Do Republicans Need their Own DLC? Posted by Shadi Hamid

Peter Beinart has an interesting idea - maybe Republicans need their own DLC, an organization that will help bring Republicans back to the center, by advocating effective, practical policies that appeal to broad cross-section of Americans, particularly independents. In the 1980s, we couldn't win over swing voters. That's where the DLC came in. Today, it's Republicans who "can't buy a swing voter."

The interesting question, in my view, isn't whether this is a good idea for Republicans, but if it's a good idea for Democrats, and, by extension, the country at-large. Let's consider a couple possible responses to Beinart's suggestion:

1) If a powerful center-right RLC succeeded in bringing the GOP toward the center, there would be less ideological space between Left and Right. This would make it difficult to distinguish between the parties - a la Bush-Gore 2000 - and sap enthusiasm among voters. After all, if the majority of Republicans turn into Schwarzenegger/Bloomberg clones, then Republicans winning elections wouldn't be the end of the world. Compare that to the situation today, where Republicans winning elections does actually mean the end of the world. Also, the whole point of the resurgent Left is to counter the people who we think are destroying the country. If they stop destroying the country, do we perhaps lose a little bit of our raison d'etre?

2) The more interesting response - and the one I tend to agree with - is this: If an RLC brings Republicans toward the center, then that essentially moves the whole political spectrum toward the Left. Then they're playing on our turf. In other words, once Republicans sign on to universal healthcare, as Arnold has done, then that normalizes previously "far-left" ideas and makes them into "centrist" positions, thereby allowing liberals more breathing space to start asking the questin of not whether we should have universal healthcare, but rather how to improve the quality of universal healthcare we already have and make it more just, equitable, and effective.   

This ties into the bigger issue of liberals  buying into the political frames of Republicans. We're always playing by their rules and fitting our ideas into the existing right-of-center discourse. The very fact that we still don't feel comfortable calling ourselves liberals is indicative of the problem. One day, hopefully sooner rather than later, we should be the ones setting the terms of the discourse, of what's acceptable and what isn't, instead of reacting and playing defense.

Comments

[Dan Kervick]

The very fact that we still don't feel comfortable calling ourselves liberals is indicative of the problem.

Personally, I don't call myself a liberal because I don't think I'm a liberal, as most of the world understands that term, not because I'm intimidated by right wing discourse. I'm a social green-o-crat.

[Jeff]

I thought they did?

http://www.republican-leadership.com/

Hell even the initials are the same.

[Shadi Hamid]

jeff, you're right - there's an organization with that name already. but they're weak, and not particularly influential or well-funded. plus their website is pretty bad. im talking about an "RLC" that would be as influential as the DLC was to the Democratic Party in the 1980s and 90s.

[Zathras]

A Republican Leadership Committee couldn't be as influential in the GOP as the DLC was within the Democratic Party, because the two parties don't operate in the same way.

The Democratic Party is driven by organized interest groups with very specific agendas: abortion, union organizing, support for Israel, opposition to tort reform. Candidates, especially candidates for President, get nowhere in Democratic politics without assuring (at least) most of these groups and (ideally) all of them that the candidates support interest group agendas completely, with enthusiasm and without reservation. Especially in Presidential politics, personality is secondary.

What the DLC provided was a means for interests not traditionally associated with the Democratic Party to get their foot in the door, placing their specific agenda items on the party's radar screen, and in time securing their own places in "the groups'" pecking order (yes, there is one. Trial lawyers are right at the top, environmental groups at the bottom, with each group's place reflecting the contribution it is likely able to make to the Party electoral strength and finances). So, for example, a new "group" like the technology industry that sought international trade liberatization could use the DLC as a means of access into the Party, and a strong point from which to fight the protectionism favored by a traditional but weakening Democratic "group," the industrial unions.

Republicans have "groups" too, of course. However, their agendas traditionally have tended to be much less specific, and are heavily influenced by the Party leadership, especially when a Republican occupies the White House. The lowest common denominator of Republican politics, the issue decisive in determining enthusiasm for a candidate by the GOP "base," is whether the candidate appears as a strong leader who will stand up to liberals and the media. A candidate who fall short on either of these two criteria (and especially on the second one) sooner or later attracts challengers from within the party, but a candidate who measures up has substantial flexibility to define Republicanism, and conservatism, as he sees fit.

As with all generalizations, the ones made here have exceptions. They reflect each party's tendencies, not ironclad rules. And on the Republican side, the full political impact of the Bush administration -- headed by a President still adored by much of the base but regarded as a failure and worse by a large majority of the country -- within the party hasn't yet become clear.

But a look at each party's Presidential candidates suggests how deeply the tendencies described here are ingrained. There has been far more continuity, as far as issues are concerned, on the Democratic side than can be found among Republicans. 90% of Hubert Humphrey's domestic agenda in 1968 would have fit comfortably within a Mondale administration in the 1980s; outside the trade area (where, as noted above, major changes in "the groups" pecking order -- enabled in part by the DLC -- strongly influenced the early Clinton administration's policy), a Mondale administration would have seen most of its own domestic policy and much of its foreign policy carried forward by John Kerry had he been elected 20 years later. By contrast Ronald Reagan's administration aimed to reverse and repudiate many of the Nixon administration's initiatives; Reagan ran explicitly against Nixon's foreign policy. Reagan's most far-reaching domestic accomplishment -- the overhaul and simplification of the tax code in 1986 -- had been trashed by Congressional Republicans even before the younger President Bush arrived on the scene. Nixon devoted vast quantities of time and effort to transforming America's relations with its international adversaries; Reagan (and, even more, the elder Bush) emphasized strengthening relations with our friends; Bush has preferred unilateral actions. Republicans followed administrations of classic Washington insiders in the 1970s with one headed by a man from as far outside Washington as it is possible to get in the continental United States; they nominated for President a man of Congress in 1996 and a man with contempt for Congress in 2000.

Yet by the standard of Republican Party politics, Nixon, Reagan and the younger Bush were all strong Republican conservatives. Ford was less of one (and eventually so was the elder Bush), because he was not seen as that strong a leader; so was Dole (and John McCain) because he was widely, and accurately, suspected of working with Democrats even when it was not absolutely necessary. Issues mattered, and in recent years specific positions on specific issues have begun to matter more among Republicans -- but in contrast to the Democrats issues have been secondary to personality in national Republican politics.

What this means for GOP politics today is pretty straightforward. Charting a post-Bush course for the party doesn't mean embracing different policy ideas -- the kind of thing a Republican Leadership Council might do. It means repudiating Bush personally, along with his closest associates and strongest supporters in Congress. The Republicans who start this battle within the Party will lose at first, but the longer the battle is put off the longer the GOP will remain George W. Bush's party: a minority party led by people both entitled and embittered, excluded from power unless Democrats are seen to fail dramatically, a party looking back on a time most of the country will regard with regret as a golden age.