The Republicans: How bad is the political damage?

The deadlock in Washington “is killing the Republican Party,” said Joshua Green in Businessweek.com. Just 28 percent of Americans now have a favorable view of the Republicans, according to Gallup. That’s a 10-point drop from only a month ago, and the lowest rating for any party in more than three decades. Even big business is souring on the GOP, complaining that it is being held hostage by a small band of rabid Tea Party rebels, who are willing to do anything, including tank the economy, in their holy war against Obamacare. “Republicans are not the party of business anymore,” said Robert Shapiro, chairman of the economic advisory firm Sonecon. “They’re the party of anti-government.” With Republicans badly splintered, the party could be headed toward electoral irrelevance, said John Judis in NewRepublic.com. Its more pragmatic leaders don’t dare to defy the anti-Washington, anti-immigration, and anti-big-business populism of the Tea Party, which “is intense in its commitment, but ultimately limited in its appeal.” If the party’s brand becomes synonymous with the radical right, it will start losing “districts that Republicans and polling experts regard as safe,” and the GOP will be crippled “not just in the 2014 and 2016 elections, but for decades to come.”

To survive, Republicans have but one choice—throw the Tea Party out, said Daniel Altman in ForeignPolicy.com. The expulsion of extremists like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz would be “a political earthquake” that would capture Americans’ attention for weeks on end. A reinvigorated Republican Party, headed by centrists like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, “would no longer have its low-tax and small-government message polluted by anti-gay, anti-immigrant, and anti-poor rhetoric.” Right now, extremism “contaminates the whole Republican brand,” said David Frum in CNN.com. In recent years, the party has lost half a dozen winnable Senate seats thanks to the nomination of Tea Party extremists like Missouri’s Todd Akin. Next time Cruz and his allies try to blackmail the party and the country, Republican leaders should say, “‘So sad you feel that way. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.’”

This is pure “centrist fantasy,” said Nate Cohn in NewRepublic.com. The Tea Party “is not some small, fringe element of the Republican coalition.” Tea Partiers make up 49 percent of the GOP’s primary electorate and 37 percent of Republican and Republican-leaning voters. The GOP establishment may not like these passionate rabble-rousers, but the party couldn’t survive without them, and knows it. Besides, the pundits are overstating the Republicans’ troubles, said Nate Silver in Grantland.com. Remember Benghazi, the IRS scandal, President Obama’s missteps on Syria? They “were hyped as game-changing political moments by the news media,” yet they were quickly forgotten when the news cycle moved on to the next story. By the time the 2014 midterms roll around, some new issue will be getting all the attention, and the recent shutdown crisis will be all but forgotten.

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You’re underestimating the depth of the Tea Partiers’ fanaticism, said Andrew Sullivan in Dish.AndrewSullivan.com. These radicals simply refuse to believe that Obama is the nation’s legitimate president, and will very likely go on trying to nullify the results of democratic elections and congressional votes, no matter how much damage it does to our economy and America’s credit rating. Republicans have become “structurally dysfunctional,” said Ezra Klein in WashingtonPost.com. Rather than accept their defeat on defunding Obamacare, the Tea Partiers will likely demand another “insane showdown” when the next budget crisis and debt ceiling arrive in early 2014, thus reminding voters of their recklessness. That will destroy any hopes Republicans had of retaking the Senate next year, and it could cost them House seats, too.

Nonetheless, Republican leaders just can’t “declare war on their own base,” said Ross Douthat in The New York Times. Instead, Republicans need to integrate the positive aspects of the new populism—its hostility to Wall Street and Washington, its championing of the middle class—with the prudence and realism of the party’s establishment. Obama, actually, serves as a good model: In 2007 and 2008, he “managed to channel the zeal of the anti-war Left without being defined by its excesses.” Right now, however, conservative extremists still think they can force Democrats to surrender and make Obamacare disappear. It may take another crushing election loss, or two, to wake the GOP from this fever dream.