Where does a political party go to die?
Where does an American political party go to die? It’s worth asking in light of decades of precipitous decline for the Republican party. Donald Trump’s election in 2016, underlined by everything that followed, forces even the most strident in the GOP to ponder where and how this self-destructive decline will end. We’re witnessing the final days in a slow, ugly death of one of America’s two dominant political parties.
The Republican party began in 1854 as a pro-abolitionist, anti-slavery party. It freed the slaves and almost single handedly passed the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution. It led our nation through the Civil War, fought the Klan and ushered in Reconstruction. It used federal troops in 1957 to integrate Little Rock High.
As Democrats began to support civil rights, alienating many whites in the South, the GOP’s infamous “Southern Strategy” was born. Republicans aggressively recruited disgruntled Southern whites after the passage of the Civil Rights Act. As Democrats were trying to move away from their racist past, Republicans, perhaps unintentionally, ended up taking their place.
It’s now a dominant part of the GOP’s genetic makeup. Stuart Stevens, a former Republican author of “It was All a Lie,” points out, “Of Americans 15 years and under, the majority is non-white,” he said, “and odds are really good that they’re going to turn 18 and still be non-white. What does that mean for the Republican party? It’s a death sentence as currently constructed.”
Today’s GOP base is increasingly rural, dominated by evangelicals who are anti-gay and anti-science, and by angry, pro-Confederacy whites who are strangely preoccupied by the Second Amendment and Mexicans. Party leaders have stood silently as Trump placed Hispanic babies in cages, told congresswomen of color to “go back” where they came from, and tear gassed protestors supporting racial equality and justice.
Even the most number-dumb amongst us can figure out that a strategy to squeeze more out of groups that are shrinking at the expense of groups that are growing is doomed to failure. With Republican registration now below unaffiliated, this is a tipping point that portends difficult days ahead for the way our democracy was intended to function.
While the Founders created a system they believed would protect the minority from being overwhelmed, they did not intend minority rule, which we’ve had for the past two decades.
If Joe Biden wins the national vote, Democrats will have won the most votes in 7 of the last 8 presidential elections. Republicans have received a majority just once since 1992, yet they’ve held the White House for almost half of those 28 years.
Half the U.S. Senate is elected by 18% of the population, most from scantly populated rural states, so it’s easy to see how the Electoral College and the U.S. Senate both artificially magnify and amplify the voices of the Republican coalition. A president who significantly lost the popular vote has just nominated a third person to join the Supreme Court. If confirmed, it will be by a narrow majority of Republican Senators who received 14 million fewer votes than the 47 Senators in the minority. George W. Bush also added two Justices to the court after he too failed to receive a majority of America’s votes. Get the picture?
America needs a strong two-party system, where people have the chance to weigh competing ideas. The death of the Republican party will leave one dominant national party, with fewer alternative points of view, and one regional player, representing states with large white populations and made up of a coalition of groups resembling the bar scene in Star Wars. The party of Lincoln, which once stood for the unity of the union, freedom for the enslaved and opportunity for the oppressed now resembles a sick dog, struggling to survive.