Some thoughts that have been bouncing around in my head for a while came into somewhat better focus while reading Steve Benin's take on the WaPo's "whither the GOP" poll at Political Animal.
What got me started is the following clause from the WaPo write up that Benin quotes at the outset of his post:
...a new Washington Post poll also reveals deep dissatisfaction among GOP voters with the party's leadership as well as ideological and generational differences that may prove big obstacles to the party's plans for reclaiming power.
While this is not a quote from the GOP, the party and its officeholders do seem to be focused on regaining power at the expense of any other valid exercise of office. Hence the party of no; it's all Obama's fault; we need to get back to our principles while actively obstructing the Democrats.
Is the purpose of a political party merely to wield power? Is a politician's purpose merely to wield power? Aren't there alternative objectives that better define political engagement? I'm thinking of purposes such as governing or participating in making good policy.
If the tactical logic of party-of-no is any indication today's GOP is focused solely and exclusively on returning to power. There are doubtless many reasons why the GOP has selected just this task for itself. An important one is the history of the GOP's success and what I take to be their misreading of their own history.
Consider the ratios of GOP politicians who served in Congress under Democratic majorities to GOP politicians who are on the extreme right-wing of their party in the 1964 to 1994 period and the 1994 to 2008 period.
Please note: chart is illustrative only.
As the modern conservative movement came to dominate the GOP but before the GOP became the governing party, the party sent an ideologically diverse caucus to Washington made up of many politicians who came of age in the minority working with Democrats. Since 1994 due to various forms of attrition (retirement, loss at polls, etc.) the ideological diversity of the GOP caucus has grown less diverse and more conservative. Further, the caucus is younger, meaning the great majority of contemporary GOP office holders came of age in the post-1994 era of GOP majorities. The current GOP caucus is made up of politicians whose expectations were formed during the Gingrich/Delay era of take-no-prisoners majority rule. Other than looking to history they have no frame of reference beyond the winner-take-all Delay Congresses. Regaining power is about the only meaningful goal they can imagine.
Without reviewing all the reasons for rejecting the view that infidelity to conservative principles led to the electoral failures of 2006 and 2008, let me just point out that conservatives make their return to relevance more difficult when they forget that the 1980-1994 conservative revolution took place against a backdrop of long-term Democratic majorities and a by-necessity Republican tradition of bi-partisanship. The electorate's expectations for conservatism however characterized were dramatically different than they are today. The electorate's expectations for government are still quite close to what they were in those halcyon days.
But what is really interesting in all this is what the obstruct-at-all-costs/party-of-no tactic is doing to conservatism as such or small-c conservatism. By seeking to derail every Democratic initiative the would-be conservative GOP is only heading further down the rabbit hole. Exhibit A for this tendency would have to be the spirited and staunch defense by conservative stalwarts of inefficiencies in our socialized healthcare plan for the elderly. The hypocrisy of scare-mongering in defense of wasteful Medicare spending illustrates most plainly that "back to our principles" is an empty cliche at the service of the drive to regain power at any cost.
A different conservatism than the one we have would work with the majority to include long-cherished conservative solutions to specific problems in the health care system. Instead we get attacks on otherwise small-c conservative ideas like comparative effectiveness and cutting waste in Medicare.
From where I sit, the conservative movement's road back to power, as long as it may be, may well be shorter than their road back to anything resembling actual conservatism.