Why the Republicans Will Misread Tomorrow's Elections Results

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-weiler/why-the-republicans-will-_b_777180.html

Jonathan Weiler, Professor of International Studies, UNC Chapel Hill
Posted: November 1, 2010 03:26 PM

Why the Republicans Will Misread Tomorrow's Elections Results

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But it will try something extreme, in all likelihood. After Tuesday, it will have no meaningful goal other than to continue to do what's it has tried to do since January 2009 - obstruct whatever plans Obama and the Democrats might have for dealing with America's myriad problems. In an extraordinary interview on This Week yesterday, Republican Senator John Cornyn could not answer a direct question about the party's policy agenda in the next Congress. After fumbling for a moment, the Texan said that he looked forward to hearing what the bi-partisan commission on deficits had to say when they released their report in December. That was it. Whatever else one says about Democrats, they are a governing party, with a policy agenda. The Republicans are not. Their one clear purpose is to sow fear, anger and resentment in service of achieving elected office. Whether the target is gays, Muslims, Latinos or whomever is irrelevant. Cornyn, when given the opportunity yesterday to repudiate an overtly anti-Latino ad run by David Vitter in Lousiana, demurred (Sharron Angle, of course, is running similar garbage in Nevada). They've been reduced to little more than appeasing to their authoritarian base. This will work in 2010 because mid-term elections are base elections and because the public mood is so (justifiably) sour.

This strategy will not win them long-term support, however. It's no longer a question of hunting where the ducks are, as was often said of the Silent Majority approach of Richard Nixon. The country hates the GOP now. As it becomes less white, it will hate them more. They are facing a long-term dead end, and nothing can stop that unless the party fundamentally re-orients what it is and who it appeals to. Mainstream pundits will spin a tale of an immoderate Democratic Party that lost because it went too far. But the public, as a whole, doesn't care whether Democrats have gone too far or not. All they care about is whether government is effective. Government isn't good or evil. It's a flawed but necessary instrument for dealing with problems that affect the common good and for administering justice and and security. But the modern Republican party can't think in these sorts of qualified, contingent terms. It's all or nothing for them - black and white, good and evil.People who look and act and sound different are to be treated with suspicion, if not contempt. And the government is nothing more than a racket that helps those sorts of people at the expense of "real" Americans (especially when the suspicious looking and sounding Barack Hussein Obama is in charge of that government).

A weak and compromised Democratic Party may struggle to take full advantage of these developments for a time and most Americans will suffer in the meantime, because GOP intransigence and Democratic reticence will hurt our prospects for recovery and for visionary long-term problem-solving. Much of the mainstream media will fall back on old platitudes (like the one I mentioned above, about Democrats going too far) and mis-characterize the public mood. But whatever else tomorrow means, it will not mean that the country wants its leadership to engage, above all else, in demonization of people who are different and downtrodden, and this is precisely what the GOP will continue to do. Because it cannot do otherwise.