GINGRICH MELTDOWN EXPOSES REPUBLICAN OVERREACH
Rachel Maddow recently made some telling points about the Gingrich meltdown and about-face. Quite correctly, she analyzed the situation in terms of the two stages a candidate must traverse in order to get elected. He (could be she) must first persuade the party to back him by advocating positions calculated to appeal to the Party base, and then, having garnered the nomination, must persuade the national electorate to elect him by advocating more centrist positions with broader appeal. In Gingrich’s case, he immediately resorted to a moderate, centrist position on Medicare and Social Security eschewing extreme “social engineering” from both right and left. In so doing he contradicted the extreme right position advocated by Paul Ryan and subscribed to by Republicans in the house, thereby igniting a firestorm of opposition within the Republican ranks.
What Gingrich overlooked was the requirement to first deliver the narrower position to secure the nomination from the Republican base before espousing the centrist position appealing to the national electorate. Or, perhaps he thought there were enough Republican moderates to override the extreme-right within the party. There weren’t, as he quickly learned (hence his prompt about-face). The Party is firmly in the grip of extreme-right ideologues, who will accept nothing less than total obeisance to their catechism as a litmus test for the nomination.
The predicament for Republicans, Maddow correctly points out, is that the extreme-right position (dismantle Medicare and cut back Social Security benefits) needed to secure the nomination, won’t get them elected in the national elections. Republicans forgot that, paradoxically, even as the Tea Partiers railed against “socialist medicine” they shouted “Don’t mess with my Medicare.” And messing with Social Security remains the “third rail of politics.”
What this says to me is that the Republicans misread the meaning of their triumph in the 2010 mid-terms. They thought it was a mandate in favor of their extreme-right policies, when in fact it was simply an expression of discontent with the way things had progressed under the Democrats for two years in the aftermath of the Bush II catastrophe. In other words, it wasn’t so much pro-Republican as anti-status quo, ironically caused by Republicans yet thoughtlessly attributed to hapless Democrat incumbents. Consequently, Republicans, first in Wisconsin, and now Washington, have overreached, ramming through votes for draconian right-wing policies far beyond what the general electorate will tolerate. Having swallowed the Paul Ryan Kool Aid, now the Republicans will be struggling to find an antidote before November 2012.
The Republican predicament has elated Democrats, inasmuch as l’affaire Gingrich has demonstrated that centrist positions needed to win the national election won’t garner the Republican nomination. Conversely, the overreaching extreme-right policies any Republican candidate must embrace to get the nomination in the Republican primaries will ensure his defeat in the national elections. From Rachel’s mouth to God’s ear.