losing that magnet is hard
Roe, Dobbs, and today
What is the magnet attracting enough people to the Republican Party to allow it to play a role in governing this country? Karl Rove, a blast from the past, opined twenty years ago that a realignment making Republicans the majority party was underway. Uh, not so much. And governing is proving impossible.
What unified the modern Republican Party was the January 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. It wasn’t Ronald Reagan as much as people liked his grandfatherly demeanor. The 1973 decision guaranteed a woman’s privacy to decide on both an abortion and health care, sparking a movement to ‘protect life’ as if the mothers’ lives were irrelevant.
Roe became the magnet drawing together many folks previously uninterested or uninvolved in politics: long-term Republicans who advocated for ‘small’ government, fiscal conservatives who thought social programs too large, disenchanted Democrats disillusioned by their post-Watergate lives and political leaders, and the Christian nationalists proliferating as the nation reentered one of our periodic eras of greater religioustiy. Roe was unquestionably as strong a magnet for all of these people as anything or anyone could be. Focusing on those other priorities wasn’t enough to create the passion of the Republicans; Roe v Wade managed to do that.
I recall thinking about this Roe magnetism on 1 July 2005 when I heard Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the determinative abortion vote on the highest court, announce her retirement. With Day O’Connor’s departure, what could possibly fill that function in attracting and mantaining supporters with vehemently different views of other traditional Republican positions?
What would become a magnet for the Republicans and how would it matter if there were more than one?
It turned out more than an abstract musing because George W. Bush was in the first year of his second term in 2005 but already faced, as had his father, much criticism over a range of policy questions. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistant both proved that Republicans, the Party inextricably linked for generations to defense and security, could fracture on national security choices. Affirmative Action, immigration reform, the role of China in our foreign relations, taxes and spending, ties with a reawakening Putin, and a range of other contemporary topics all proved devisive as well.
Brutal primary battles in 2000, 2008, and 2012 seemed to show a ‘ big tent’ because folks with such diverse concerns were Republicans but their passion to overturn Roe still bound them. During hose elections the Republicans views could not win nationwide elections for president. Congress was split closely as it remains But people believed they could get a Surpreme Court to overturn the odious abortion guarantee.
I continued wondering after the 2022 Dobbs decision what that magnet is. My assumption that Republicans might have trouble finding a similar unifying issue seems true if one looks at the lack of a governing presence at the federal level. Republicans, especially in the House, are unified only on hating Joe Biden but that isn’t governing.
It has been clear that Donald Trump the person drew many to the GOP but he also repelled a substantial number who became ‘Never Trumpers’ or became concerned about the retribution implied against women as state Republican legislatures passed ever harsher moves to restrict women’s health care opportunities, with abortion a slide of those health services. Trump has his loyalities but he doesn’t have anti-abortion magnatism.
Republicans lost the popular vote for president in 2016 by 2.9 million votes but Trump carried the Electoral College. Republicans lost the Congress two years later, and in 2020 support dropped further. The Republicans won the House of Representatives in 2022 as the health care issues and concerns about Republican policy concerns cited as major factors by voters.
Trump is the most popular candidate on the Republican side but what are his top five policy priorities? Do they match with anyone but the Freedom Caucus?
The fundamental need for a magnet remains, however, but the Party has neither any single overaraching magnet which allows the emergence nor any unifying figure and resulting policy priorities.
It’s appealing for many supporters to assume Donald Trump is that post-Roe magnet for Republicans because he has brought millions of former Democrats to support his MAGA ideal (it hardly qualifies as a platform as governing is not the goal here these days). Trump does not offer an overarching vision for the Party with a clearly defined desired outcome except payback for personal grievance. The former president’s volatility on issues and fixation on personal retribution do not translate into the same effect drawing people together as the Roe decision did for almost half a century. Trump and his high viz supporters engender drama and exhaustion which gets little accomplished.
More importantly, the Republican Party itself has nothing it seeks to accomplish except assuring that President Biden receives the same negative treatment as Trump has earned. Treatment of any political figure, including Trump, Biden, or Alfred E. Neuman, is insufficient to draw together the party.
Being a political party over an extended period is not the same as being in power. Republicans want to defend their power but don’t offer much to lure new folks in as olders age out. It takes generations to build power, party, and governance. Voters get tired.
Republicans appear a cast of characters in search of a future. Factions within the Party fight for power but those fights almost invariably lead to further fracturing as individuals believe they can be the heirs to the Trump voters.
But the MAGA voter is bonded to Trump personally, I suspect. His willingness to act in a flamboyant, ‘in your face’ manner is what draws so many who feel ignored by traditional politics isn’t working for the dozen mini-Trump candidates who got no traction in the past year as they declared their candidacies to replace him, then fell back into the crowd once their names became known.
Evidence tells me the MAGA voters are Trumpists alone, but not some political belief system beyond the man himself. I don’t think this would be transferrable to his son, for example. The personal story, the performances, the constant allegations of ‘persecution’ are Trump specific rather than an attack on the Party as a whole because he personalises to much.
Why does this matter? Because the Party will continue struggling with governing. Legislating and executing the actions of a state on behalf of the voters is an activity based on an idea which will draw the voter to support a candidate. Nothing is binding the party together as anti-abortion did while those opposing the Dobbs decision and resulting public policy activities are heavily engaged and united.
We are nine days from a government shutdown. We are not seeing government working. I see no reason to think a breakthrough in fixing the process within the GOP, a process repealing those the minority party needs to attract, is immenent. That is not the right point, however.
The question is what would it take for the GOP to become functioning and what are the magnets that would bring people into the system to build a viable entity?
I am at a loss on that one right now. I see lots of things the GOP is not but am having a hard time, listening to its leaders, figuring out what its positive objectives are for the nation rather than for the individual party members who personalise so much.
We used to say the Democrats were just an amalgam of special interests. I am not sure the Republicans at even on the same planet, much less an amalgam of anything. Your thoughts?
It was a beautiful day. I hope you got the same where you are!
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Be well and be safe. FIN