However, I was interested in Ezra Klein’s recent piece at Vox.com on what he perceives as a basic inability to govern among Republicans:
Different Republican senators have different ideas, but across the party as a whole, there is no plan. The Republican Party has no policy theory for how to contain the coronavirus, nor for how to drive the economy back to full employment. And there is no plan to come up with a plan, nor anyone with both the interest and authority to do so. The Republican Party is broken as a policymaking institution, and it has been for some time.
“I don’t think you’re missing anything,†said a top Republican Senate staffer. “You have a whole bunch of people in the Senate posturing for 2024 rather than governing for the crisis we’re in.â€
“There hasn’t been a coherent GOP policy on anything for almost five years now,†a senior aide to a conservative Senate Republican told me. “Other than judges, I don’t think you can point to any united policy priorities.â€
He goes on to offer four possible explanations:
- It’s Trump’s fault.
- Conservative thinking has no room for Covid-19.
- They’re worried about Tea Party 2.0.
- They’ve given up on 2020, and many are looking toward 2024.
While I think there’s some merit in each of those, I think that Mr. Klein is missing something basic. Republicans aren’t coming up with policy prescriptions that Democrats would recognize as such because their present operative theory of governance is so much different from that of Democrats. Democrats tend to long for grand, sweeping top-down plans planned and administered from Washington while Republicans don’t. With as many closet minarchists and anarcho-capitalists (like Paul Ryan) among them, what else would you expect?
The uncomfortable truth is that Republican-led states are actually faring better with respect to combating COVID-19 than Democratic-led states. It’s no secret that New York and New Jersey’s responses were disastrous—they have by far the highest number of deaths per 1M population of any state. While California’s deaths per 1M population is much better than most states its number of cases per 1M population is trending in the wrong direction. Given that California shut down early and has remained locked down longer, it’s a bit hard to see how, barring divine intervention or just dumb luck, that will turn around. For all of the complaints about Texas and Florida, their numbers of new cases diagnosed are actually trending in the right direction.
Indeed, I think it’s a bit hard to fault Republicans on their lack of policies given their success at the state level. But at the national level he’s got a point. As far as I can tell, the only thing that Republicans actually agree on at the national level is that taxes are too high.
I would go even more fundamental than that. The GoP is not a coherent party capable of collective action. There is no party discipline. The party platform, such as it is, is windowdressing (and that’s putting it charitably).
Like much of society these days, the GoP (and the Democrats though currently to a lesser extent) is rough collection of atomized interests groups and politicians. Who speaks for the party? Not even Trump, the titular figurehead.
The days of political parties acting as coherent entities that represent a real coalition are over. They are now hollow vessels. Even the party money for campaigns doesn’t mean that much anymore.
So there’s no GoP policy because there’s no GoP. There are just a bunch of people using the label and acting in their own interests. At best the GoP is a brand, one that isn’t representative of any coherent or enduring principles.
I would say that at this point both parties are largely affiliational in nature. The Republicans aren’t Democrats and the Democrats aren’t Republicans.
At this point the farthest right Democrat is to the left of the farthest left Republican. In that sense and only in that sense they’re coherent.
“Democrats tend to long for grand, sweeping top-down plans planned and administered from Washington while Republicans don’t.”
That would be a bingo. And empirically, let’s be honest, the Democrats are running on the same issues they have for the past 50 years. I guess fools, and Charlie Brown, figure Lucy won’t pull the football away again.
As for COVID, stop the horrible “stop the virus” insanity and just let it run its course. It is, and it will. You can’t stop it; that’s vanity. You can only modulate it, with costs. Any super high end stereo electrical engineer circuit designer will tell you, simply the circuit. Simplify it. All attempts to fiddle and complicate will only do damage, will be more harmful than helpful.
The wiring of Democrats versus republicans is attached to different goals, platforms and purposes.
Democrats strive for central control over the people. Their governance is top heavy with administrators, bureaucracies, social programs for all needs, run ironically by a one-size-fits-all end game. Everything about their structure relies on communal, collective theories rather than individuation of a people. Therefore, they are happIest and more comfortable with a command-and-control type of government hierarchy, which gives the appearance of a party inculcated with greater discipline and coherence.
Republicans, OTOH, tap into people’s own ingenuity and self-guidance. They believe in a bottom up disbursal of power and talent – a formula which isn’t able to guarantee perfect outcomes or equal shares of everything or anything. Instead, individual outcomes are often proportional to individual inputs, creating a society with infinite numbers of sizing opportunities, rather than one socially engineered size for all.
As for who speaks for Trump’s party ——> the people do. It’s multiple voices, personalities energized by wanting freedom of self expression, upward mobility if so desired, and to fail or succeed under their own terms. Such a formula can be messy, risky, even chaotic, and is not always a reliable construct to success. But, fueled by self determination, rather than a strict, costly blueprint that democrat governance religiously likes to follow, free spirited individualism usually produces a more innovative approach, with the flavor of “American†embossed on a finished product.
As for acting in the public interest – both establishment Democrats and Republicans fail in this area, especially those in office for too many years. Just look at what’s happening with COVID relief bills. The Democrats, in particular, are stringing the process along into the summer recess, not to benefit the most immediate needs of the people, but rather to crowbar in a progressive agenda during a stressful pandemic.
Finally, the opposition party and it’s base likes to swaddle Trump in condescending language inferring incompetence and gross behavior. However, reviewing his presidential performance, such criticism seems questionable, considering: how he has confronted China; bringing back supply chains and manufacturing; is piecing together a tenable ME peace policy via the Abraham Agreement; has energized jobs and the economy (pre COVID); has worked with the private sector to create opportunity Zones and more recently working on a timely vaccine; has improved the VA; activated prison and Title 9 reforms; has participated in new trade agreements with Mexico, Canada, Japan, India, S Korea; succeeded in recovering captives, and has been more transparent about his objectives than any president in my lifetime, through endless press conferences. These are not accomplishments of a lazy or uninterested president, sitting on his hands.
I nominate Jan to speak for the Republican Party 🎉.
As for red states doing better, we do exactly because we don’t look to government planners for salvation. There is a pride in taking care of one’s own.
Example, New Orleans, a lot of disbelief that people would flee flooding and leave 1,000 elderly relatives behind to die believing that government would evacuate them. How in hell do people leave their mothers behind to drown? Collective good?
If those things jan claimed were actually true I would also vote for Trump. Since they arent, I wont. Gotta run. Need to sharpen my hammer and sickle, or at least the sickle.
Steve