Ideology vs. Consensus vs. Competency vs. Corruption

The post-mortems abound …

It’s fascinating watching the debate going on within the GOP about who “lost” the election. Everyone has their own axe to grind in this, and the answer is almost certainly less clear-cut than presented, but the main schools of thought seem to be:

1. The Republicans compromised too much. This is the “Hugh Hewitt/James Dobson” school of thought. If the GOP had stuck to their guns and presented a united front and actually gotten their agenda enacted — passing judges, passing laws, reforming this, banning that, winning all over — then that ideological purity would have been a shining beacon that the electorate would have flocked to. Instead, too many Republicans tried to play to the left, blocking the President’s actions on
the war and security, blocking the social conservative agenda (or, depending on which conservative branch you looked to) becoming too much tax-and-spendy like the Democrats.

After all, the story goes, didn’t the GOP take power in the first place based on their ideological purity, leading away from the center?

2. The Republicans didn’t compromise enough. This is the moderate/centrist line of reasoning. They argue that the GOP lost because it was too beholden to the social conservatives, too unyielding and secretive and unilateral in its actions (led by its presdient). As a result, it scared the public at best, alienated them at worst.

After all, the story goes, didn’t the GOP take power in the first place based on revulsion by the public of the far Left, and by attracting voters in the center?

3. The Republicans just couldn’t shoot straight. This school of thought basically says that the party neither led (built consensus and mind-share) for its actions, nor did it actually act in an effective fashion. The War in Iraq is usually pointed to here, something that, no matter how one feels about its justification, was mishandled almost from Day 1. This ties into #1-2 as well, since the GOP never did manage to get much of its agenda pushed through (except for security measures)
— a national energy policy, social security reform, immigration reform, all major subjects trumpeted by the GOP leadership as crucial issues they would resolve, and yet always foundering on Democratic opposition, internal squabbles, and (depending on whether you fall into the #1 or #2 camp) excessive or insufficient compromise.

After all, the story goes, didn’t the GOP take power in the first place as better, more effective managers than the Dems?

4. The Republicans became too mired in corruption. This one is either blamed on the media for their liberal slant (the media isn’t really all that liberal, it just likes forming public opinion) or on a few bad apples (not few enough), or even just on the dangers and snares of power. Whatever, there was a clear public perception that GOP power attracted too many corrupters and too many folks willing to corrupt.

After all, the story goes, didn’t the GOP take power in the first place as the party of virtue and morality?

The problem, of course, is that what actions the GOP decides to take will depend on which of these explanations becomes the received wisdom. Moderates think the Reactionaries lost the election. Reactionaries think it was the moderates. And, in private, they all complain about both how things were mismanaged and about the corruption that toppled the party from its purported moral high ground.

Will the GOP return to its far-Right roots? Or will it return its right-of-center ones? And to which will the citizenry respond better — extremism with a pure message, or moderation muddled with nuance?

It’s not just a GOP thing, of course. The Democrats face the same issue — especially in the battle between the ideologues (#1) and the moderates (#2). Some say the party has to both present and act on a strong Left agenda, to counterbalance the Right of the past decades and to create a clear alternative. Others say the party has to govern from the center, to compromise, to not dwell so much on the past as lead toward the future. Some want impeachment hearings; others are scared to look
like (gasp) Liberals.

In some ways, the challenge is even greater for the Dems. Their purchase on power is tenuous, their boost in Congress fueled in part by factors (corruption, disdain for the GOP) that may not be in place next election cycle. Both sides (on both sides) can make strong cases for ideological purity vs. moderation and compromise. Which way they go will determine their parties’ political future, and our nation’s as well.