The Future Of The Republican Party

The Republicans have a delicate balancing act.  They want to keep stringing along their base for the 2014 Congressional election.  And it looks like they plan on using the demonization of government programs to keep doing so.  And they are counting on voters like Terry Rupe to believe them.

“I don’t have any use for the federal government,” Rupe said, even though his household’s $13,000 yearly income comes exclusively from Washington. “It’s a bunch of liars, crooks, and thieves, and they’ve never done anything for me. I’m not ungrateful, but I don’t have much faith in this health care law. Do I think it’s going to work? No. Do I think it’s going to bankrupt the country? Yes.”

Rupe sounds like he could be standing on a soapbox at a tea-party rally, but he happens to be sitting in a back room at the Family Health Centers’ largest clinic in Louisville—signing up for Medicaid. Rupe, who is white, insists that illegal immigrants from Mexico and Africa get more government assistance than he does. (Illegal immigrants do not, in fact, qualify for Medicaid or coverage under the Affordable Care Act.)

But in 2016 and the longer run, they have a problem because there will be fewer and fewer voters like Rupe.  Then they will have to grapple with the problem described by conservative, Henry Olsen.

Some conservatives may think American principles require hands-off government, but most Americans have consistently rejected that idea. One could date this rejection to the election of 1912, when two progressives and a socialist got 75% of the vote against the constitutionalist incumbent, William Howard Taft. But one could also date it back to 1860, when the party of Lincoln stood for government action on behalf of ordinary Americans through protective tariffs, subsidization of intercontinental railroads, creating land-grant colleges to extend learning, and giving federal land out for free to western settlers.

If American principles simply require hands-off government, then American principles have not been part of our politics for a very long time. A hands-off approach is not what American politics and principles require; it is a parody of what America and American conservatism mean.

I fear that the Republican strategy will indeed work in 2014 as they should hold on to the House and make gains in the Senate (probably not the six seats they need for a majority though).  But if they think they can pivot away from their extreme rhetoric in only two years, they will be sadly mistaken.  And it may cost them both branches of elected government at that point.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.