Out-of-control Republicans are out of step with the times
Gulf between party base and the middle ground cripples its ability to field appealing candidates
Republican efforts to reverse the party’s “demographic death spiral” are expected to bear fruit this week with the Senate’s passage of the immigration reform bill. But Hispanic-Americans are unlikely to feel seduced. As the price for obtaining as few as a quarter of Republican votes, Democrats last week agreed to militarise the Mexico border by doubling US armed guards to 40,000 – far higher than the number along the North Korean demilitarised zone. Even the Senate’s drastic “border surge” is too mild for the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, which has yet to produce its own bill. The chances of that happening are now falling. So too, are hopes the Republican party will easily reconcile itself to the realities of 21st-century America.
Three forces are pushing the party of Abraham Lincoln in the wrong direction – and Washington into further dysfunction. The first is a glaring Republican leadership vacuum. Both of the obvious candidates have thrown in the towel. Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, is facing a re-election battle next year. Big money has threatened to back a conservative challenger if he votes in favour of a “pathway to US citizenship” for America’s 11m illegal immigrants – even if he ensures it can only be earned from behind an electronic fence. The owlish Mr McConnell has no interest in stirring up local Tea Party antipathy. His fellow Kentucky senator is Rand Paul, who ejected a more moderate Republican with his own primary challenge in 2010. Mr Paul opposes any kind of “amnesty” for America’s largely Mexican shadow population.
Since Republicans control the House, John Boehnerwould be the most obvious national leader. Alas, the hapless speaker cannot even control his own number two, Eric Cantor, the House majority leader. Mr Cantor killed a delicately negotiated bipartisan farm bill last week by permitting a last-minute amendment aimed at pleasing hardline conservatives. Sixty-two Tea Party Republicans nevertheless joined Democrats to defeat the bill. Mr Boehner was left looking impotent. “If he were a woman they would call him the weakest speaker in history,” said Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader. She had a point.
But Mr Boehner is no fool. He long ago gave up pretence of whipping Republicans into line. “The harder you grip the golf club, the wilder the swing” is one of his observations – all the more true when your golfing partner keeps kicking the tee away. To bemoan Republican behaviour as “parliamentary”, as many in Washington do, is to miss the point. Parliamentary parties are disciplined. Today’s Republicans are out of control. Even their Jacobin wing lacks a Robespierre. “It would be hard for anyone to control this chamber,” a conservative lawmaker admitted to me.
Second, the Republican base is staging its version of the Alamo. An internal report in March said the party was destined to keep losing elections if it did not redress its image as “narrow”, “out of touch” and a “bunch of old men”. It followed a 2012 election defeat that was predicted by all except the top Republican strategists, who until the final moment still believed the day was theirs. In addition to hiring accurate pollsters, the report said the party should take urgent steps to win over Hispanics, women, gays and other alienated voters. Perhaps “hard of hearing” would have been a better description of its audience. Last week House Republicans passed a bill restricting women’s right to abortion to 20 weeks of pregnancy with no exceptions for rape or incest – the toughest anti-abortion bill in years. It has no chance of becoming law. Yet a majority of Republicans thought it expedient to nail their colours to the mast. A majority also voted against renewing the Violence Against Women Act earlier this year, which passed with Democratic help. Barack Obama won 55 per cent of the female vote in November. That is starting to look like a floor.
Third, the gulf between the Republican base and the US middle ground is crippling the party’s ability to agree on appealing presidential candidates. Last week leading Republicans in Iowa, the first state in the nominating calendar, said Marco Rubio, the 2016 hopeful, would be unwelcome there because of his role in brokering the Senate compromise on immigration. In contrast, Mr Paul usually gets a red carpet. The same applies to most Republican districts, which are heavily concentrated in the US south. Only a handful have large numbers of registered Hispanic voters. In the absence of national leadership, lawmakers will look to their own interests. Instead of acknowledging that the net inflow of Mexican immigrants has fallen to zero, or that trade with Mexico exceeds that with China, Republicans are protecting their flanks. It is a recipe for electoral oblivion. There are more than 50m Hispanics in the US. Their average age is 27, against 42 for white Americans.
There is little in US history to suggest Republicans will adjust to reality soon. It took more than a generation for the party to recover from its sponsorship of the National Origins Act of 1924 that restricted non-Protestant immigration, long after the Irish and Italians arrived on US shores. Today’s mania for more drones and surveillance towers along the US-Mexican border shows a similar tendency to close the stable door after the horse has bolted. Republicans eventually caught up with the 20th century. It may take a while to come to terms with the 21st.
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