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politics and politicians Title: Fix the GOP, Don’t Abandon It Last week, to much fanfare, Glenn Beck declared that he was leaving the Republican party and becoming an independent. During a Tuesday night appearance on the O’Reilly Factor, Beck explained his decision thusly: Beck has a point here. Granted, he’s overstating the case to some degree -- political constraints are such that the GOP can’t do a lot of what he demands. But there are indeed issues where the politics favor the Republicans -- the insurer bailout in Obamacare, farm subsidies, highway spending, and the Export-Import Bank -- where the party is not doing much of anything. Far too often, the GOP seems more inclined to go-along-to-get-along then do the hard work needed to reform government. As I argued here, and in my new book, the Republican party has been aligned with big business for almost 150 years. In many respects, this is a good thing for conservatism. People who are employed by a business, after all, do not need the government to prosper. And big business employs a lot of people, so conservatives have common cause. But businesses are profit-maximizing agents, and insofar as they believe the government can assist them, they will go rent seeking. Corporate and professional interests have many friends in the Republican party, who, always in the guise of promoting “economic growth,” pay off their patrons with corporate welfare, favorable regulations, conciliatory tax policy, and the like. Republicans have been doing this for big business since the 1870s, and they continue to do so to this day. So Beck is right: a lot of what the Republicans do is not conservatism. It’s more akin to interest-group liberalism. However, leaving the GOP is a bad idea, for two reasons. First, the Republican party is not going to let conservatives go anywhere else. There has never been a viable third party in the country, at least not one that has persisted over the long run. This has to do with the nature of our elections. Political theorist Maurice Duverger demonstrated fifty years ago that winner-take-all contests centered around discrete geographical areas typically produce a two-party system. There are exceptions, but they’re rare. Moreover, third parties that do thrive temporarily are co-opted by one of the two major parties -- usually to the detriment of the ideological movement that spawned the third party in the first place. For instance, the Populist party was captured by the Democrats in 1896, and did not see traction on any of its issues for nearly 20 more years. The Progressive party ended up getting split between the two major parties after 1916. Similarly, the Perot movement ended up fueling the “Republican Revolution” of 1994, but the deficit-cutting zeal of the GOP in the mid-1990s soon gave way to the gross profligacy of Congress during the George W. Bush years. As if all that isn’t enough, even the seemingly easy task of forming a third party is a challenge. The two parties can be thought of as opponents in most respects, but they can also be understood to operate a cartel that restricts entry by competitors. A third party will thus have to jump through all sorts of hoops to get itself listed on the ballot, and even more to be included in presidential debates. None of this is coincidental. The two parties want us to have a choice … between the two parties! Second, the Republican party can be reformed. It may be very hard to do so, but the GOP is not a political machine. It is not a closed system, impervious to change. It’s open, and grassroots reformers have recourse -- in the form of party primaries. They may be seriously out-financed in those contests. Still, it is one thing to be an underdog, and another to have no hope of change at all. And there is hope. In fact, I’d argue that there has been an extraordinary amount of change within the GOP over the last generation. Reformers have made some real gains. In the wake of the 2014 wave, I noted this about the incoming Senate: The House has shown similar signs of improvement. The “insurgent” class of House reformers is now large enough to make real noise. Did such a group really exist a decade ago? Certainly not with the same numbers. There is no denying that conservative reformers have won some big elections in the last few cycles, and that the reformist right is on the rise within the GOP, if not yet dominant. Maybe part of the frustration is that there has been change, but no breakthroughs. That’s because breakthroughs are hard in our system of government -- by design. That is one of Madison’s big points in Federalist #10 and #51; he wants our system to be responsive to changes in public mood, but -- fearful of fractious majorities -- he also promotes a system of checks and balances to slow change down. Moreover, the powers that be in the Republican party have been doing things a certain way for a century and a half. They are not going to give up just because conservatives have won a handful of elections. Still, given the heartening results of the last few elections, rather than giving up on the GOP, conservative reformers should take careful note of their successes and failures, and refine their strategies. For instance, in 2014, there was a lot of emphasis on defeating incumbent Republican senators. This was largely unsuccessful. Meanwhile, Dave Brat came out of nowhere to defeat Eric Cantor. Therefore, perhaps the point of attack in the next cycle should be the many go-along-to-get-along Republican House members, who may be more vulnerable. The point is that the Republican party is no doubt in need of reform, but still -- it can be reformed. That won’t come easy. Reform never does because the powers that be always prefer the status quo to change, but it can be done. Glenn Beck should stay in the party and lend a hand. Jay Cost is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard. His new book, A Republic No More: Big Government and the Rise of American Political Corruption, is now available. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 34.
#2. To: TooConservative (#0)
Well, well, well. " Jay Cost is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard. His new book, is now available. " Tell you what MR Cost, take your new book and put it where the sun don't shine!! The GOP is beyond fixing! To hell with them. As to third parties, it should be remembered that the Republican party began as a third party. If they had done as they should have, there would be no need for cheerleaders like you trying to keep the base from leaving. But no, aholes like you had to follow karl rove, el jeorgo busho, mc connell, boner, et al over the cliff. When you wake up and realize what you have done to the party, remember, YOU AHOLES DID IT TO YOURSELVES !!! May you all rot in hell!!!!
quite a conundrum then. The party can't be fixed ,and 3rd party insurgencies brings us the Presidency of Woodrow Wilson and Bubba Clinton.
Well, the soap box, the jury box, and the ballot box are all broken. I guess we will have to resign our selves that the nation is going to go down the drain, and there is nothing we can do about it.
We can take back our schools one classroom at a time, for starters.
It's taken about 70 years for the progressives to destroy the schools. Sorry, but I don't think we have that kind of time left.
Sadly, I have to agree! That would be like a gang of thugs attacking your house, shooting you, your wife, kids, & pets, then pouring gasoline on and striking a match to burn it down,and someone suggesting you chill out, call the police, and wait for them to arrive on scene & take care of it, but for you to NOT TAKE THE LAW INTO YOUR OWN HANDS, and correct it in a civilized manner. Yeah, riiiiiiiight.
#35. To: Stoner (#34)
Your local GOP must be a lot more lively than the one around here.
Yeah, riiiiiiiight. I think Beck's most cogent statement was that if we the Dims, the slide goes faster. If we pick the Pubs the slide slows just a bit. However, what he did not consider is regardless of party, once they all gather in the hell hole of Wash DC, birds of feather...
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