Republicans: What Now?

What now for Republicans?

Maybe nothing. Certainly our local assemblyman in Morris County will be elected without changing his positions. So too will most Republican Congressmen. House districts are safe by design (so much for representative democracy).

Still, following the Romney defeat, Republicans must be asking themselves, is this as good as it gets?

After several decades of a joint effort by Fox News and conservative radio to craft a counter narrative to ideas from the mainstream press, the nation remains unimpressed with conservative ideas - don’t worry, the nation is also unimpressed with liberal ideas. The majority of Americans accept that the social safety is a good idea. Most also agree that those who are better off should pay higher taxes. Obama won a second term while campaigning on this very issue.

Even freedom means different things to different people. Republicans thought they had made this year a referendum on freedom. But if you are a worker who would like the benefits of a union, it turns out that Republicans didn’t mean this freedom. Nor did they support the right of a woman to choose whether to continue or terminate a pregnancy.

The traditional conservative insights remain good ones. For example, many of us would agree with conservatives that we can’t throw money at social ills and expect them all to evaporate. Many of us also recognize that wealth comes from private industry. Still, the conservative narrative that pretends that the market will solve all of our social ills is absurd. Unfortunate too are the attacks on benefits like unemployment insurance and food stamps. There is an old slogan that those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat it; it would seem that conservatives wish to return to an era when hoovervilles and soup kitchens were the only resource for those down on their luck.

And can someone explain conservative opposition to environmental laws. The EPA worked, we cleaned up the air, and made many horribly polluted rivers much better (even if not drinkable). Here too, many of us would follow conservatives in asking that costs be balanced by benefits. However, the wholesale attacks on environmental legislation turn off many of us off. (And by the way, it is no coincidence that the founder of the Cato Institute is Charles Koch, an energy mogul).

Finally, there is the conservative retreat from science. If you asked a group of Republican candidates about evolution, you will find beliefs ranging from skepticism to outright hostility. If Republicans cannot embrace basic science, they will never be able to work with the rest of us on issue like global warming.

If we are lucky, Republicans will move to the middle and once again become interested in governing. Until they do, we will be faced with more of the same, which is pointless gridlock.

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