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What Next for the Elephant?
Job interviewers sometimes ask: Where do you see yourself in 10 years? Let’s take that question to a national scale. Where do you see the Republican Party in 10 years (or 15 or 20)?
I wrote about this at The Week today, and I thought it was kind of fun to muse on the topic. I figured it might be an interesting discussion question for Ricochet as well. Consider looming problems, shifting demographics, changing labor markets, and of course the likely evolution of the left. What possibilities will be open to us in the middle-to-long-term? Which appeal most to you?
Published in General
Emigrate.
The GOP needs to listen to David Stockman on how to overhaul the financial system and the Fed. Rep. Steve Scalise is at least somewhat sympathetic to Stockman’s views. Until they do this, rent seeking, graft, and dependency will rule.
I don’t see much value in the exercise. The Republicans and Democrats are incoherent shells of parties. They are superfluous, hulking, Rube Goldbergian machines. The only thing we want to recognize as commonality is our mutual distrust and animus of “them, those people”.
It is even shedding it’s “slightly amusing” patina. Let the party rot under the boot of our pending progressive dawn.
It probably won’t be in 10 years, but unless California’s de facto secession is addressed, I think the US will devolve into regional nations by 2050.
Or the Iranians or North Koreans could deliver one or two HEMP weapons; the consequences over the next year would be the near depopulation of the US. A regional EMP attack—unless multiple attacks are coordinated—would be very dangerous but probably survivable.
The Republican party in 10 years will be in the midst of a terrible struggle between its incoherent ideologies. But being in the minority they will be attacking the profligate spending and unbalanced budget of whatever Democrat administration we will be under. There will be calls for balanced budgets, fiscal responsibility, a need to appeal to every day Americans. They probably will be complaining about Democratic gerrymandering, too. Half of Republicans will say the parties current situation is the fault of Trump. The other half will be blaming NeverTrumpers and the Deep State.
I posted this yesterday in another thread. The GOP has a PR problem, as the tone-deafness its candidates display toward social issues allow it to be too easily anchored to the perception that is full of mean old men. If they don’t make a proactive attempt to root out old and corrupt machine politicians who are easy to tar with antiquated social attitudes this will continue.
The GOP should impose term limits on its own Congresspeople and refuse to acknowledge the candidacy of anyone older than 45 for any office.
I suspect that anything other than a radical change in party practices will see it die within 20 years.
Although the entire country seems to be completely divided, the country might be less divided by income and North-South regional splits.
Family income
Under $30,000: Romney lost by 30 points; Trump lost by 12 points.
$30,000–49,999: Romney lost by 15 points; Trump lost by 9 points.
$50,000–99,999: Romney won by 6 points; Trump won by 4 points.
$100,000–199,999: Romney won by 10 points; Trump won by 1 point.
$200,000–249,999: Romney won by 5 points; Trump won by 1 point.
Over $250,000: Romney won by 13 points; Trump won by 2 points.
In another 15 years, the Republican Party might be the party of the poor, and the Democrat Party might be the party of the rich, but that seems a bit extreme right now.
Regions
Northeast: Romney lost by 19 points; Trump lost by 15 points.
Midwest: Romney lost by 3 points; Trump won by 4 points.
South: Romney won by 7 points; Trump won by 8 points.
West: Romney lost by 11 points; Trump lost by 16 points.
The Rust Belt seems to be moving more Republican while some of the suburbs of the South in places like Texas and Georgia seem to be moving away from the Republicans. This could be because the Rust Belt region is proud of Trump while some in the South suburban region is embarrassed by Trump.
The Pacific Coast states, excluding perhaps Alaska, and the former swing states of Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico seem to be moving rapidly to the Democrats. The West seems to be more willing to follow the trends of Hollywood and Silicon Valley, although this region traditional has a strong libertarian streak which makes me wonder how much censorship and Bill of Rights attacks they will be willing to take. Libertarians and/or libertarian-Republicans may essentially replace the Republicans in parts of the West. (It might be tough to keep the West in the Union, if current trends and non-assimilation of immigration continues, but all the Californians will probably just spread to other states and wreck those states first instead…)
We are going to get more and more RINOism, socialism, social problems, a bond market collapse, and wacky politics until the day that the GOP gets serious about this and this and this . That’s what David Stockman’s book is about. Listen to his interviews on the Tom Woods Show and Contra Krugman around September 2016.
Post-Trump GOP will look a lot like current GOP.
Dems & Trump traded the political & pundit class for the working class. Repub pundits are annoyed and homeless. They overstate the problem.
Post-Trump GOP will hold the Rust Belt and lose Virginia. It will gain among working class of all races while losing in the suburbs.
Relative to the Bush-Ryan era, there will be
And it will be led by people who didn’t alienate too many Repubs over Trump. Pundits who think they’re The Remnant or agree with Baseball Crank’s pinned Tweet are going to be waiting forever for the rest of us to wake up accept them as our leaders. The leaders will be people like Pence and Haley that maintained respect for most Republicans.
As you point out in your article, this depends on the Dems too. If they can escape their loons and fight for the Rust Belt this may all change. But that’s not where the smart money is.
Great post, especially this:
We have a feedback loop of big government, social problems, and Fed easy money that will never stop. I doubt that many “Reagan conservatives” or Moralist Rockefeller Republicans get this.
Don’t go by me, listen to Tim Carney and Jonah Goldberg. Start @ 40:00. Power keeps getting centralized, no matter what, and then people wonder why our politics are so haywire. I need to re-listen to it, but the Whisky Politics interview of D.C. Mcallister said the same thing.
I see you have come up with the perfect formula for losing – selling the same old dog food that makes the dogs puke.
Gil, I love you, but I honestly think your “America will go to whomever can convince the Rust Belt” paradigm has a few weak spots. For one thing, it’s one of the fastest-shrinking American populations.
In that case, whoever closes the borders wins.
They will win lower-income whites and they will win blacks.
Look at what VDH says or Dr. Joseph Salerno says about “Mises and nationalism.” Thoughtless immigration policy in this economy is going to cause social problems. It’s crazy.
If by “poor” you mean “working poor,” then I think that’s exactly how it is right now.
The Democrats have been the party of the rich for a very long time. The best trick the Democrats ever pulled was to convince people that they aren’t.
I just listened to the Salerno interview at Mises. That was interesting. One of the commenters made an interesting observation about the quote at the 7:30 mark – that when an individual is transgressed, he creates nationalism to protect his rights as an individual.
Gated Community Liberals that make money off of government power. Pure state power or Keynesian graft. Welfare is integral to their survival as such.
I have waited for an articulation like that for, forever.
I think a more distributive, fair, non- Keynesian, libertarian economy would help, but we are no where close to that.
I love you too, Rachel :)
The Rust Belt isn’t everything, but it’s a lot. If GOP can hold the Trump Rust Belt states plus Minnesota then even without Virginia they have a 45 vote cushion in the Electoral College. Obviously they need to hold other states too. But the Rust Belt is critical to what was called the Blue Wall in the pre-Trump era. Future Repub victories will most likely involve holding it
Others have made that mistake too.
Mitt Romney — born in Detroit, Michigan
Paul Ryan — born in Janesville, Wisconsin
Hillary Clinton — born in Chicago, Illinois
During the past two presidential elections all three lost Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Iowa. That’s 70 electoral points — more than 25% of the amount needed to reach 270.
It’s certainly possible, and my Option 2 probably tracks that prediction the most closely. Both parties are changing a lot though, and I think a moderate-to-major realignment is a strong possibility in the middle-term future. So the old rules may not hold. The Rust Belt has been disproportionately important in politicians’ calculations in recent years, mostly because it had a lot of swing states. That was true mainly because it was the area that fell most between the stools of the two parties, favoring some aspects of one and some of the other. Things could easily shift though, as coalitions change shape.
Even beyond the declining population, the Rust Belt isn’t necessarily a good template on which to draw an enduring political message. Conservatives like to think that it is (liberals too, ironically!) because it still has a sort of nostalgic significance for us, most closely representing a mid-century culture that we still view as a recent high-water mark for American culture. It sort of feels like we had a fairly healthy, negotiated social contract in that era. A lot of aspects of that contract are just defunct, though, and not really salvageable. The Rust Belt itself is one of the least-thriving and most-embittered regions of the country. And the same features that make the Rust Belt kind of appealing to us (Real America!) also raise serious risks for a party that focuses too much on securing it. To be blunt, a platform focused on pleasing the Rust Belt is likely to be kind of reactionary, lacking in cross-country or cross-generational appeal. That’s my suspicion, anyhow.
I don’t see how just writing off the Rust Belt is going to make us less bitter.
But yeah, go try for California. Or New England. And good luck with that. At least the Rust Belt is still winnable. The coasts are lost.
I didn’t say we should write it off. I said that it should not be viewed as the strategic key to American politics. Obviously I’m well aware that Gil and others will view my above comment as more disaffected NeverTrump disrespect for the common man, etc, but seriously, it doesn’t seem to me that the problems I’m witnessing can all be in my mind. The GOP is significantly underwater in current polls. That’s not totally unprecedented in a first-term presidency, but this is, best case scenario, at the very low end of normal. Special election candidates are losing campaigns they ought to win and Congress has struggled too, in no small part it seems to me because they lack direction. There’s no clear sense of what the party is supposed to be trying to accomplish. I don’t see how an intense focus on the Rust Belt will help with all of this.
Neither do I think we should write off the coasts. They’re unfriendly to Republicans now, but we live in a fast-paced world. It wasn’t that long ago that everyone knew that the South would always go to the Democrats.
The question that might be important to ask is why the Rust Belt (and other regions) are so embittered toward Washington? Why does a large portion of the country feel like Washington looks out only for itself and its friends and doesn’t give a crap about the “deplorable” parts of the country?
The party that figures out how to turn that around will do well. But neither party seems interested.
What’s next for the elephant? Going the way of the donkey.
Becoming flag-waving patrons of the Rust Belt is the most surefire way to “go the way of the donkey”. Washington always has its problems, and the present hour surely is not its most glorious, but a huge piece of the Rust Belt’s bitterness is rooted in the decline of the industries that built its cities and kept them prosperous (for awhile).
Its economy wasn’t sufficiently diverse. It benefitted disproportionately from unusual economic circumstances in the mid-to-later-20th-century, and then global competition and automation kind of lowered the boom. Opioids, corrupt local governance, and other on-the-ground cultural problems created some terrible vicious cycles in many of those towns. Undoubtedly, some mistakes at the top also worsened the situation in various ways (for instance the decision to loosen regulation of opioids at a very inopportune time). But this isn’t all about Washington, or even mostly about Washington. If we try to keep the GOP afloat on populist anger rooted in the Rust Belt collapse, we’re really not that different from Democrats who want to keep their party afloat on oppression narratives focused on blacks, gays, and women. That only works for so long, and it sorely undermines reasonable discussion and governance. (Also note that the demographics they are targeting are quite a bit larger. If you’re going to go full-bore identity politics, at least try to find some bigger and more stable identity groups.)
Again, that doesn’t mean that the right course is to write off the Rust Belt as “deplorables who deserve their sad fate”, or anything of the kind. They are fellow Americans, and we should seriously consider what kinds of policies might help ease their distress, but we should also realize that their problems are idiosyncratic to a certain extent, and that channeling Rust Belt wrath is not the way to revitalize the GOP over the long term.
Wipe out FICA taxation. It’s pure fiction anyway.
Who said anything about “populist anger”?
I’m saying that Washington shouldn’t do that, but honestly find ways to reengage with the citizen class instead of, you know, finding ways to regulate their lives to the last inch or tax them to the last dollar.
Washington takes Americans for granted, and then wonders why Americans are writing off Washington.
The future is bright for the Republican Party in 10-20 years. I don’t believe the negative hype about demographic shifts and ignorant socialist youths. Kids are fickle and they get old – generally smarter over time as well.
Low taxes, security and optimism are always popular but they take a lot of effort to sell. Spite and bitterness is easy, and understandable. Maybe we’ll lose a few elections and the President doesn’t seem to care about the long term health of the party. He’s not the best but he’s not a hateful man far as I can tell. The left is addicted to hatred and it will get old for many people as they get old.
Tech will reshape this country in ways we cannot predict precisely and not all the gains will accrue to the coastal elite hubs. The desire for space and community is strong. The youths are growing up as tech natives and learning the value of IRL stuff and the consequences of detachment better than the olds. They’re not smarter or better, they simply have more experience in the digital and physical worlds.
Self-driving cars, online work, and VR will allow people to stay or even relocate to rural areas for the peace and community unavailable in the metropolis and this will allow the party of low taxes and security to succeed.
Defeat and despair is never an option.