Norm Ornstein on Main Stream Extremism

Norm Ornstein, not known as a liberal wishing ill for the Republican Party, thinks the Grand Old Party is in the midst of an existential struggle between bedrock conservatives and radicals. (h/t Sheila Kennedy). It caught my eye because I’ve seen variants of a lot of these make their way into proposed Indiana legislation:

That the Texas Legislature should “ignore, oppose, refuse, and nullify” federal laws it doesn’t like.

That when it comes to “unelected bureaucrats” (meaning, Hertzberg notes, almost the entire federal workforce), Congress should “defund and abolish these positions.”

That all federal “enforcement activities” in Texas “must be conducted under the auspices of the county sheriff with jurisdiction in that county.” (That would leave the FBI, air marshals, immigration officials, DEA personnel, and so on subordinate to the Texas versions of Sheriff Joe Arpaio.)

That “the Voting Rights Act of 1965, codified and updated in 1973, be repealed and not reauthorized.”

That the U.S. withdraw from the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and the World Bank.

That governments at all levels should “ignore any plea for money to fund global climate change or ‘climate justice’ initiatives.”

That “all adult citizens should have the legal right to conscientiously choose which vaccines are administered to themselves, or their minor children, without penalty for refusing a vaccine.

That “no level of government shall regulate either the ownership or possession of firearms.” (Period, no exceptions.)

That seems to be the current struggle going on. Ornstein notes that the Republicans was being fractured from the left at the beginning of the 1900s with guys like Teddy Roosevelt and Robert La Follette pushing Progressive policies, and the Democrats being pulled from the left a little earlier than that with William Jennings Bryan running around with his Cross of Gold speeches and whatnot; and again in the late 60s and early 70s with the McGovern wing briefly taking hold.

Ornstein finds the roots of the Republicans’ current challenge in the strategies and tactics of New Gingrich:

Clinton’s election in 1992 moved the Democrats firmly to the center on previously divisive issues like welfare and crime. But it also provided the impetus for the forces that have led to the current Republican problem. These forces were built in part around insurgent Newt Gingrich’s plans to overturn the Democratic 38-year hegemony in Congress, and in part around a ruthlessly pragmatic decision by GOP leaders and political strategists to hamper the popular Clinton by delegitimizing him and using the post-Watergate flowering of independent counsels to push for multiple crippling investigations of wrongdoing (to be sure, he gave them a little help along the way). No one was more adroit at using ethics investigations to demonize opponents than Newt. In 1994, Gingrich recruited a passel of more radical candidates for Congress, who ran on a path to overturn most of the welfare state and who themselves demonized Congress and Washington. At a time of rising populist anger—and some disillusionment on the left with Clinton—the approach worked like a charm, giving the GOP its first majority in the House in 40 years, and changing the face of Congress for decades to come.

For the current struggle, Ornstein sees a push back against the radicalism but doesn’t foresee the return of the kind of problem-solving conservatism he’d like to see. Instead he says:

It is a measure of the nature of this intra-party struggle that the mainstream is now on the hard right, and that it is close to apostasy to say that Obama is legitimate, that climate change is real, that background checks on guns are desirable, or even that the Common Core is a good idea.

One thing this piece reminds us of, simply by recounting some of the history, is that trajectory lines are not constants. A lot of the current dismay and dissatisfaction about government comes from drawing a line between the way things were and they way they are now and simply projecting that line to the future. But there will be an inflection point. Things change, they always do. Often, but not always, for the better.