BACK in July 2007, John Heilemann, a writer for
The Republicans look like dead men walking. Almost two-thirds of Americans regard the
These figures have come to life in
The party has flailed around for a champion without success. Rudy Giuliani led the national polls for months only to implode. Fred Thompson sped to the front for a while only to fall asleep at the wheel. The party is divided into warring factions. Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee have as much in common as their respective alma maters—
The party's travails are producing a fierce argument on the right. Are the Republicans' problems just part of the normal political cycle? Or do they portend the end of an era? The pragmatists argue that the problems are just a matter of competence and happenstance. The war in
The fundamentalists think that there is something much deeper going on. Ed Rollins, a former Reagan aide who is now Mr Huckabee's campaign chairman, argues that the machine that Ronald Reagan built is now finished. The coalition of social conservatives, defence conservatives and anti-tax conservatives “doesn't mean a whole lot to people anymore”. Mr Huckabee is openly critical of George Bush's foreign policy.
The truth is more nuanced. There is more than happenstance at work, but less than the break-up of the Republican coalition. Mr Bush's people pursued a self-defeating political strategy. They fired up the Republican base, ignoring the centre and rewarding their loyalists with government largesse. But Mr Bush's serial incompetence destroyed his narrow majority. And his addiction to government spending alienated fiscal conservatives.
Mr Bush's Republicans also made serious policy errors. They stuck their head in the sand over global warming. They ignored rising anxiety about stagnating middle-class incomes. They turned the war on terrorism into a defining issue and then messed it up. Mr Reagan had a lasting influence not just because he forged a coalition but also because he was right on the biggest issues of his time—the importance of shrinking government and facing down communism. The Republicans are now in danger of being either wrong or half wrong on two of the defining issues of our time—global warming and radical Islam.
This suggests that the Republicans need to engage in some vigorous rethinking, and fast. But it does not add up to a case for taking a jack-hammer to the Reagan coalition. The coalition has served the Republicans handsomely in the past—they will have held the White House for 20 of the past 28 years and controlled the House for 12 years from 1995. Jackhammering the coalition would almost certainly be a disaster. Do the Republicans really want to abandon a chunk of their core voters when they are already behind in the polls? And do they want to engage in a civil war in the middle of a tight election?
The value of values
Business conservatives can never win a majority without the support of “values voters” (there just are not enough people around who look like Mr Romney). “Values voters” can never produce a viable governing coalition without the help of the business elite. The Republicans have seen revolts against their ruling coalition before—remember Pat Buchanan's pitchfork rebellion against George Bush senior—and they have always succeeded in putting it back together again. They need to do the same now. Enough Republicans believe enough of the Reagan mantra—less government, traditional values and strong defence—to make it a workable philosophy.
The doomsters draw the wrong lesson from the Bush years. The lesson of the Bush presidency is not that the Republican coalition is exhausted but that it has been badly managed. Mr Bush has failed to keep the coalition in balance—he tilted too far towards his party's moralistic southern wing and too far away from its libertarian western wing. He has allowed public spending to balloon and pork-barrel politicians to run wild. And he has ignored big changes in public opinion about climate change. The Republican Party certainly needs to update its agenda to deal with problems Reagan never grappled with. But this is no time to go breaking the mould and starting again.
Fuente: The Economist
5 comentarios:
Demasiada complicada la política en Estados Unidos, evidentemente más madura que la de nuestro país, saludos.
El panorama de los republicanos es complicado;ojo,que Giuliani,aún no ha dicho su última palabra.
Si algo les interesa a los "elefantes",es que el candidato demócrata sea Obama.
Menudo partido. Todos una colección de impresentables.
I would need many Rum bottles to imagine ZP becomes president. But I think there is a lot of people drunk in Spain.
La política de USA es complicada, pero a la vez muy interesante, y como bien se apunta, Giuliani tiene que jugar en los estados grandes, para ver su verdadero poder.
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