A Lasting Republican Majority?

Jack Balkin wrote an interesting post on Monday that I've been meaning to write about (but haven't had the time till now). In it, he asks whether the Republicans will ever be able to build a lasting majority of the type enjoyed by Democrats in the 1930s and 40s and again in the 1960s. His post was prompted by Karl Rove's suggestion last week that, at worst, this election will be a temporary setback on the road to a lasting Republican majority ("1938 was a huge wipeout for the Democrats -- do you think that was the end of the New Deal?").

Balkin fleshes out this comparison a little more:

The comparison speaks volumes about what Rove and Bush are attempting: a fundamental realignment of American politics that will create a conservative Republican majority for a generation. In this analogy, 2000 is to 1932 as 2004 is to 1936, and as 2006 might be to 1938. But there is one important difference between the two time periods. Democrats won by landslides in 1932 and 1936, racking up sizeable majorities in the House and the Senate. They lost some ground in 1938-- in part due to unpopularity over court packing, in part due to a deteriorating economy-- but they did not lose control of either house of Congress. And in 1940 Roosevelt was elected to an unprecedented third term, while maintaining sizeable Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress. Similarly, during the heyday of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, the Democrats not only controlled all the branches of government, they also controlled both houses of Congress by decisive margins.

To make the lasting kinds of changes that Bush and Rove seek, the Republicans need to gain a significant majority of American voters over a sustained period. They have not managed to do that yet.

There have been no Republican landslides for the Presidency since the 1980s, or for Congress since 1994. Since 1994 they have never had more than 230 seats in the House, or 55 seats in the Senate. (After the 1964 elections, the Democratic numbers were 295 and 68, respectively; after the 1936 election they were an astonishing 334 and 76-- with a smaller House and Senate!)

After some discussion of the last few election cycles, Balkin concludes:

Much depends on whether the Republicans can successfully recreate a National Security/Values Coalition, find a movement conservative to win the Presidency decisively in 2008, regain Congress by significant margins, and grow those margins over time, just as the Democrats did in the 1930's. If they can do all of these things, then Rove's plan will be vindicated. But that means that we won't know whether Rove's plan succeeds for many years.

Rove may know something about the 2006 elections that everyone else doesn't. Or he may be counting on 2008 to provide the landslide victory that will cement a Republican majority for a generation. If Iraq continues the way it has been, this does not seem likely. But politics has a way of changing very quickly in a very short period of time. On September 10th, 2001, the Bush Presidency seemed stalled. A day later, it had new life and a new set of political goals-- fighting the War on Terror-- that it had every reason to believe would unite the Republican Party and finally carry it to a permanent majority.

Balkin's certainly right about one thing. Electoral dynamics can shift drastically between election cycles. Even if the Democrats score an impressive victory this time around, it's no guarantee that the Republicans won't make major strides in 2008.

That said, I think I can confidently say that the Republican party, at least in its current incarnation, will never be able to achieve anything close to the types of lasting majorities the Democrats enjoyed during the New Deal and Great Society eras. And the reason is pretty simple: the policies supported by the Republican party are just not capable of bearing that kind of weight.

The Democratic majorities of past eras were built on the backs of policies that transformed our country and were enormously popular, policies like Social Security and Medicare. These policies did more to improve the lives of average Americans than anything the Republican party has ever even thought up, much less successfully implemented. Indeed, the modern Republican party not only lacks grand ideas, it lacks even a workable governing philosophy. As I've written previously:

The modern Republican party is a movement built upon a collection of ideas dreamed up by people far removed from the realities of actual governance. These half-formed policies--slogans really--were born out of anger and powerlessness, not empiricism and dispassionate inquiry. They were not designed to be effective or workable, but rather to be consistent with pre-existing ideologies and, of course, easy to sell. Not surprisingly, this resulted in a governing philosophy that sounds great in the abstract, but is incoherent and ill-suited to the task of actually governing.

Remember, we're talking about a party that operates under the assumption that cutting taxes pays for itself. When the primary tenet of your governing philosophy is little more than faith-based nonsense, there's really only so far you can go as a party. Eventually, reality is going to bite you on the ass.

And I think we're seeing that to some degree now. David Brooks actually admitted this, more or less, in an interview a while back:

I think Republicans have in their minds we are the anti-government party. We came to shrink government. So they say that out on the campaign trail. But when you are the majority party actually governing, it doesn't work. People want the problem solved. So instead of having a governing philosophy that will tell them I'm going to spend it here but not there, they have a governing philosophy that is irrelevant to actually governing. So they take that anti-governing philosophy and they just toss it out the window and when they get here and spend like sailors. So what you have is a governing philosophy that doesn't apply to the real world . . . .

And it's not just their voodoo tax policy and inability to cut spending. The programs the GOP actually wants to implement are, almost without exception, exceedingly ill-advised. Indeed the Republicans are fortunate that they weren't successful in their attempts to privatize social security or create health savings accounts. These are classic examples of ideas that were conceived of and championed because they conformed to pre-conceived ideologies and not because they made any policy sense. They would not have solved the problems they were intended to solve (indeed they would have made them much worse) and they would have grown increasingly unpopular over time. They're just really bad ideas. And you can't build a lasting majority on really bad ideas.

Republicans are quite good at campaigning and sloganeering. But to build a lasting majority you need to be good at governing too. The Republican party, at least in its present form, has shown absolutely no ability to do this. And until they do, they're never going to have anything more than narrow and short-lived majorities.