I had mentioned the possibility of a civil war within the Republican Party in a previous discussion, but felt it deserved further elaboration. Should a civil war break out in the GOP ranks, it will affect all politics in this country in ways that are hard to see in fullness yet. But it will be ugly, and it might help or hinder attempts at moving American policy towards a more progressive vision. We need to be prepared for it as if it were an inevitablity--if only because so many in the GOP see it so.
Continued after the bounce....
According to a Ron Suskind article in the New York Times, Bruce Bartlett--who served in the Treasury Department under Bush I and advised Reagan on domestic policy--states that
there will be a civil war in the GOP if Bush II wins the 2004 race. Meanwhile, we have the senior editor of the Weekly Standard, David Brooks, claiming that
there will be a GOP civil war if Bush II loses. And Pat Buchanan is practically rubbing his hands in anticipation, seeing the coming crisis as
"another Goldwater moment" and, in reference to the upcoming civil war, declaring "let it come" almost as if he were saying "bring 'em on."
Bush winning this election is, at best, a very iffy proposition right now; his being able to keep Republican criticism silent is even more questionable, given the increased pressure to improve the situation in Iraq and to put DeLay-style cronyism under control. And even if Bush manages to eke out victory in the polls and re-establishes temporary control of the GOP, there are too many question marks over Republican hegemony as is. The tactics necessary to ensure an election win and to maintain party discipline will only add more question marks--more suspicion, and thus more outrage. The best Bush can do at this point is delay the inevitable, it would seem. So let us accept as fait accompli that, no matter what happens on November 2, there will be a war within the Republican party, fighting for its soul--and that it will come soon.
David Brooks paints a vivid picture of what the Republican civil war would be like:
The foreign-policy realists will battle the democracy-promoting Reaganites. The immigrant-bashing nativists will battle the free marketeers. The tax-cutting growth wing will battle the fiscally prudent deficit hawks. The social conservatives will war with the social moderates, the biotech skeptics with the biotech enthusiasts, the K Street corporatists with the tariff-loving populists, the civil libertarians with the security-minded Ashcroftians.
However, such an image would seem to indicate there are dozens of loosely aligned factions within the GOP and that they would only fight for their own particular agendas. But it seems more likely to me that, at least at first, party fracturing would occur along well-established blocs with definite philosophical underpinnings keeping the blocs united.
Here is how I see the factional break-down in the coming GOP civil war:
Neo-Conservatives: When the long knives are drawn, expect the neocons to be largely on the sharp, pointy end. The vision articulated by the Project for a New American Century has proven bankrupt; a lone superpower using its economic and military might to impose its will on others will find a united front against its plans. This is true domestically as well as internationally, as this election will help prove. We may have a large economy but it is not bottomless, nor is it self-sufficient. We may have a technologically advanced army but it is still a volunteer army, and therefore small and subject to the good will of the volunteers; a drafted army will not eagerly advance the agendas of empire.
Voters see our economic and military limitations far more clearly than the neo-cons have, and will react strongly against "pie in the sky" visions of American dominance. And the GOP will not allow the neocons to drive policy much longer. The only chance for neocon survival relies on a ruthlessness that will turn even more support away from the GOP. To save themselves, ultimately, they will be forced to destroy the Republican party, and the vast majority of the GOP will not allow such a thing.
What is to happen of the neocons then? If they fail to remain in the party, they will probably try to influence the GOP from behind the scenes. There is no home for them in the Democratic Party--after all, the Democrats bade their own neocon faction "good riddance" when they rushed to Reagan's side in the 80s. And it's unlikely that they'd create or take over a third party, if only because that would ensure their marginality. So I would expect them to be sent off to the sidelines, waiting for an opportunity to make a comeback.
The Religious Right: This faction is a little trickier, as it represents a very sizeable voting block, and the GOP won't let it go easily. The Religious Right sees their party as having moral backbone in comparison to what they perceive as liberal permissiveness. In painting liberals as being too extreme, the GOP has been forced to move into the other extreme, making it impossible to run for office as a Republican without throwing out the occasional scrap of red meat for the fundamentalists and the religious fringe.
However, party moderates will be well advised to remember that they were the allies of the neo-conservatives and thus potentially dangerous. They can be wooed back to a more sane and stable political position, in theory, but zeal has typically short-circuited any appeals to reason. Perhaps a Bush loss will be a wake-up call, but unless an intelligent appeal is made early on--one designed to appeal to their concerns but direct their approaches in more productive and progressive ways--it's more likely they will go into deeper denial, claiming that Satan's influence has stolen their God-appointed leader away.
But the Republicans cannot hope to keep both moderates and fanatics happy. They will be compelled to make fundamentalists understand that they cannot proscribe their way into a moral utopia, and that they will need to take different approaches to their concerns. Abortion, for example, occurred more often under Bush II than under Clinton, precisely because Clinton outperformed Bush economically. The religious Right will have to take a more progressive approach to their problems, or be in the fringes until Kingdom Come.
And there lies the problem--fundamentalist Christians have a lot invested in their being persecuted outsiders, and would be quite happy to break from the GOP and form their own political party if they think the GOP has turned their backs on the fundamentalist vision. However, I certainly cannot deny the appeal that progressive politics could have on fundamentalists, and can only wait and see.
Paleoconservatives: The old-school conservatives in the Republican party are mad as hell, and they aren't going to take it anymore. The principles of the Goldwater movement have been betrayed by the neocons and their allies. The paleocons have watched while the neocons took a record surplus and turned into a record deficit, all the while creating the biggest government bureaucracy ever, launching a pre-emptive war, and passing into law the nuttiest, most pork-laden bills in US history. Of course the paleocons are mad--they feel like their trust has been betrayed and their country belittled. Count on the paleocons holding the scabbard end of the long knives.
But should the conservatives emerge triumphant in the coming GOP shakeup, they will find themselves still at a disadvantage, cursing the day they allowed the neocons to add the "neo-" to the "conservative" name. Conservatism will have been as discredited as the neoconservative agenda, if only by association. And they will only have themselves to blame. For the paleocons, their end goal will be to rebuild their intellectual stock while both regaining influence and keeping the neocons under strict control, and that's not an enviable position.
Moderates: Ever since the conservatives gained control of the GOP, the party's moderates have been trying to maintain a juggling act. When you are trying to portray yourself as an alternative to both liberal and conservative extremism, it can get dicey. But while moderate Republicans might be willing to appease their party's extremists, a number of them are sick of the path the Republicans have taken in the past few years. They are beginning to speak up, and when the civil war comes they will take up arms along with the paleoconservatives.
There are no guarantees, however, that the moderates will be allowed to stay in the GOP, especially if the neo- or paleoconservative faction gains control. But this will be most dangerous for the GOP, because unlike the other factions, the moderates can find a home in the opposition party. To drive the moderates from the Republicans is to give power to the Democrats, and that's something the GOP cannot afford.
There are, of course, other factions, such as the libertarians who side with the moderates on some issues and with the paleocons on others. There is also a tradition of "Bull Moose" progressives--typically strong on defense and fiscally conservative but socially liberal and willing to use the federal government to build national infrastructure. My presumption is that these factions will join the moderates in the upcoming fight, and will help reach out to the paleoconservative faction, because it is in their political interests to retain mainstream appeal and to maintain an alternative to the Democrats. So at the risk of over-simplifying, I think it is safe to treat these factions as moderates.
Naturally, I'm more sympathetic to the GOP moderates and Bull Mooses (and to a lesser degree, the libertarians) than the other factions, so I will grant that my analysis could easily be flawed. However, there's little I've seen in the past year to indicate that moderate Republicans are interested in being rolled by the neoconservatives, or that the paleoconservatives are content to sit out the fight and let matters settle. Therefore, I stand by my conclusions: The neoconservatives will be driven out of power if not out of the party all together; the religious Right will be forced to either adopt more progressive approaches or become further alienated; the paleoconservatives will be weakened by association to the neocons but will be motivated to help re-establish conservative credibility; and the moderates will dominate the GOP when the dust settles.
What does this mean for us Democrats? It means that we should be ready to engage the moderate side of the Republican Party at the earliest opportunity. With John Kerry as President, we will be in a strong position to help the moderates as long as they are willing to help us undo the neoconservatives' damage. It thus becomes imperative that Kerry, unlike Bush, unite Americans regardless of party affiliation. If Kerry fails, this will give the paleocons an opening to reassert themselves. But if Kerry succeeds in bringing national unity back, and if he can make significant inroads into repairing the damage done to our country, the Republicans will be in a position to help usher in a progressive rebirth. If the party of Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt can survive its own internal challenges, it can certainly rise to the challenges of the 21st Century.
Update [2004-10-27 16:33:1 by lilithvf1998]: Reihan Salam has a TNR article on this subject which, rather than exploring factions, discusses which particular high-profile heads will role should Bush lose. It's rather cheeky, but if you've read any of my writings before, the cheekiness shouldn't bother much. Much.