Recently, the daughter of a Republican candidate contacted me in reaction to a post I wrote about her father. We ultimately spoke by telephone and surprisingly agreed on many issues, particularly the toxic problem of the GOP base's stranglehold on the nomination process which either (i) forces sane candidates to have to stake out insane positions to get nominated or (ii) allows true lunatics to beat sane and rational candidates. As noted in an earlier post today, Mark Obenshain's concession to Mark Herring has already reignited the war over whether or not the Virginia GOP will continue to use state conventions which lead to more extremist candidates or revert back to primaries. The same civil war is being waged all across the nation. A column in the Washington Post looks at the growing civil war. Here are excerpts:
The Republican civil war, like all civil wars, is even messier than it looks. It’s a battle between two different conservative establishments, complicated by philosophical struggles across many other fronts. Its resolution will determine whether we are a governable country.
Because the GOP fight is so important, it’s a mistake to dismiss the passage of a real, honest-to-goodness budget through both houses of Congress as a minor event. The deal negotiated by Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) may be small, but it represents a major recalibration of forces inside the Republican Party.
The tea party certainly still wields power in GOP primaries, one reason why only one of the seven Republican senators facing tea-party challengers, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, supported allowing a vote on the deal. But Ryan and House Speaker John Boehner calculated, correctly, that the wreckage from October’s shutdown strategy allowed them to breach the tea party’s barrier against deal-making.
Let’s be clear about what this GOP brawl is not. It is not a clash between “conservatives” and “moderates.” Most genuine Republican moderates either lost primaries or were defeated by Democrats. Liberal Republicans, once a hearty breed, disappeared long ago. The Republican Party is unequivocally in conservative hands.
Nor is this a fight in which “the Republican establishment” is being challenged by its “grass-roots” enemies. Boehner denounced conservative fundraising behemoths (they include FreedomWorks, Heritage Action and Americans for Prosperity) because he understands that they now constitute an alternative Republican establishment. Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) was even more explicit, arguing that “many of the outside groups do what they do solely to raise money.”
The showdown involving the two conservative power centers is not the only dispute that matters. There are crisscrossing divisions between foreign policy hawks and non-interventionists; between those who care passionately about social issues such as abortion and gay marriage and those who would play them down; between purist libertarians and pro-business pragmatists; and between supporters and opponents of a more open policy on immigration.
The governing wing won this round. But Ryan’s comments on the debt ceiling, coupled with similar remarks from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, suggest that Republicans will face another internal struggle over how much to demand in exchange for expanding the government’s borrowing authority.
If Boehner cedes that decision to the party’s confrontational wing, the gains of this week will evaporate. And given the hostility among conservatives to Obama, the habit of seeing compromise as a form of capitulation could prove very hard to break.
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