job with that kind of support. And what about when the veto pen starts bleeding ink? Bush will be linked to obstructing wildly popular legislation, and those members of Congress that support him. This adds up to a bloodbath in 2008. How many Republicans will sign onto the Democrats' domestic and foreign agenda to create veto-proof majorities in order to save themselves in 2008? And what will the reaction of the conservative base be? I never thought two years ago that I would write this, but I don't see how how the Republican party can make any gains in 2008 (my prediction that the 2004 election was the peak of the conservative movement's dominance wasn't until March 2005). They have hitched their fortunes to a core voting block that demands certain things from their candidates. These are the extremists of the Republican coalition, the more hardcore of the conservative movement. The Christian nationalists. The anti-immigrant xenophobes. The foreign policy adventurers. The radical free-marketers. The unlimited presidential power fanatics. The legal libertarians. I would consider all of these people to be in a very distinct minority yet they appear to have control of the party machinery, the organizations that support it, and the leaders who promote it. How can a moderate Republican survive in this climate, much less a liberal one? Lincoln Chafee left office with a 60% approval rating. He has long opposed Bush and his agenda. The voters threw him out solely because he was a Republican. Now that's in Rhode Island. What about the rest of the country? Take a look at Arnold Schwarzenegger. He tried to govern with a simpleminded libertarian agenda and he suffered setback after setback. He is now a consummate politician because he has abandoned the movement conservatives and started working with his Democratic rivals. Now, that's California, but hasn't California been, as we've heard for the past 40 years, the bellwether state? I think Republicans like Schwarzenegger are the only ones that stand a chance in hell for 2008, and that's if they're in blue or purple states. This isn't quite the "liberal Republican" conservatives complained about in the 50s, 60s and 70s, this is the Republican who is nonideological and who compromises. In short, the precise opposite of the Reagan and Gingrich revolutions. If the ideologues lose sway, then where will they go?
It seems that the Republican party will either become the party of Schwarzenegger or the party of the conservative (Whoever the standard-bearer becomes; it's unclear who that is right now). And either way, that splits the party, perhaps for a long time. I wonder too what will become of the conservative counter-establishment and alternative media that has proliferated over the last 30 years. Its certainly not going to disappear once Republicans lose control of government. In fact, it will be right where it is most comfortable: as the underdog. Nothing rallies the conservative base better than liberal dominance. The difference is that conservatives won their dominance through populism. If I am correct is asserting that the Democrats are now the populist party, then the conservative establishment will have a difficult time making the case that they alone speak for the people. One can't help but see cycles in all this. And the more I think about it, the key variable is who controls the populist agenda. That is the bind our binary system seems to be in, perhaps for all time. I fully expect the pendulum to shift back to the right within my lifetime, but for the time being, the bell tolls for conservative populism as the sun rises on a new Democratic, progressive, populist agenda.