NY Times Runs Obituary for New England Republicans
Given this year’s election results you knew it had to happen: the New York Times has printed an obituary for the “Yankee Republican (Republicanus newenglandensis).” Pam Belluck describes the subspecies as “Dignified in demeanor, independent in ideology and frequently blue in blood [how the heck did I miss out on that one?], they were politicians in the mold of Roosevelt and Rockefeller: socially tolerant, environmentally enthusiastic, people who liked government to keep its wallet close to its vest and its hands out of social issues.”
Belluck points out the striking (and exceedingly worrisome) results of this past election, in which independents, many liberal Republicans and even Democrats deserted Republican incumbents in droves. Seeking a reason for the trend, she quotes former NH Republican governor Walter Peterson (who this year co-chaired Republicans for John Lynch, the incumbent Democrat):
“What the people want is basically to feel like the candidates of a political party are working for the people, not just following some niche issues. The old traditional Republican Party was conservative on small government, efficient government; believed in supporting people to give them a chance at life but not having people on the dole; wanted a balanced budget; and on social issues they were moderate, tolerant, live and let live. They didn’t dislike somebody from other religious viewpoints. That was the old-fashioned conservative, but the word conservative today has been bastardized.”
Defeated RI Senator Lincoln Chafee sums up the dilemma well: “‘I’m caught between the state party, which I’m very comfortable in, and the national party, which I’m not,’ said Mr. Chafee, adding that he was considering the merits of ‘sticking it out and hoping the pendulum swings back.’” Like Chafee, I think many of us liberal Republicans in New England (and New York, where I grew up and still vote) have increasingly in the last few years (decades?) felt the chill wind that tends to blow our way from the rest of the Republican Party most of the time.
Has the moment come when there is no room for us in the Republican tent? Has the pendulum swung so far from the Party’s good-sense roots that it will not, in fact, swing back? With every loss or retirement of another prominent Yankee Republican (Charlie Bass, Sherry Boehlert, Linc Chafee, just to name a few this year) our influence in the national party diminishes proportionately. Is our battle already lost?
30 Responses to “NY Times Runs Obituary for New England Republicans”
Another example of why the US is going to become a single party state. Anyone in New England for was really for smaller,limited government, and for economic opprotunity now lives in Charlotte, Atlanta, Dallas, or Nashville.
The Republicans also have the problem that they are the “unhip” political party and thus cannot not developed any new potential candidates. Sure, the Republicans have a few legacy elected leaders in New England but my guess is that every one of those will be replaced with a Democrat when they retire. Lincoln Chaffee may be moderate candidate but his legacy is that he never convience anyone else that his ideas had merit nore did he apparently develop any subordinates.
The moment came about 12 years ago. The only question is when you realized this. If it’s just now, then you’re at least 6 or 8 years too late to have any credibility as a political analyst.
Even with redistricting reform there will be many districts that will lean conservative and condidates that respond to them will be welcome.
The opportunity for the Centrist community is to nurture moderate Republicans as well as moderate Democrats.
I dream of a grand political collaboration among Mayor Bloomberg, Gov Schwarzenegger, Joe Lieberman, John Danforth, Bob Kerrey, Lincoln Chaffee, The Republican Main Street Partnership, It’s My Party Too, and other relatively independent moderates.
The pendulum will swing again and it would be nice to be ready.
Paul,
The demographic trends in the US means that the pendulum will be locked in one direction and that will be that the US will become much more liberal and overwhelmingly one party. We will be a country that a minority of highly educated, wealthy whites and Asian who run/lead a country made up of relatively poor blacks, hispanics, and immigrants. A good prototype for the future of the US National polticis would be Southern California. The biggest problem is that there is not much room for the middle class in such an arrangement.
The NYT deserves a fair degree of credit for the disappearance of moderate Republicans since it has so vigorously urged voters to vote for Democrats in all circumstances without regard for the individual merits of the candidates.
Superdestroyer makes a really interesting argument from the “demography is destiny” perspective.
I am surprised that your vision is of a “liberal” one party state dominated by rich whites. A lot of liberals (I imagine) would argue against this view, seeing the two as contradictory.
This is a pretty bleak vision, really. You may be right.
BTW: Superdestroyer, you do not identify the “one party” in the state you foresee. The Democrats? Why them necessarily?
However, there is another perspective…from the field of geography, actually. Liberal strongholds tend to be in areas where development is blocked by the sea or natural barriers. Migration is occuring to southern centres where…as you say…economic opportunity beckons. The Liberal strongholds such as the Bay area are barely reproducing themselves, whereas the sprawling southern centres are growing exponentially…with a more econonmically conservative ethos.
DBL said: “The NYT deserves a fair degree of credit for the disappearance of moderate Republicans since it has so vigorously urged voters to vote for Democrats in all circumstances without regard for the individual merits of the candidates.”
An excellent point. The NYT policy in 06 may be replicated in the future…even “good” moderate Republicans must be voted against for the good of the country, so they declared.
Perhaps they were right in 06. It will be interesting to see if the NYT perpetuates their “Party Line” policy in 08.
i liked barney frank’s take (which i heard the other day on c-span radio, and should be available via the “newsmakers” podcast found here) on the NE slap heard ’round the country.
he said something to the effect of “the moderate NE republicans, when it came down to it, still voted with the party on borderline issues. the republican leadership would keep votes open until 3 or 4 in the morning so they could browbeat the holdouts until the submitted. and they would. and the people didn’t like that.”
So my question to NE republicans (which sounds merely like reasonable republicans): Where will you go?
Looking at it as objectively as I can, I can’t really see a party for NE republicans right now. For the reasons stated in the post, the Republican Party is no longer the place you belong. But the Democrats don’t seem to offer a viable alternative. Especially where small government is concerned there is no small government party anymore.
Always in these situations the idea for a third party comes up, but as always is promptly shot down, because we all know that in order to get power in the system we have now, you already must possess power. Dems and Repubs rarely unite (except to raise their own salary) but would against the treat of a third party.
Barny Frank (via Dan above) is right – the moderate New England republicans in congress are voting lock step with the rest of the more radical republicans in congress and the people of New England decided they have had enough. That is, the moderate republicans are leaving the increasingly radical far right that the republican party is becoming.
Unfortunately for the republicans, one of the groups they need to win nationwide elections is the religious taliban. But, the taliban is starting to gain quite a bit of control of the party and the agenda. That, and of course the republicans no longer being the party of small government, leaves conservatives wondering what has become of their party.
Back in 2004, after the election, Barney Frank said (paraphrasing) “a lot of people seem to like the sound of conservative music – now they’ll get a chance to see if they like the lyrics too.” I guess they didn’t like the lyrics.
The problem is that the national Republican party became completely intolerant of debate and diversity of views and its goals became almost entirely subsumed by those of George Bush. Look at recent votes on issues of the war, civil rights, executive privelege,and spending bills where typically 95-100% of Republicans vote as a block while the Democrats often split 60-40.
New Englanders, in particular, have been treated as pariahs by the national Republicans. There was simply no point in re-electing representatives who served a party that was hostile to the region and its interests. The fact that the party could no longer even claim the mantle of conservatism simply sealed the deal for many voters.
Those voters still exist. But right now they don’t have a party to support.
Marlowecan,
Since I live in the Washington, DC area, I base my model the future of politics on that area. The District itself contains about 40% whites, many of them either extremely wealthy or supported by wealthy parents. There are virtually no middle class in the District of Columbia. Thus you get a public school system that is 95% minority and failing with the west wide (read the white side) filled with expensive private schools for the children of rich whites and Asians.
In the near suburbans of DC you get the same thing but with a little less money. There are still a few public schools that the upper middle class will send their children to but private schools have begun to expand. However most schools are becoming increasing minority and thus suffer from white flight (See T.C. Williams made famous by the movie, “Remember the Titans.” Once gain there are few middle class people in the near suburbs since crime is higher and housing prices are extreme.
As an anecdotal story, after living in the DC area a few years, I travelled to Huntsville, Alabama for a consulting job. It struck me as very odd to see a 20 something white females bussing tables, mopping floors, or working in a convience store. It is something that you are very unlikely to see in the DC area.
If you look at the county map of the 2004 presidential elections, the bluest counties were the counties with the richest whites, large number of minorities and a small middle class ( See Manhatten, Cook County, San Francisco, Phiily, Seattle, Boston, etc). A surefire mark of an overwhelmingly blue county is an lack of a native born middle class.
Since Democrats who are now in control support almost totally open borders and since blacks and hispanics have much larger families than whites, it is the demographic destiny of the US that large portions of the US will be a few rich whites and asians who can afford private schools, private security, and private transportation working as the managers/politcal leaders in metropolitcanareas made up of large numbers of minorities who will be the consumers of public services. If you think that middle class whites will live with blue collar minorities I suggest you look at the commuting patterns of most large metropolitan areas.
Which is why I believe the GOP will resurrect itself. The only thing that is questionable in my mind is how long it will take; if the Dems govern too far to the left, the GOP resurgence will be fairly quick (quite possibly a Republican White House). But if the Blue Dog Democrats successfully push their moderate agenda over the next two years, then the GOP will have a much harder time recapturing moderate and more fiscally conservative voters.
Superdestroyer and I have had this debate several times, but my fundamental disagreement arises from what appears to be his central thesis, which is that race is destiny. Yes, African-Americans overwhelmingly vote Democratic right now, but that’s not because of race, ethnicity, or culture. It’s an accident of history having to do with the Civil Rights movement and how the parties realigned at that time over a twenty year span. Before that realignment, African-Americans usually voted Republican. There will be such realignments in the future. The same sort of thing for Hispanic voters. At the moment, this “being Hispanic” seems to be a real category that people identify with, but it is almost certain that the day will come (if it hasn’t already) in which the rancher in Texas of Mexican descent, Dominicans in NYC, Cuban exiles in Miami, and Guatamalan migrant workers in California see more differences between themselves than they see commonality – despite the fact that they or their grandparents speak Spanish. I just don’t think you can take current voting patterns as they relate to ethnicity and simply project them forward. It assumes that those ethnic groups will always be the same and that their voting issues will always be the same. Neither assumption is likely to stand more than a couple decades.
pacatrue,
I think you are absolutely correct and ironically I think this is why the Democratic party stands the most to gain by promoting racism. As long as they can keep that specter alive and keep people self identifying along racial and ethnic lines, they have a lock on certain demographic groups. Once the members of minorities see that this is what is happening, and that they are being used, the realignment will begin. Again, I don’t know when it will happen but I firmly believe that it will happen.
Err…Libertarian?
I’m talking about a party that most people can actually choose from. I’m not a big fan of the two-party system – I’d rather have many parties, that could better represent the diversity of interests in the country. But the reality is that today you can vote for a Republican or a Democrat. Period. Very few of us get another choice. This is fine when the parties are loose associations of diverse interest groups, but becomes a serious problem when partisanship reigns supreme.
The GOP needs to purge itself of the current leadership if they want to resurrect themselves. That didn’t happen in the recent leadership elections, and is highlighted by their failure to finish the budget before their term expires.
Fine with me if New England Republicans, in their current Democratic-lite iteration, lose out. Democrats have their own internal splits that may be increasingly on display in the absence of the northern GOP, and we may see a conservative drift among the Ds as a result.
I have often wondered if the NE Republicans ever thought of creating a regional party, more in tune with their beliefs and dropping the social agenda. Why not? If the national party is almost dead in NE then start anew.
George Bush said that as a politician he (as part of the job description) had to listen to people he didn’t agree with. Moderate Republicans perhaps got us health insurance deductability instead of and NHS, oppostion to the minimum wage or getting it increased, a prescription drug benefit that is perhaps the smallest possible step to government price setting of pharmaceuticals, all of which I am in favor of. My impression is that your Moderate Republicans regarded the Christian values voter as, in the words of a commenter, the religious Taliban and found listening to them intolerable. I think for a moment that is understandable but wouldn’t want to get frozen in that position; it’s not political. George Bush’s failures in Iraq, which so worried Chafee, are at least the results of, by analogy, sitting for the exams as opposed to those of Bill Clinton who, as the movie he objected to suggested, got a note, possibly from Sandy Berger, giving him an exemption (until 9/11). I’d rather see the first kind of failures.
The Republican party’s distain for those who cross party lines has long been evident. No party is fond of such behavior but “Blue Dogs” rarely recieved the derrission that the “RINOs” did (Joe Lieberman and Zell Miller being notable exceptions.) Is it surprising that there is a lack of moderate Republicans? Until the GOP decides to return to the “big tent” of Ronald Reagan they will likely be pushed back further and futher unless the Democrats make major blunders.
C Stanley,
Minorities don’t identify along racial and ethnic lines because Democratic politicians tell them to. They align along those lines because they experience real discrimination in society, and they feel more comfortable around “their own.” Do you think the Democrats told all the black students to sit together at the lunch table? Do Democrats tell blacks in the middle class that they must live in Prince Georges County, MD and not in Montgomery County or Fairfax County? Blacks do what they do because they feel its in their best interest, not because they are told to do so by Jesse Jackson or some white liberal Democrat.
Blacks were as solidly Republican in the late 19th century as they are Democratic now. There are ten major reasons for the transition:
1) Southern Republicans became lily-white in the 1890s and did little to fight disfranchisement in many Southern states
Nixon played the race card to scare white working class voters in the North and Upper South in 1968
2) The National Republican Party stopped appealing on behalf of blacks after the failed Lodge Force Bill in 1890 (which would have introduced Federal agents into Southern elections); Republicans found the votes in the West to make up for lost votes in the South
3) Black migrants to Northern cities in the 1910s and 1920s turned to local political machines, which were mostly Democratic
4) Roosevelt cared more about the poor than any other President; moreover, his FEPC in 1943 was the first effort by a 20th century President to ban employment discrimination; in response white Philadelphia transit workers went on a hate strike in 1944 and the Republican Party welcomed them in with open arms; the Detroit race riot of 1943 encouraged the same white flight to the suburbs and to the then-irrelevant GOP; the so-called “Southern strategy” began in the North in the 1940s
5) Truman continued to push for Civil Rights in 1948; Dewey, nevertheless, was the last Republican to receive a sizable black vote
6) JFK pushed the Civil Rights Act after Bull Connor in 1963
7) Goldwater rejected the Civil Rights Act in 1964; he got the lowest vote among blacks for any Republican ever
9) Southern Strategy in 1972 picked up Wallace voters
10) Reagan launched his 1980 Presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi as a symbolic gesture of support for “state’s rights.” Everybody knew what he meant.
The transition of blacks to the Democratic Party occurred over many decades. But the height of it was under FDR in the 1930s and 1940s, before the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. There were remnants of “Lincoln Republicans” as late as the 1960s. The best example was Edward Brooke, Senator from Massachusetts. But like his white liberal counterparts in the GOP, his days were numbered.
Black Republicans today largely resemble black Democrats in the 19th century. They are usually MUCH wealthier than other blacks, and often have closer social and economic ties to whites than do most African Americans. Most African Americans deeply distrust black Republicans today; Michael Steele ended up doing horribly among blacks in Maryland, as did Kenneth Blackwell among blacks in Ohio. There is no more reviled figure in black America than Clarence Thomas. The idea that Karl Rove could break the black relationship to the Democratic Party with a bunch of Clarence Thomases was preposterous in its inception.
Does anyone notice that the perception seems to be that those who had voted for the moderate Republicans are too stupid to realize that if they voted for a Republican, no matter who it was or how moderate they might be it would get them the same people in charge of Congress? Why isn’t it possible that they just finally had enough of hoping that the moderates they’d been voting for could moderate the extremists who currently have all the power in the Republican party? In our system there is no such thing as voting for an individual. Whoever you vote for the party they belong to has to be considered in today’s political environment. Since I think the leadership of the Republican party is much further to the right than the Democratic leadership is to the left I don’t consider any Republican to be someone I can vote for and many years ago I did vote for moderate Republicans.
Great post, Elrod! Republicans think that black voters are brainwashed by Democrats into thinking that they can only survive as victims, and that Democrats are the only ones who can vote in the government programs that will enable their victimhood to endure. But I see Democrats as ensuring opportunity and fairness- from Roosevelt through to Clinton.
Black voters aren’t going to vote for a conservative black candidate just because of their color. Rove tried that in three different races and failed miserably, because the voters saw that those candidates would support the policies that have hurt the middle and working classes. You can’t cut the school lunch and Pell grant program while giving the richest one percent a huge tax cut, and say you want to create opportunity for black voters. They just don’t buy it.
Let’s be serious here.
The Democrats only turned on Zell Miller when he stood up at the Republican convention, attacked the Democratic nominee and virtually accused him of treason simply for running the incumbent during a time of war.
They only turned against Lieberman when he got up and lectured critics of the war about giving aid to America’s enemies – again a veiled accusation of treason.
Elrod, You are an elephant in some sense; you sure have a memory. One substantive issue, without Everett Dirksen of Illinois and the (moderate) Republicans, there would have been no Civil Rights Act of 1964. The example of Reagan in starting his campaign reveals a trait of Reagan and a behavior which can be looked at in another way. The white Souherner was, in a national sense, reviled for his sin. Reagan’s opening said to him or her, ‘You’re a good person.’ The later public service announcemnts/placards with the black HUD secretary saying ‘Equal Housing Opportunity. It’s the law’ starkly gave the message, ‘Throw your sins, no longer a person, into the river.’ I think Reagan was doing a similar thing at Bittburg. MLK said, “I have a dream.” That may be better than a memory.
Elrod,
If DC, Detroit, Baltimore, Compton, Philly, are examples of the great things that Democrats are doing for blacks, I would hate to see what they do to their enemies. How is forcing middle class whites to move out of the distant exurbs in order to flee the crime, schools, and infrastructure failures that the Democratic controled cities providing for the middle class?
In the long run, it does not really matter why blacks and hispanics vote for Democrats no matter what. The effect, in the long run, will be to make the US a single party state.
You did a a review of history but do want to hazard a guess what the future of the US will look like when 50% of the population will vote for the Democrats no matter what? If DC is any example it will not be very pleasant for the middle and working classes.
superdestroyer makes an excellent point, even though I disagree with his belief that the Dems will become the one party to rule the US.
But the point is, yes, Elrod, you give all the historical examples of why blacks rightly turned to the Democratic party. Many of those examples were the right legislation at the right time (though you leave out the role of moderate Republicans as MichaelforgotID mentions, as well as the Nixon/Rockefeller coalition of the GOP that pushed for civil rights legislation). The fact remains though that now many blacks are now asking the Democratic party, “What have you done for me lately?” Many of them are also recognizing that their best interest is often pushed aside in favor of other coalitions within the Democratic party. The Jesse Jackson coalition is still pushing the affirmative action agenda and as superdestroyer points out, the policies of the Democrats have led to just as much inequity as any policy of any Republican in the last 40 years. So the question is, which party is going to help blacks and other minorities NOW? I see two big issues where this will be decided: education (many blacks favor school voucher programs to allow them to opt out of failing inner city schools, for example) and housing (I haven’t seen either party seriously address racial bias in mortgage lending or rental polcies, but these are definitely issues important to the black community).
And I never suggested in any way, shape or form that blacks vote in a certain way because they are told to do so…obviously you give the reasons why they are inclined to vote Dem based on historical events. But look at your list: nothing positive from the Democratic party since 1972? I would say there were positive steps since then, but you probably didn’t want to bring up the affirmative action and welfare because both have been mixed bags. A certain amount of both were probably needed and helpful, but they have also produced a lot of unwanted consequences because these policies were poorly implemented. Entitlements instead of empowerment is never a good long term strategy.
On this:
You make my point for me. The distrust is there, but is there reason for it based on the actual stance of each party, or is it because the Democratic party has fostered fear of racism and class envy? Why would blacks so distrust those among them who have been successful, if not for the class envy rhetoric that says that it is the success of wealthy people that oppresses the poor?
And Kim, thanks for once again misstating that the school lunch program has been cut when it has not. You also make my point for me because once again, the Democrat talking points don’t have to be accurate, they just have to sound like they are true. As I pointed out to you in another thread, there were Republicans who called for cuts in order to eliminate fraud in the program (which actually would be to the benefit of those who are truly needy) but since they were deomonized, their proposals were dropped and no cuts were made. You could have made your point about the Pell grants, that is a fair point, but instead you chose to drop a false accusation in there (I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you forgot about our earlier exchange about this).
CSPAN has put up the aforementioned (by me) podcast, if anyone is interested.
You are right CS, we did have that exchange-and I should have qualified my remarks. But it doesn’t change the intent of the Republicans to cut the budget in places that disproportionately affect the black community. That is what affects their voting patterns, not the Democrats painting Republicans as racist. African-Americans may feel that they are taken for granted by the Democratic party, but they realize that they have not prospered overall under Republican rule.
If Republicans wanted to save money, why didn’t they go after the graft and waste in no-bid contracts for companies engaged in the reconstruction of Iraq or in the defense industry? During Bremer’s provisional government, more than 8 billion just vanished.. Where were the congressional hearings on this? Oh, you’re right better to cut the waste from the student lunch program. If they are parading themselves as the party of family values, why not nurture families on the edge?