In grad school I took a course on public opinion. Through this course I came to appreciate the impossible complexity of explaining people’s political views. Around this time I also began to think seriously about the causality behind political actions.
The ongoing crisis in the GOP reminds me of this course.
Liz Cheney has been ousted from her leadership role for no discernible reason other than refusing to move on from the January 6th riot. And she was removed with a voice vote, suggesting that Republican representatives didn’t want to put their names down on the issue. With that over, the rest of the GOP’s congressional leadership seems determined to continue supporting Trump, despite questionable electoral incentives to do so. The party platform seems to orbit around national identity grievances; both state and federal leaders have promised to roll back cancel culture and resist the encroachment of liberal media and big-tech. While these might be perfectly valid goals for a party to have, it is curious how much these identity-issues have overtaken all else.
Senator Tim Scott, in his response to the president’s first speech to Congress, accused Biden of unnecessarily dividing the country. Meanwhile, more and more conservatives (both current and former legislators and GOP administration officials) trade barbs with the Trump wing and threaten to leave the big tent altogether. Such threats may lack actionable conviction, but it is still startling that they are even made.
Make no mistake, polarization and obstruction and small-minded politics have been around for a long time. Of course Republicans will trash Democrats and Democrats will trash Republicans. This is politics, and both sides will say and do whatever they can to undermine the other side and win over voters.
So this article is not another ‘*gasp* can you believe the hypocrisy of Mitch McConnell!!?’ piece. Such reactions are often unrealistic and naïve.
But no honest appraisal of the record can lead to any other conclusion than this: the turmoil of the current Republican party and its flagrant disregard of an obvious threat to the national interest has no precedent since the Civil War. And I think that every conscientious American has to go on the record that what is happening is not ok. Surely not all Democrats are angels; but in the wake of January 6th, it seems grossly inappropriate to accuse Democrats of ‘divisiveness.’
Why is the Republican party fracturing itself over a man no longer in office?
This question brings me back to public opinion. Because I know that there must be some pressure at work here, something compelling GOP legislators to ditch Cheney and protect Trump (or at least not punish him). I just can’t decide what it is.
One answer pulled from the pages of public opinion literature is elite manipulation. Maybe Republican leaders are manipulating the broader public - fueling their fears and framing policy issues in a certain way - only in order to serve their political interests. It is possible that most conservative voters don’t actually care about Trump anymore one way or another. Perhaps voters just want to move on with life and are eagerly looking ahead to the next election. In this scenario, it might make sense for a Kevin McCarthy or Elise Stefanik to galvanize media attention and enflame Democrats, thereby distracting the public from policy areas where Biden could claim credit. Put differently, maybe Republican elites are presenting Republican voters with a certain picture of the party and its problems because they want to divert attention away from the party’s actual legislative or electoral performance. This Machiavellian interpretation of events suggests that destabilizing partisan forces within the GOP flow from the top down.
A different answer is that public sentiments from below are the cause. Perhaps Republican legislators who continue to endorse Trump are only following the will of their constituents. If a politician like Cheney has genuinely lost the faith of most Republican voters, then it makes sense for her party to want to remove her. Romney-style conservatives might complain about the state of things and threaten to caucus as independents, but so long as the majority of conservative voters feel differently, can we honestly expect GOP leadership to follow Romney’s lead? How are Republicans to win elections if they reject their own base? And politicians, if nothing else, generally go where the votes are had. With a democratic imperative behind the new voting bills and the refusal to investigate January 6th, suddenly the whole picture seems inherently rational. In this case one might disagree with GOP politicians, but it is hard to outright dismiss them.
Then again, how do we even accurately measure such democratic imperatives? And how do we know that voters hold their views earnestly and consistently, that they’re not just giving an inconsequential answer to a poll? Or maybe, just maybe, elite manipulation is so effective that it interferes with accurate expressions of the public will?
Let’s step back from the rabbit hole and acknowledge our original problem: public opinion is complicated. There are no simple, empirical answers regarding the crisis of the Republican party.
But approaching an answer is important, nonetheless, because this is not some theoretical debate of interest only to scholars. This is a conversation of extreme political consequence.
Depending on which interpretation is embraced by the American body politic, the implications for our democracy are drastically different.
This is a conversation of extreme political consequence.
If one decides that the current GOP is rotten because of elite manipulation and scheming politicking, then the logical next step is to reform things at an institutional level, or at least to clamor and fight for different elected representatives.
If one decides that the GOP establishment is only fulfilling the sincere wishes of a large number of Americans then. . . well it is not entirely clear what would come next in this instance, because it is impossible to reconcile Trump’s language and actions over the past eight months with the long-term health of the country. Trump clearly exists on a different epistemological plane, but what does a country do when many millions of its citizens do? If millions accept the decisions of our courts and watchdogs and millions don’t, how do we proceed? Peaceful compromise must assume shared institutional ground, otherwise it cannot succeed.
Again, we don’t really know what America thinks in aggregate. However, if Trump is the sole hope and cause of a dogged minority, then it seems we are destined for several years when one half of the country perpetually feels wronged, abandoned, and full of vindictive fury.
To be sure, this is a dangerous cocktail for any nation. I fear the full expression of this danger has yet to manifest itself.
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