Tuesday Open Thread [8.12.14]

Ed Kilgore suspects that if the GOP does real well in 2014 (i.e. winning the Senate), then they will become overconfident in 2016 and nominate someone who cannot possibly win:

In both 2008 and 2012 the GOP managed to nominate presidential candidates with relatively moderate images and demonstrated swing-voter appeal. In both cases, the nominations were in no small part fortuitous following a demolition derby of more ideologically rigid rivals. The odds of the “most electable” candidates winning a third straight GOP nomination have been diminished by the relatively low popularity of Chris Christie (damaged significantly by “Bridgegate” and already controversial for supporting a Medicaid expansion in his state), Jeb Bush (headed for a direct collision with conservative activists for his championship of Common Core education standards) and Marco Rubio (more distant from conservative sentiment than ever as the prime Senate sponsor of “amnesty” legislation).

Personally, I think no matter how well the GOP does this year, the dye is already cast for 2016. The radical tea bagger base of the Republican Party already thinks that they lost in 2008 and 2012 because the Establishment forced them to nominate two liberals. And of course they lost because their candidate was not conservative enough. So it will be a tough sell for the Establishment in 2016, made worse by the fact that their Establishment candidates (Christie, Bush, Rubio) all suck.

I think the only thing that can possibly awake the GOP from its fever dream of the last six years is a wipe out loss a la 1964, the last time they really said “fuck it all” and nominated a true believer in Goldwater. That loss made them choose the more Establishment Nixon in 1968 when they could have gone Reagan, and made them stick with Ford in 76.

Linker agrees, arguing that “the best chance for genuine Republican reform will be for the party to nominate a fire-brand who gets roundly and unambiguously repudiated by voters”:

That defeat, coming after two previous ones, just might provoke genuine soul-searching, and a dawning awareness that the GOP has gone down a dead end and can only find its way out by a dramatic change of direction. Think of liberals nominating New Democrat Bill Clinton after losing with Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, and Michael “Card-Carrying Member of the ACLU” Dukakis. Or Tony “Third Way” Blair leading the U.K.’s Labour Party to victory after 15 years in the wilderness under the Conservative Party of Margaret Thatcher and John Major. Sometimes a political party needs to get knocked upside the head before it can come back to its collective senses.

Some say this is now the “Libertarian Moment” for the GOP, when it finally embraces a new ideology to propel them into the future. The New York Times:

“Libertarians, who long have relished their role as acerbic sideline critics of American political theater, now find themselves and their movement thrust into the middle of it. For decades their ideas have had serious backing financially (most prominently by the Koch brothers, one of whom, David H., ran as vice president on the 1980 Libertarian Party ticket), intellectually (by way of policy shops like the Cato Institute and C.E.I.) and in the media (through platforms like Reason and, as of last year, ‘The Independents’). But today, for perhaps the first time, the libertarian movement appears to have genuine political momentum on its side.”

Indeed. And I would welcome the embrace of Libertarianism by the GOP, for it truly offers a stark choice between the parties. But it has to be a full embrace. Economic libertarianism and Civil Libertarianism and Social Libertarianism. If there is to be no government invasion of a corporation’s right to do business (i.e. regulation and taxes), then there is to be no government invasion of our civil liberties (i.e. repeal of Patriot Act) and no government invasion of the bedroom (end of support for all social conservative policies ever championed by the GOP… meaning that the new GOP is pro-choice, anti-death penalty, pro-marriage equality, etc).

If you want to know if the “Libertarian Moment” is genuine and sincere for the GOP, all three pillars of Libertarianism would be embraced by its chief GOP proponent, Rand Paul.

But this is what he had to say:

“The party can’t become the opposite of what it is. If you tell people from Alabama, Mississippi or Georgia, ‘You know what, guys, we’ve been wrong, and we’re gonna be the pro-gay-marriage party,’ they’re either gonna stay home or — I mean, many of these people joined the Republican Party because of these social issues. So I don’t think we can completely flip.”

In other words… the Libertarian Moment for the GOP is bull shit. And Rand Paul knows it. He wants to be the GOP nominee, so he is sacrificing his principles and embracing social conservatism.