What Now For the GOP?

A couple weeks ago I listed out the 5 big reasons that I chose to support Obama.  With the election now in the rear-view mirror I want to expound on the last point I made, which was that I hoped an Obama reelection would send a message to the GOP that they needed to return to the center if they ever hope to move back into the White House again.

Specifically, they need to jettison most, if not all, of their platform on social issues.  While I could talk at length about a dozen or so, I really want to concentrate on 2 - gay marriage and illegal immigration.  While I don't necessarily think that these are the two biggest issues in the country at the moment (though they both are very important) I'll put it bluntly: the GOP will never have success on a national level (i.e. presidential elections) until they jettison their opposition to gay marriage and soften their hardline stance on illegal immigration.

For both of these I am not arguing these on the basis that they are the right thing to do, although I think anyone who has read this blog over the years knows that I do feel that way.  I am simply presenting this in the context that these two positions are impacting the Republican party in a significantly negative way, and I just don't see any path forward for them other than to reverse themselves.

For gay marriage, the reasoning is pretty simple.  8 years ago, opposition made complete populist sense.  At that time, nearly 2/3rds of the country was against it.  That is not the case anymore.  Support for gay marriage has grown considerably over that time, particularly in the last 2 years, and now stands at approximately 54% in favor vs 42% opposed.  A party should not be purely a reflection of the majority opinion, but continuing to hold this position would not only defy political logic it would also fly in the face of pretty much everything the GOP purports to stand for.  The rallying cry of the Republicans, and the Tea Party in particular, since 2009 has been a rejection of government overreach.  So to take a purely social issue (I don't think anyone rejects gay marriage on economic grounds) where the majority of the country is on the opposite side from you and say that while you disagree with government interference in general you still think this is one case where the government absolutely needs to be involved just presents a huge credibility problem.  Rather, changing positions on this issue actually presents a golden opportunity for the GOP.  Much as a free speech advocate will defend Nazi hate speech, the Republicans have a chance to conclusively demonstrate that they really do believe in limited government - even if the result of that is allowing something which they think is morally wrong.  In that way, this is actually not a compromise for them at all; it's just a return to the values they have claimed to hold all along.

The 2nd issue is a bit trickier and would definitely be a reversal for the GOP.  And really, this is about demography.  This election, black voters made up 13% of the electorate.   Latinos made up 10% (up from 8% in 2008) and they are the fastest growing segment of the country.  That's nearly one full quarter of the electorate that currently votes overwhelmingly Democratic.  That leaves the GOP with the daunting task of needing to capture about 60% of the remaining vote to have a majority.

Now, I don't have a silver bullet when it comes to telling the GOP how to win over black voters, and I don't think anyone else does either.  But there most certainly is one when it comes to Latinos and it's immigration reform.  What does the GOP need to do?  Well, for starters they need to tone down the rhetoric, stop blaming illegals for all the country's problems, stop crusading against every public service that gets provided for an illegal, and generally expand their list of solutions from the current roster that is pretty much limited to self-deportation and building bigger walls.  Those are good starts.  Then whatever they end up presenting better have the words "path to citizenship" in there somewhere.  How do you sell that to your base?  It won't be easy, but I think you start by reminding people that we are a nation of immigrants and that the reason we have this "problem" is because opportunities in this country are better than just about anywhere else.  You tell them that by providing a path to legality you will clamp down on seedy businesses who are thriving on what is essentially black market labor and you will increase tax revenue when their earnings are now reported on W-2s instead of getting paid under the table.

As a side note, I wrote most of this yesterday and today I saw this article where Sean Hannity (of all people) and John Boehner have basically come to the same conclusion.

This is all a very tricky situation for the GOP.  If Tuesday demonstrated anything, it was the great chasm between local and national politics.  Even though President Obama won a pretty decisive victory, the Democrats only managed to pick up 3 seats in the house and will be in the minority by a 233-193 margin over the next 2 years.  To understand why, I think it's helpful to take a look at this map of the House election results.  Look at states like California and Illinois.  Even though Obama carried each of those states easily, there are significant chunks of red in each of them.  More interestingly, look at states like Ohio and Florida where Obama pulled out narrow victories.  Even though those states went blue for him, those states are overwhelmingly red when it comes to Congressional elections.  But then look at the states that went for Romney, like Louisiana, Missouri, and Indiana.  Outside of New Orleans, St. Louis, and the Chicago metro area (respectively) there's barely a drop of blue to be found.  This creates a very difficult problem for the GOP to solve, because while their path back to the Presidency lies in tacking to the center, they are going to have to do it by asking Representatives from very conservative districts to make compromises that will almost certainly prove to be very unpopular back home.  And unpopular decisions back home will almost certainly lead to fiercer primaries that is likely to produce even more conservative candidates.

It's a dangerous tightrope that the GOP must walk.  But walk it they must if they ever want to get back into 1600 Pennsylvania Ave again without a visitor pass.  If they don't, then it is likely that the present makeup of our government will be the status quo for the next decade - red House, blue Presidency, and the Senate in flux (but a very slow flux since only one third of seats are up every 2 years).  That will not foster compromise and will not lead to effective governance.  And the country will suffer for it.