The ongoing collapse of the Republican Party, with its absolute rejection of the new President, and accompanying collapse in public approval, has no precedent in American political history, although it has elements in common with every other generational change:
- As in 1860 it's centered in the South and the rhetoric is violent. But that rhetoric was followed by action. There is no evidence, despite the stockpiling of weapons, that America is about to be visited by a Second Civil War.
- As in 1896 the issues of the minority are primarily economic, having to do with the nature of money and of government. But there has been no divide into small parties, as there was then, and the populism has all been rhetorical.
- As in 1968 parts of the old governing coalition are abandoning politics altogether, social conservatives into churches, economic conservatives onto Wall Street, neoconservatives into think tanks. But back then the old governing party, the Democrats, controlled Congress for another 12 years, often by large majorities. These Republicans can be ignored.
Thus it's 1932 that seems to offer the best comparison. As it is now, opposition Republicans had immediately become a rather ineffectual minority. But the leaders of that Congressional Party, Senator Charles McNary of Oregon and Rep. Bertrand Snell of New York, did not entirely reject the New Deal, as this crowd has rejected President Obama's program.
Question before you click. Who is that at the top of the post, and what does he have to do with our story?
The reason is the narrowness of Obama's win, compared with that of FDR, and the nature of today's Republican Party, as opposed to what existed then. The President's five-point win gives him a Congressional majority that is much narrower than what FDR possessed. It's almost as if the Republicans were in a building collapsing by degrees, a Three Stooges set in which Boehner, Mitch and Joe the Plumber were falling through one floor, then the next, then the next.
Today's Republicans are also different from yesterday's in that they are as ideologically rigid as southern Confederates. Some are even identifying with the Confederacy, further alienating voters where they're needed most.
The response in 1933 was similar to what today's media is suggesting for the GOP. Run as reformers, as honest men, on a platform of civic virtue. That is, accept the new Thesis, seeking only to moderate it and make it work. This was the platform of Fiorello LaGuardia, the Republican elected New York Mayor in 1933, and of the laconic Midwesterner finally selected the party's standard-bearer in 1936, Alf Landon. (That's him at the top of this post.)
Point is that didn't turn out so well. Landon won just two states. The party was fooling itself. It took FDR's own over-reaching, with the 1937 court-packing, along with a second recession for Republicans to win the 1938 midterms. And those candidates were not just leaning against the New Deal, they were in full-throated opposition to it, more like the current Republican leadership than the people reporters would have Republicans put in charge.
What does this mean? Mainly that the future of the Republican Party is no longer in its own hands. It can, and will, respond to any Presidential mis-steps. But the best evidence we have that Obama's election truly transformed history lies in the haplessness of today's Republican leadership, more than his own program.
The lesson for the President should be that conciliation is not as necessary as he's letting on, that the bat is firmly in his own hands, and that however he remakes our nation, it will be entirely on his own terms. That's his burden, but also his opportunity.
Ours as well.
