The GOP Needs Ideas, Not Grievance Politics

The party has a golden opportunity over the next several years to realign and attract new voters. Will it squander it?

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Voters respond to ideas, and right now, the GOP cupboard is bare.

Over the last several years, it’s become easy to find journalists pontificating about the “identity crisis” within the Republican Party. That assessment is off base; there is no “crisis.” The GOP is not in a period of uncertainty and confusion. For the time being, it has become a party of identity—not one that can’t choose an identity. 

It’s even more shortsighted to say, “The GOP is dead.” Both major political parties in the United States have shown resilience and ability to adapt to changing demographics, political landscapes, and cultural shifts. Granted, the parties as a whole are much weaker than they’ve ever been, creating a permission structure for people to operate within the party while elevating themselves above it. 

That weakness in the GOP provided a narrow path for Donald Trump, and the party, at least for the time being, has handcuffed itself to the personality of the recent one-term president. 

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  1. Avatar photo
    Jason Gibson

    Totally agree. How depressing

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    Michael Darwin

    For all his negatives, Trump is usually very good - The Best! - when it comes to branding. So are Radical Democrats and Communist Democrats referring to the same branch of the party or different ones? Trump normally doesn't like to confuse his base with multiple adjectives for the same noun.

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  3. Todd

    The only time this will happen is when they—and I mean all politicians—answer honestly the question of “what do you believe?”.

    For quite a long time now, the answer to that question is “whatever the other side likes is bad”…..and frankly, that is A) bulls**t and B) non-informative.

    When they get back to “I believe smaller government is better. I believe government cannot solve all problems and instead, we can. I recognize that this position will mean that that we as a culture will have to do MORE not less or the same to make sure our fellow American thrives…..”

    Then, when these same people vote along these lines reliably….and not vote with an reality show host to enlarge the government and run up the debt.

    Treat the other party like the opposition and not the enemy. Publicly call out anyone who does so. Act like you have a self-imposed term limit and stop worrying about what 1% of your electorate posts on Twitter. Publicly challenge/invite anyone who calls the opposition the enemy to lunch on your dime.

    Be privately honest to those with whom you are going to bash. Do not pull any punches though.

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  4. Avatar photo
    Narwhal

    “Voters respond to ideas”

    Someone else has probably questioned this already, but I’m not sure if I buy that claim without any supporting evidence. Some voters, sure. Many voters, maybe. All voters, hmmm…

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  5. Andrew M

    "Too many Republicans have fallen into a “very online” mindset in which they believe the latest hot topic on social media is what’s driving conversations in neighborhoods across the country."

    Interestingly enough, the Washington Post had a similar article about the Democrats today.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/05/media-is-figuring-out-that-biden-was-right-left-wing-twitter-is-not-real-life/

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  6. Dennis Trask

    15% yep the wingnuts run the show. They animate the fight donate the money and elevate the candidates. We desperately need leaders not shills for the wingnuts.

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  7. CatoTheElder

    “The [GOP] has a golden opportunity over the next several years to realign and attract new voters.”

    Another take: The GOP is entirely in disarray, without direction or even just a party-unifying ideology. The party’s only hope for survival is to, over the next few years, pick up the pieces and reassemble them so as to support a concomitant rededication to a common set of ideals, with a focus on selling those ideals to new voters.

    Mr. Caruso can be rightly applauded for looking for the silver lining, which surely must be large and valuable given the huge cloud overhanging the GOP at present. But I’m not sure just where he comes down on the idea of need for real “realignment” of the party toward one with a coherent set of ideas that can be made attractive to new voters. In his own newspaper (Mr. Caruso is the Managing Editor of the Washington Examiner) less than a month ago, in a column co-written with Executive Editor Seth Mandel, Mr. Caruso argued that “the conservative policy program is not in need of drastic reform,” and that the key for Republican triumphs in 2022 and especially 2024 was that Trump cannot run. The rest of the column was in support of the notion that the ideas the party was playing with—immigration restriction, social conservatism, and being tough on crime were their triumvirate of themes that reportedly appealed to enough voters usually seen as outside the GOP circle on the Venn diagram to see the party to victory. If that is the case, then Caruso isn’t fully committed to meaningful change of the party. And that’s a problem.

    If the GOP doesn’t clearly cut the mooring lines tying it to the SS Trump and travel a markedly different course, it runs a great risk not just of losing, but of losing very badly indeed. It will be very hard to recruit new voters into a GOP coalition if it’s the same song list as the Trump era, and especially so if the walking ego with a nice fake tan is the emcee.

    Caruso rightly derides the grievance politics orientation of Trump and his base, and his column here begins with the statement that the GOP cupboard of ideas is bare. So it looks a bit more now as if he’s coming closer to full-on commitment to the push for a manifest change in the nature and structure of the GOP, toward good ideas, aimed at the right voters, and presented by candidates that aren’t built to be just slightly different versions of the giant griping grifter with a 1000-hp ego.

    But Caruso still doesn’t grapple with the very first question Republicans need to ask themselves once they realize they need some new ideas: Great. Anybody got any? What should they be? What ideas can we adopt and make our own? The only real example Caruso gives of something that might fit the required mold is Romney’s Family Security Act, which I endorse not as the first and final piece of the puzzle, but as an excellent introduction to what a newly built and dedicated GOP could look like. But it cannot and should not stand alone.

    There are other good, solid, conservative-friendly ideas out there. Let’s see if the GOP can find ‘em and wrangle ‘em home.

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    1. Avatar photo
      Pat Riot

      Necessity is the mother of invention, and as long as the GOP is in the position they are in now--0.5% from majorities all over the country--then they won't change a thing.

      Lots of commenters here are echoing Mr. Caruso's predictions of GOP losses in coming elections, and that might happen, but it's going to need to *happen* before anybody talks about making any changes...

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      Aylene Wright

      I agree with most of this, but to be fair to Jay (and Seth), I think we must consider the target audience of that article, written for a different publication with a much Trumpier subscriber base.

      (Just one example: Seth is not a strong immigration restrictionist himself, and once awarded Trump 5 billion Pinocchios for his "The Country Is FULL" claim. But he realizes most people reading that article are immigration restrictionists.)

      Merely trying to have them move on from Trump, is still the first step in the process. It's certainly not enough. Nor do I think this process is going to be anything quick.

      Note there are basically three approaches the GOP can take here, overall.

      1. What they're doing now; just ride the Trump tiger for as long as they can, and worry about the next step later.

      2. What the Desantis supporters want; don't explicitly repudiate Trump, but convince him to pass the torch on to a successor who somehow manages to keep the Trump base support and attract moderates who are fed up with Trump. Basically a slightly kinder, slightly gentler, slightly smarter version of Trump.

      Now there are people who actually would be fine with Trumpism without Trump long-term. Others see Desantis as more of a transitional figure, almost playing the role Biden at one point seemed ready to play for the Dems.

      The problem is that not even Biden, now that he's in power, actually wants to be a merely transitional figure. I seriously doubt the much younger Desantis would. So if he manages to grab the 2024 nomination, he could either decide to focus on the serious governance angle with only a side of lib-owning, or just be a Trump Lite. Either way, he'd want to leave his mark.

      3. Likely the best one long-term, yet the most difficult, and I fear, least likely. Actually get away from personality driven politics and move towards idea based politics. And one problem may be, that despite our polarized state, we actually don't have an existential crisis that needs solving in the near future. I think on the medium term future we'll be really having to wrestle with China, finally tackle debt and entitlements, etc. But the voters don't really care about looking that far ahead. It really does come down to the voters, in the end.

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      1. CatoTheElder

        Great comment, and I at least largely agree, possibly completely.

        I will confess to significant unease with the notion of a Ron DeSantis candidacy (though to speak too much of such now is monstrously premature). I am not convinced he really wants to be, or sees himself as, anything other than Trump 2.0–slightly different recipe, but same old flavor. If that is the case, I think we could be in for another very rocky ride with a president constantly jousting with the opposition and anyone seemingly disloyal or at all out of line, etc. I now must qualify all this by admitting that I see him only from afar, as it were, so my nearly knee-jerk assessment should be seen as such.

        I think you are absolutely right about the fact that it’s the voters, those fiendishly fickle voters that tell pollsters one thing on Wednesday, another on Friday, and vote a third way by mail or at an early voting location whenever they want. I think voters can be sold on genuinely good ideas, but that the selling technique that’s gonna work can’t be easily or well predicted. In fact, it’s precisely because “what works” isn’t easily predicted that I prefer politicians that just lay it out there, saying this is me, these are the ideas and principles I hold with, and I think it would be good for the Great State of Despair and the nation as a whole for politicians like me to be elected your representative/senator/president. I think I’ve run into two politicians like that. Maybe only one. Now, if I can recall who it was….

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  8. anonvet

    I suspect it's not going to go the Mitt Romney direction. Sohrab Ahmari convinced Rod Dreher who has now convinced Tucker Carlson, who is now broadcasting from Hungary. This is all getting much...weirder.

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  9. Alex DeLarge

    The Dispatch's message is always the same: The Republican brand should that it is the Party that: (a) doesn't "fight" outside of the halls of Congress; and (b) accepts left wing values but wants to implement them more slowly than Democrats would.

    Romney's plan to slightly rearrange the way welfare is delivered may have some merit. But if that's the defining message, it's merely a brand of being Democrat-lite.

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      Dave

      The GOP became Democrat-lite when they went along with Trump’s trillion dollar deficits and trade war tax increases, while jettisoning Paul Ryan’s attempts to reform entitlements.

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      1. David R

        Just another European-style socialism-light but angry and nationalist "right wing" party now. The Democrats wanted American politics to be more like Europe and they got it good and hard.

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  10. Avatar photo
    Rajeev

    The "Democratic Party" right now is representing the will of the overwhelming majority of the people. They have their outliers but the loudest members of the far left keep losing in elections because they don't align with the views of the heart of the Democratic Party. The right wing media and politicians try to amplify these nutty voices in the Democratic Party to some success (as they should do) but those Democrats that are more extreme on policy do not have the influence that many think they do. They may make an influential move here and there (the dumb eviction moratorium extension for one) but usually end up having a healthy backlash and shifting the debate back toward the center (like defund the police which ended up with Democrats pumping more money into policing a year later).

    Most of the economic ideas that Republicans are trying to implement are just piggy-backing off Democratic ideas (bad ideas in my personal opinion). So there is no contrast just a late arrival to the party. Republicans always were irresponsible on deficits and debt, but now they want to spend in manners that Democrats have long advocated for. Republicans now want to take the worst instincts of Elizabeth Warren to reflexively break up companies they don't like while ignoring monopolies that benefit them. In the process they are willing to follow some of the worst Democratic voices and ruin free speech because they don't like that companies are woke so now that the speech isn't to their liking they don't support free speech.

    Which brings it back to the main problem of the Republican Party over the last 12-25 years. They never stood for much to begin with. They loved cutting taxes when it effected their voters but will raise any tax that they see hitting Democratic voters. They loved corporate money and speech but now that the companies are willing to talk about issues that don't favor them they want to use government power to stop these companies. They loved massive deficit spending anytime they hold office but want to pretend as though debt and inflation are only problems if a Democrat is in office. They love natural disaster relief, protectionism and subsidies that benefit Red states but won't do so if they benefit blue states.

    In order to stand for something now, you have to have shown the ability to stand for something before. This iteration of the Republican Party will never stand for anything on principle (with few exceptions) because they have been nihilistic for decades.

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