Is the party over – the Republican Party that is? This is not a description to demean but rather to warn of the demise of the current Republican Party through a review of the significant detours which it has taken. Political parties are not necessarily permanent political fixtures. Parties endure as long as they alter their identities to remain viable and consistent with current times.
Political parties that have collapsed include the Whigs, the Federalists, the Democratic-Republicans, the Know-Nothings, the Free-Soil Party, the Populist Party, the National Republicans, the Anti-Masonic Party, and three iterations of the Progressive Party. The Democratic and Republican parties have endured as long as they have because they have significantly altered their identities to remain viable
The modern Republican Party altered its course when Senator Barry Goldwater was the Republican Party nominee for President. Lyndon Johnson and the Democrats supported civil rights legislation. The solid Democratic South was their’s for the taking if the Republicans would oppose such legislation. The party of Lincoln opted to oppose the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This action invited the South to join the Republican Party and so it did. In 1968, Richard Nixon appealed to southern whites’ racial grievances. By 1980, the GOP had become dependent on the white South. In 2018, some seventy per cent of “safe” or “likely Republican” districts were in Southern states as stated in a New Yorker article. Altering or adjusting the identity to attract a certain block of voters may help win elections but lose the basic core of the party.
A NY Times article “Republicans’ long journey on abortion” (6/24/22) may provide added insight. The article explains how G.O.P. strategists in the early 1970s decided that the party could attract new Republican voters by making a play to Catholics and evangelicals centered on abortion in light of the Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973. More Republicans than Democrats supported decriminalizing abortion. In fact 64 percent of Americans, and 56 percent of Catholics, agreed with the statement “the decision to have an abortion should be made solely by a woman and her physician.” 10 years later this coalition between evangelical Christians and Catholics would contribute to the rise of Ronald Reagan.
The South remains racially polarized and the most religious region. These dynamics dominate the political culture and create problems for the GOP. This Southern dependency may be one reason why the GOP’s future is less clear.
The US Department of Education became a Cabinet-level agency in 1979. Ronald Reagan advocated to dismantle the department while campaigning for his presidency. The Reagan administration issued the “Nation At Risk” report on K-12 public education telling us our public education was failing. Many states continue altering education as a result often without questioning the report itself and claiming private education with public funding is a viable solution.
Ronald Reagan reinforced the Republican party’s shift. Perhaps he personified the return to a time past even though viewed through a flawed lens when he claimed government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem. The 1950’s and 1970’s including street protests, affirmative action, federal money going to cities, states and education many visualized as the failure of government as seen through their rear-view mirror.
Reagan’s shifted to a call for reducing taxes was considered a means to curb government overreach. The belief that if the funding was reduced the size would diminish may not have materialized. However the concern for tax reduction more specifically on the wealthy became entrenched in the GOP.
The 1990’s brought us the “contract with America.” This was a pledge by Republicans calling for the removal of some regulations, tax cuts, and a balanced-budget amendment. Grover Norquist co-authored the Contract with America with incoming U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich. The Republicans became the majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate. This strategy seemed to have attracted voters
George W. Bush with his self-description as a “compassionate conservative” resonated. His political campaign for the presidency was successful with the aid of Karl Rove who believed values always play a role in a campaign.”
There is disagreement over whether same-sex marriage drew voters to the polls. Most experts agree that voters turn out to vote for president, not a ballot measure. There is evidence that the same-sex marriage measure on the ballot helped George Bush. 11 states in the 2004 general election voters cast ballots on the definition-of-marriage measures.
We know the Barack Obama defeated Sen. John McCain 2008. During the campaign, Sen. McCain advised a supporter on national television that Sen. Obama was a good person. Perhaps the Republican supporters were viewing opposition candidates as not only an opponent but an enemy. We would witness more of that after Sen. Obama was elected the first African-American President. Some racist focus did materialize at that time. This blend of populist rage and overt racism eventually helped to elect Donald Trump.
A PEW Research Center 2016 report provided the demographic data on voters which should provide some insight. In 1992, 93% of Republican voters were white; that share has declined somewhat to 86% 2016. The share of Hispanic voters in the GOP has edged up from 3% to 6%. There has been no increase in the share of Republicans who are black; blacks made up 2% of all Republican voters in 1992 and make the same share of all GOP registered voters 2016.
The report continued to reveal that Republican and Republican-leaning voters now being a significantly older cohort than Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters. Surveys conducted thus far in 2016, 58% of Republican voters are age 50 and older, compared with far fewer (41%) who are under age 50. This marks a flip of the party’s age composition from 1992 when 61% of all GOP voters were under age 50 and just 38% were 50 and older. The median age of Republican voters has increased six years, to age 52, while the median age of Democratic voters has increased one year, to 48. As the country has become better educated, the education profiles of the two parties have flipped: In 1992, Republican voters had more education than Democratic voters not so in 2016.
Jelani Cobb states in the New Yorker that “in just four years, the GOP, a powerful, hundred-and-sixty-seven-year-old institution, became the party of Donald Trump. He began his 2016 campaign by issuing racist and misogynistic salvos, and during his Presidency he gave cover to white supremacists, reactionary militia groups, and QAnon followers. Trump’s seizure of the Party’s leadership seemed a stunning achievement at first, but with time it seems more reasonable to ponder how he could possibly have failed. There were many preëxisting conditions, and Trump took advantage of them. The combination of a base stoked by a sensationalist right-wing media and the emergence of kook-adjacent figures in the so-called Gingrich Revolution, of 1994, and the Tea Party, have redefined the Party’s temper and its ideological boundaries. It is worth remembering that the first candidate to defeat Trump in a Republican primary in 2016 was Ted Cruz, who, by 2020, had long set aside his reservations about Trump, and was implicated in spurring the mob that attacked the Capitol.”
If this is the current state of the Republican Party what does that indicate for its status and future growth? Have Republicans traded the party’s future seeking a distorted vision of yesterday’s America.” A recent Brookings study divides the electorate into two groups — those under 45 years of age and those over 45 years of age. Younger white men prefer Democrats in about the same percentages as do younger white women — 55% to 52%. In older Americans the gender gap is ten points — only 31% of white men prefer Democrats, whereas 41% of white women do. Why absence of a gender gap among younger voters? Abortion may be a partial reason. Similar to their females and males under 45 years old grew up under Roe v. Wade. Historically men’s and women’s views on abortion have not differed substantially. Further females graduate from college and now hold such traditionally “male” occupations as soldier, police officer, lawyer, and doctor, and men’s presence in some traditionally “female” occupations, such as nursing, is becoming more common.
Time may be running out for the Party, as its base ages and dwindles. “Its loyal voters are declining in number and yet have locked the party in place,” wrote Thomas Patterson, a political scientist at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, in his book “Is the Republican Party Destroying Itself?”. “It cannot reinvent itself without risking their support and, in any event, it can’t reinvent itself in a convincing enough way for a quick turnaround.”
Last November, according to the New Yorker article “Trump made gains among some minorities, over 2016, particularly Latinos, although minority groups remain overwhelmingly supportive of the Democratic Party. The gender gap between voters for Biden and those for Trump was the most pronounced in recent history: fifty-seven per cent of women voted for Biden; forty-two per cent voted for Trump. The G.O.P. has also gained increasing shares of decreasing constituencies. White conservative Christians remain prominent in the Party, but they are a dwindling segment of the electorate: in 2007, thirty-nine states had white Christian majorities; today, fewer than half do. In 1996, non-Hispanic whites made up nearly eighty-five per cent of the electorate; by 2018, they were just sixty-seven per cent. In the six Presidential elections since 2000, Democrats have lost the white vote every time, but prevailed in half of them even without it. The day before the 2020 election, Benjamin L. Ginsberg, a longtime Republican election lawyer, who represented the George W. Bush campaign in 2000 and 2004, published an op-ed in the Washington Post, warning that the Party could find itself a permanent minority.”
The New Yorker article cautions the GOP’s steady drift toward the right, from conservative to reactionary politics; its dependence on older, white voters; its reliance on right-wing media; its support for tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans; and its increasing disdain for democratic institutions and norms all portend increasing division and a diminishing pool of voters.
Will the current Republican Party survive on its current course? Historical patterns on the demise of other political parties may not bode well. If the basic beliefs and values fail to reflect those of the general population is redemption possible. As Heather Cox Richardson, a historian at Boston College and the author of “To Make Men Free,” a history of the Republican Party, indicated, “When you see the collapse of parties it is usually because you have some problem of the existing party system coming up against a major new change.” The change can be a change in values. It might also be a simple reduction in the number of voters who share the proclaimed political values. When we review the direction of the current Republican Party do we say, this is who we are or these are not our values?
(The information here is taken from various sources which I believe are both truthful and reputable.)
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