As the new Democratic majority prepares to take power, Republicans have become, as Phil Gramm might put it, a party of whiners. ...
[M]ost of the whining takes the form of claims that the Bush administration’s failure was simply ... bad luck... The fault, however, lies not in Republicans’ stars but in themselves. Forty years ago the G.O.P. decided, in effect, to make itself the party of racial backlash. And everything that has happened in recent years ... is a consequence of that decision.
If the Bush administration became a byword for policy bungles, for government by the unqualified, well, it ... rested on contempt for government in general. ... So why worry about governing well?
Where did this hostility to government come from? In 1981 Lee Atwater ... explained the evolution of the G.O.P.’s “Southern strategy,” which originally focused on opposition to the Voting Rights Act but eventually took a more coded form: “You’re getting so abstract now you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites.” In other words, government is the problem because it takes your money and gives it to Those People.
Oh, and the racial element isn’t all that abstract, even now: Chip Saltsman,... a candidate for the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee, sent committee members a CD including a song titled “Barack the Magic Negro” — and according to some reports, the controversy over his action has actually helped his chances.
So the reign of George W. Bush, the first true Southern Republican president since Reconstruction, was the culmination of a long process. And despite the claims of some ... that Mr. Bush betrayed conservatism, the truth is that he faithfully carried out both his party’s divisive tactics — long before Sarah Palin, Mr. Bush declared that he visited his ranch to “stay in touch with real Americans” — and its governing philosophy.
That’s why the soon-to-be-gone administration’s failure is bigger than Mr. Bush himself: it represents the end of the line for a political strategy that dominated ... for more than a generation.
The reality of this strategy’s collapse has not ... fully sunk in with some observers. Thus, some commentators warning President-elect Barack Obama against bold action have held up Bill Clinton’s political failures ... as a cautionary tale.
But America in 1993 was a very different country — not just a country that had yet to see what happens when conservatives control all three branches of government, but also a country in which Democratic control of Congress depended on the votes of Southern conservatives. Today, Republicans have taken away almost all those Southern votes — and lost the rest of the country. It was a grand ride for a while, but in the end the Southern strategy led the G.O.P. into a cul-de-sac.
Mr. Obama therefore has room to be bold. If Republicans try a 1993-style strategy of attacking him for promoting big government, they’ll learn two things: not only has the financial crisis discredited their economic theories, the racial subtext of anti-government rhetoric doesn’t play the way it used to.
Will the Republicans eventually stage a comeback? Yes, of course. But barring some huge missteps by Mr. Obama, that will not happen until they stop whining and look at what really went wrong. And when they do, they will discover that they need to get in touch with the real “real America,” a country that is more diverse, more tolerant, and more demanding of effective government than is dreamt of in their political philosophy.
It seems as if Krugman is making a huge generalization of what went wrong with the Republican party, and worst of all is that that generalization is pointing towards racism. Among all this theorizing in the media as to "what happened to the Republican party," there's not nearly enough attention placed on the fact that historically when the country is in a recession, the incumbent party does not win and furthermore the Democratic party had a once in a lifetime candidate in Barack Obama who, with almost entirely his words, was able to excite a huge majority of the nation. There were elections that probably went Democrat simply because of the voters that came out for Obama and not because of the racist "Southern Strategy" that apparently is predominant in the G.O.P.
This talk of the financial crisis discrediting Republican policy is something else that really bothers me, particularly on the point of tax cuts. We won't get any where as a country if these partisan tactics of as soon as something goes wrong blame it on the other party and support the apparent failure of their policies as proof that yours are best. It seems ridiculous to me to say that the support for smaller government and lower taxes comes as a result of racism, when there is plenty of evidence to show that well targeted tax cuts spur business and investment growth and in many cases not only decrease government revenue by less than expected but can also increase revenue (capital gains tax). I haven't seen any evidence of tax cuts being the cause of the current crisis, maybe deregulation to a certain extent but not tax cuts, and it is misleading to the public to say that since this happened when we lowered taxes, we should therefore increase them. In my view, there are times for tax cuts and there are times for tax increases.
Overall, I think what happened to the G.O.P. is partly just the continuing of a historical trend and also of a country sick of devisive partisan politics which tries to appeal to racial differences and religious extremism. However, it does not point to any fundamental flaw (or racism) in the conservative policies of smaller government. I think what both parties need to understand is that there is both a time and a place for government, and until this competitive urge to prove the other party wrong above all else is overcome, the swing of the political pendulum from one party to the other will continue.
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