Republicans pushed to political margins

Republicans pushed to political margins
By Edward Luce in Washington
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 20 2009 20:08 | Last updated: April 20 2009 20:08
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bfb7a960-2dd5-11de-9eba-00144feabdc0,s01=1.html


Barack Obama holds his first cabinet meeting at the White House on Monday. With seven women, nine ethnic minority members and only eight white men among the 21-strong group, historians have hailed it the most diverse cabinet in US history In his first 90 days as president, Barack Obama has pressed virtually every button to generate outrage among conservative Republicans – most recently in his defence on Monday of the decision to release the Bush-era “torture memos”.

Whether it was his smiling handshakes with Hugo Chávez of Venezuela at the Summit of the Americas at the weekend or his decision to push ahead with a stronger role for government in the economy, the new president has rapidly come to stand for everything conservatives detest.

Yet the Republican party, which is increasingly dominated by fiscal and social conservatives, continues to sink ever deeper in the public’s estimation. In contrast, opinion polls show that Mr Obama’s approval ratings remain where they were when he took office, at 60-67 per cent.

His popularity continues to ride high in spite of his having apparently bowed low to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia in London earlier this month or at having accepted the gift of an anti-American screed from Evo Morales of Bolivia, another critic of the US.

Fastening on these photo opportunities, some Republicans are accusing Mr Obama of appeasing the US’s enemies. Others, including Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, compare Mr Obama to Jimmy Carter, the last but one Democratic president, whose friendly dealings with unfriendly foreigners helped pave the way for the rise of Ronald Reagan.

“Carter tried weakness and the world got tougher and tougher, because the predators, the aggressors, the anti-Americans, the dictators – when they sense weakness, they all start pushing ahead,” Mr Gingrich told Fox News, the conservative cable channel, yesterday. “I think it sends a terrible signal about how the new administration regards dictators.”

The same emphatic rejection accompanies Mr Obama on the domestic front, with Republican critics accusing the president of “liberal fascism” over his $3,600bn (€2,770bn, £2,430bn) budget plan.

Indeed, the more impotent the Republicans are to affect Mr Obama’s agenda – in contrast to centrist Democrats on Capitol Hill, who have already jettisoned parts of the president’s most cherished goals – the more shrill the rhetoric becomes.

“The Republicans are still at the anger/denial stage,” says Bill Galston at the Brookings Institution, the think-tank. “There are those conservatives for whom the federal government is the devil’s own work and taxes are his instrument. And there are those who detest Mr Obama’s ‘I’m not George W. Bush’ ongoing world tour. But in terms of framing a coherent response to Obama’s presidency, we have yet to see any movement.”

One problem is the lack of clear Republican leadership. Michael Steele, the new chairman of the Republican National Committee, has turned out to be a gaffe-prone spokesman causing embarrassment even to his supporters. And the Republican leadership on Capitol Hill is exactly what it was during the final three years of Mr Bush’s presidency, when the party’s cycle of defeat began.

John Boehner, the Republican minority leader in the House, and Mitch McConnell, its Senate leader, have both chosen a stance of ideological purity rather than coming up with new policies to respond to changed conditions.

Lacking a clear national leader has also made the party vulnerable to the appeal of fringe supporters, such as Rush Limbaugh, the talk-radio host, or the groups that organised last week’s anti-tax “tea-party” protests.

David Frum, a former speechwriter for Mr Bush, says that Republicans usually rely on figures outside Washington to bring them back from periods in the wilderness, such as Mr Reagan in the late 1970s.

Mr Frum cites four likely hopefuls, all governors: Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, John Huntsman of Utah, Mitch Daniel of Indiana and Charlie Crist of Florida. Absent from his list is Sarah Palin of Alaska, a figure that moderate Republicans believe would only prolong their party’s spell in the wilderness.

But even Mr Frum concedes that the Grand Old Party remains in denial. “Normally it takes two or three defeats for a party to change direction,” he says. “However, I am hopeful that in the internet age the cycles of politics may have gotten quicker.”