Republicans are failing the ‘politics of addition’
The Republican party at the state and national level has become a national embarrassment, as members eagerly debase themselves in declaring fealty to the former president.
Shortly after Gov. Ron DeSantis dropped out of the Republican Primary race and before former Gov. Nikki Haley flamed out, I was in my feelings about who would get the Republican nomination for president.
“Anyone but Trump,” was my thinking. For all the good that 45 did while in office, I’d had enough of his antics and figured it was time for a change, which is a sentiment most folks—even those who voted for him—agree with. Alas, my wishes were not to be heeded, as former Pres. Trump romped to victory, quashing any hopes that the Never Trumpers and the Anyone But Trumpers had of returning the presidency to conservative normalcy.
Losing our way and likely races, too
I spent more than a week engaging in soto voce lamentations over his cruise to victory, thinking of his myriad instances of misconduct, in words and deeds, over the last near-decade: flirtation with Putin, trade war with China, bromance with Kim Jung Un, Jan. 6 attack, etc. Then it occurred to me that my real issue is not with the former president.
“For as much as I dislike Trump’s antics, character, and unfitness for the presidency, I dislike the Democratic and Republican parties even less. He is who he has always been, a performer willing to say or do anything for attention and admiration. Entertainment is his vocation.”
Usually, at this point, my friends say “What about the Democrats? They are even worse.”
I don’t concern myself with what the Democratic party is doing because I’m not voting for them. (However, I would love to see the Dems begin to care about inner city crime, take seriously the border crisis, and show genuine concern for Israel in its fight with Hamas.) Mostly I’m angry at the Republican Party apparatus which has declared fealty to someone who scarcely deserves it.
Had outraged Republican Senate members had the conscience to do the right thing and convict the former president, we wouldn’t be in this position. Trump would have been effectively barred from running for president again and we could have returned the party to normalcy. Now, one thing is clear: “It’s Trump’s party now.”
Last fall, Republican Sen. John Danforth of Missouri wrote an impassioned guest essay for The Wall Street Journal, and in it he asked his party to disavow populism and “return to its conservative roots” while making clear what the party’s future would look like should they decline to do so. Drawing a distinction between what he calls traditionalists (think Mike Pence) and practitioners of unmoored populism (think Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley), he says the party has to choose one or the other. It cannot choose both, he says, and argues ardently for his vision.
“True conservatism places more emphasis on the soul of the nation than on the policies that emanate from Washington. Populist leaders like Donald Trump—who openly flouts the standards of basic human decency and appeals to rage (‘I am your retribution’)—evoke our basest instincts. Populists have relentlessly undermined our Constitution. They have falsely asserted that elections are rigged, that President Biden is illegitimate, and that we should ignore our courts.
“They have opposed the peaceful transfer of power and encouraged a mob to attack the U.S. Capitol. To this day, they turn Americans against the government, claiming that it is no longer our servant but has been “weaponized” to attack us. None of this is conservative. All of it is radical.
“We are the party of fiscal discipline, but the national debt rose nearly 40% during Mr. Trump’s presidency. We are the party of limited government, yet in the name of helping working people, populists support massive intervention in the marketplace through federal controls on prices and interest rates and, as in Disney’s case, using government to punish a corporation for expressing “woke” opinions. In their big-government activism, populists more resemble progressive Democrats than traditional Republicans.”
That’s a hyooge problem. As I wrote earlier, while a large swath of the party will walk over hot coals to return the former president to office, a Biden vs. Trump rematch is too close to call, primarily because of his weakness among independents, many of whom are just as likely to hold their noses and vote for Biden as they are to sign up for four more years of the Trump circus.
The math ain’t mathing
I shared the following quote from WSJ earlier this year:
“‘In a polarized country, any candidate has to win 90% or more of their party to win an election,’” said Whit Ayres, a longtime Republican pollster and strategist. “‘You can’t be competitive if you’re not close to 90%.” In 2020, Trump lost 9% of his own party’s voters, AP VoteCast found, and still came up short in the election.’”
“Most national polls show Trump tied with or narrowly leading President Biden in a hypothetical 2020 rematch, and some recent surveys of battleground states have given Trump clear leads.”
That reality hasn’t changed. The same way folks on the Left have openly beseeched Pres. Biden to do the right thing and step aside for the good of the country, I had hopes that strong conservatives would disavow populism and borrow words from the late William F. Buckley, by standing “athwart history, yelling stop, at a time when no one is inclined to so do.”
Turns out, leaders in the Republican party are hard to come by, particularly when it comes to putting country above party and a single person.
“I feel like if you get elected to be a leader, then you oughtta lead,” said Henry Barbour, Republican National Committeeman from Mississippi, on The Dispatch Podcast. “I think you ought to be able to stand up for your principles. If you can’t do that, what’s the point?”
It might not make a difference. Biden might be a feeble president executing a tremendously flawed plan, but he benefits from a feckless, fractured Republican party who might be just unwise enough to rescue him in November.
Barbour said it best: “[Winning elections] is the politics of addition. This is math, and it’s not hard math. We need more voters, not fewer voters.”
Where are the Republican mathematicians when you need them?