The GOP: Searching for a viable new identity

“Sometimes a tactical retreat is the smart play,” said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. After a closed-door strategy session in rural Virginia last weekend, Republican House members sensibly dropped their threat to force the federal government to default on its debt unless President Obama agreed to cuts in U.S. entitlement programs. Instead, Republicans decided to suspend enforcement of the debt limit for three months, giving them time to negotiate with Obama over spending cuts and entitlement reform. Retracting the debt-limit threat was the right move, said Jake Sherman in Politico.com, but it forces the party to face an “existential question: What does it mean to be a Republican during a second Obama term?” If all-out political warfare is now off the table, how do Republicans advance their agenda “in a town where they have just a sliver of control?”

They can’t, said Charles Krauthammer in The Washington Post. Let’s face it: “The country chose Obama,” and with Democrats also controlling the Senate, “you cannot govern from the House.” The Republicans’ recent attempts to bend Obama to their will through “cliff-hanging brinkmanship” have not only failed to work, but so alienated the public that the latest polls show the GOP ranking somewhere “below head lice and colonoscopies in popularity.” For the next few years, Republicans should “go small,” put up what reasonable opposition they can to the worst excesses of Obama’s agenda, and let him make a huge, reckless mess. “Don’t immolate yourself trying to save liberalism from itself.” When Democrats inevitably overreach, Republicans can make a comeback in the 2014 midterms and the 2016 presidential election. Paradoxically, said Philip Klein in WashingtonExaminer.com, letting Obama have his way will expose him for what he is. The president’s refusal to make any tough choices and cut spending will be that much more apparent when he can no longer “point and say, ‘Hey, look over there, House Republicans want to blow stuff up.’”

Just one problem, said Jonathan Chait in NYMag.com: Many House Republicans “actually are whackos.” The far-right fanatics who dominate the GOP caucus represent deeply conservative, gerrymandered districts, and they aren’t interested in sensible compromises on spending and taxes. In 2011, let’s remember, this crowd spit on Obama’s Grand Bargain offer to cut the deficit over 10 years by $4 trillion. If their behavior in the last Congress is any guide, said Chris Cillizza in WashingtonPost.com, there is still “a significant group within the House GOP who prize moral victories over actual victories.” For them, paralysis and continuing crises may be preferable to letting Obama have his way, even if it hurts the GOP brand.

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Let’s not waste more time on losing battles, said William Kristol in WeeklyStandard.com. Freed from the messy responsibility of having to govern, Republicans now have the liberating opportunity to rebuild their reputations as the thrifty, responsible stewards of the public purse, while using every opportunity to tell voters that unless we dramatically cut spending, our nation is headed for a calamitous fiscal reckoning. To regain power in Washington, said Jonah Goldberg in NationalReview.com, Republicans need to broaden their appeal to independents—and that starts with rejecting the base’s obsession with ideological purity. The party hasn’t been marginalized because it’s insufficiently conservative. The real problem is that the GOP “isn’t tactically smart or persuasive enough to move the rest of the nation in a more conservative direction.” Until we figure out how to do that, Democrats will be calling the shots.