Repubs Warn Repubs They’re Losing the Center; Will Dems Fight Hard Enough to Win It?

“It should be an area of deep concern to Republicans of all stripes. Once you lose the vital center, then you begin to lose the claim that you are the majority party,” said former Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, a moderate Republican who retired in 2006.

He said that in more than four decades in political life, he’s never seen “a higher degree of partisanship or a higher level of intolerance for another point of view.”

Over at Swing State Project, James has a great compilation of recent comments by prominent Republicans, many retired, expressing great pessimism about their party.  The recurring theme is that the Republicans are out of touch, and don’t realize that they’re out of touch.

Readers of Daily Kos generally don’t need to be told that the current GOP, especially as represented by the administration of George W. Bush, is not conservative, but is radical.  While it wouldn’t express it in the same terms, since 2005 the American public has largely come to the same conclusion.  The electorate hasn’t really shifted much ideologically.  The change is that Americans now see through the Republican sham of hiding their true intentions behind clever catch phrases like “compassionate conservatism,” and appear ready to–possibly reluctantly–give the Democrats a chance to run the White House while maintaining control of Congress.  

We have a tremendous opportunity next November and beyond, because it’s not inconceivable that the in 2008 the magnitude of the potential Democratic win and its lasting effect lasting effect on American politics could be similar to that of the 1932 election.  The 1932 election built on the big Democratic successes of 1930 by bringing in Franklin Delano Roosevelt, providing the governing majorities and mandate and willingness for change, and implemented the foundations of the New Deal like Social Security, labor law and government regulation over the economy that are the basis of our national wealth and power and facilitated the creation of a massive middle class.  We’re approaching an election where it’s not just Democrats or the left side of our national political spectrum that hungers for bold, assertive politics and a dramatic change of course.  The views of many of the people associated with the Netroots really are the majority because they’re not just the left, but they’re the left and the center.  We are the mainstream.  

As I read the Boehlert quote, I thought of something from the preface of E.J. Dionne’s excellent book Stand Up Fight Back: Republican Toughs, Democratic Wimps and the Politics of Revenge.  

In this current moment, the Democratic Party carries the banner not only of the left but also of the center.  The need to represent both the center and the left is an problem for the Democrats, as will be made clear here.  But it is also an obligation and an opportunity.  Democrats will succeed if they manage this task.  They will fail if they don’t.

To some that may sound like flaccid Broderism.  But Dionne aims much of his criticism at exactly those Democrats and protectors of the “established wisdom” who spend much of their time tut-tut-ing Democrats for being too left, too liberal, too this or that.  He thinks the Democrats’ biggest banes have been internal squabbling, which makes Democrats look unprincipled and craven in timidly looking for the right “positioning,” which then leads to indecisive timidity.  What Democrats should do, Dionne argues, is stake out their positions and defend them proudly, and make it clear that our political positions derive from our political principles.  

It can’t be emphasized enough that we need to be bold in espousing our principles, and bold in advancing policies that are linked to our principles, principles such as making it clear that government should be for everyone, not just a privileged few making billions of dollars.  Government should be on the side of those protecting the environment for the future, not raping it for instant profits.  Government should be on the side of consumers who want safe food and baby toys, not corporations or free trade ideologues who want us to cede our ability to act in the public good.  We should emphasize our respect for tradition, but also our embrace of tolerance and diversity.  And we should honor our vision of a people not acting as selfish individuals, but pursuing individual goals in a broader society bound with a sense of solidarity, a sense of shared benefits and shared sacrifice, the sense that “we’re all in this together” that Michael Tomasky evoked last year when he succinctly declared “The Democrats need to become the party of the common good.”

The principles and beliefs of “the left,” or the Netroots, or the Democratic party have long—and effectively—been derided by the GOP as “elitist,” as fringe, as hostile to Middle America or “mainstream values.”  But it’s becoming clear to Americans who aren’t strong partisans that it’s the GOP that’s out of the mainstream.  It’s the GOP that’s out of touch with “mainstream values,” and that it’s actually the Democrats who best represent the beliefs, aspirations and values of most Americans.  

Democrats seem to have finally started–fitfully, and with frequent and infuriating reverses and failures of will—to embrace the approach that confidently defending our principles will bond the center to us.  And observant Republicans are finally figuring this out, which is why they’re so despondent.  

There’s the adage success breeds success.  The Democratic success started in 2005 with the resolute and confident defense of Social Security, one of Democrats’ greatest accomplishments and something central to our belief in the positive role of government.  The Social Security battle was the abrupt and crushing end to Bush’s brief claim to a post-election mandate, and along with the disasters in New Orleans and Iraq, the most visible demonstrations of the Republicans’ destructive theory and practice of governance.  The success continued on to the 2006 election.  And mixed amid those infuriating failures of will on Iraq, the 110th Congress has so far seen some major successes, such as passing legislation to greatly expand health care to children and veterans, raising the minimum wage, implementing major Congressional ethics reform, increasing support for stem cell research, slashing interest payments on student loans and banning discrimination against gays and lesbians in the workplace.  Of course several of these successes have been blocked by Bush and his Republican enablers in Congress, but Democrats have at least started, even though inconsistently and fitfully, to challenge Bush and the Republicans.

Democrats need to continue to stand up, to fight back, to not shirk from being associated with our principles, but to boldly and confidently embrace them.  They still have a long, long, long way to go before they will inspire the kind of respect and passion we hope one day see. But some Republicans are starting to see the what the Democrats are doing, and they know that if Democrats don’t turn back against themselves, and if they don’t again become timid and too averse to boldness, we could recapture the devotion of the American electorate the way we did for much of the middle part of the 20th century.