The following article bu Susan Milligan was posted on the U.S. News and World Report website December 8, 2017:
The Republican revolution of 1994 led onetime Democratic Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama to switch parties and become a proud member of the GOP. Next week’s election in Alabama may define the beginning of the end of the senior senator’s party as he’s known it.
When Shelby aligned with the party, Republicans were on an electoral and ideological roll. Having seized control of both the Senate and House, the GOP was on a mission to cut taxes, reform entitlement programs, slash domestic spending and shrink the federal footprint on Americans’ lives. Now, the Republican Party has been increasingly defined by what were once its fringe elements, observers in both parties bemoan, raising the question of whether the party, in its traditional model, is on its way out.
On one side are the firebrands, the ones who tacitly (or not so tacitly) affirm the views of white supremacists and neo-Nazis who have held rallies around the nation. They are the ones who have defended Alabama GOP Senate nominee Roy Moore, saying the accused child molester is the more moral contender in the race because he opposes abortion and same-sex marriage.
On the other side is the so-called “establishment,” the ones who wish Moore would just go away and who are aching to pass tax cuts and other conservative agenda items that were stymied for the eight years of Barack Obama’s presidency.
But instead of being an embarrassing subject of the party, the fringe elements are capturing control of the GOP’s image, if not its entire agenda. The distinguished Shelby says he wrote in another Republican for the open Senate seat but acknowledges there’s nothing he can do to keep his home state from sending Moore to Washington.
“I think they’re driving the dialogue,” Republican strategist Ford O’Connell says of the far-right wing of the party – and it’s because establishment Republicans need them, or think they need them, to govern. “One of the reasons you’re seeing these folks drive the agenda, and other people are passively on board, is that there’s a unique sense among Republican voters that like it or not, this is their best chance to get something done.
“They may not agree. They may not be happy with the president. I think what they’re hoping is that winning is going to cure all, because losing hasn’t cured anything for the Republican Party,” adds O’Connell, who worked on the John McCain-Sarah Palin campaign in 2008.
Even when it comes to domestic policy, Republicans are not walking the old walk. After complaining for years that Democrats passed health care overhaul without a single Republican vote and (though there were hearings held by five congressional committees) enough deliberation, Senate Republicans early last Saturday morning rushed through a massive tax bill lawmakers didn’t even have time to read.
Under GOP control, Congress has already voted to bust spending caps to pay for defense programs. The hastily-written tax bill (senators were handed a 479-page bill with handwritten edits in the margins) will increase the national debt by $1.4 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Yet only deficit hawk Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., voted against the package, which did not include a “trigger” the retiring lawmaker favored to hike certain taxes again if economic growth did not materialize.
And if Republicans do, as expected, chalk up their first major legislative victory with the signing of a tax package later this month (House and Senate negotiators are working out the differences), the party’s image has been rebranded by what conservative columnist George Will calls the “tribalists.” President Donald Trump has exacerbated the situation, people in both major parties say, by tweeting about such matters as NFL players kneeling during the national anthem and condemning the violence – but not the racism – at the Charlottesville, Virginia white supremacist rally.
“Ronald Reagan would be very disappointed. This isn’t the party of Reagan any longer. It’s become a reckless and dangerous party in the United States,” says veteran Democratic presidential campaign strategist Simon Rosenberg, president of the think-tank NDN. “To me, the most powerful indictment of Republicans right now is that they’ve lost any connection to virtue, in the classic meaning of the word.”
The feud within the party has been ongoing since the election but has deepened as the fringe wing of the party threatens to subsume the GOP’s historical approach to issues and governing. Former White House strategist Steve Bannon stumped for Moore this week and slammed Mitt Romney – the party’s 2012 presidential nominee and a possible Senate candidate from Utah next year – for “hid[ing] behind his religion” to dodge military service.
It was a remarkable statement not just because Romney is a party stalwart, but because Trump himself had five deferments to avoid service in Vietnam (including 4 college deferments and one for a bone spur on his foot). Senior Utah Sen. Orrin hatch, the Senate’s longest-serving Republican, called Bannon’s attacks “disappointing and unjustified.”
The Republican National Committee, too, has followed Trump. That is a normal situation when the president came out of the party apparatus, but Trump (who used to be a Democrat) ran more as an outsider, technically on the Republican ticket. So while Trump attacks members of his own party (mostly those who have criticized him or displayed a lack of fealty), the RNC has been behind the man at the top. The national committee, for example, pulled its financial support from Moore after the molestation charges surfaced, but is reinstating cash donations after Trump endorsed Moore earlier this week.
For those in the party who don’t like Trump, it’s worth thinking about party unity – and the fact that the president, while owning a historically low approval rating in the low 30s, is still popular with a majority of Republicans, says GOP strategist Chris Jankowski.
“To me, you’re saying – Republican Party, do you want to implode now or later?” Jankowski says. “If and when they break with him, it will be the end of the Republican Party,” says the Virginia-based operative. “Instead of getting drawn into a choice between being with Trump or against him, “every Republican on the state level should just do the best job they can,” he says.
Keeping that dichotomy maybe tough, especially if Moore is indeed elected next week. Democrats have pushed Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., to retire early amid charges of sexual harassment, and on Thursday Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., announced he would resign after leading Democrats led by the party’s female senators, demanded he do so and for the same reasons.
Meanwhile, Republicans have been mum about Trump and the numerous complaints of sexual harassment and groping against him. They have not moved to demand that GOP Rep. Blake Farenthold of Texas leave office, although Farenthold (known for photos posted during his first, 2010 congressional run that showed him in ducky pajamas embracing a model in lingerie) agreed recently to pay back the $84,000 in taxpayer funds used to settle a sexual harassment suit filed by a former staffer.
If Moore comes to Washington with Trump’s endorsement, it makes it easier for Democrats to cast themselves as the party of accountability and the GOP, as the party of loose morals or – as MSNBC host Chris Matthews speculated on “Morning Joe” – the “Grand Old Pedophiles.”
“As in every instance, the tone comes from the top,” says Whit Ayres, a longtime GOP pollster, lamenting the provocative remarks and tweets of the president. The alt-right wing of the party “hasn’t taken over yet,” Ayres says. “But they are creating enormous discord and division. And it’s going to be a long time before it’s resolved.”
“It’s a tragedy,” says Rosenberg. “It’s the failure of a once-great political party. I don’t think they’re going to get a do-over.” At this point, veteran Republican thinkers are hoping for a make-over.