Toward A One Party System

Many moons ago, back when this side of the divide was a lonely place, I would go to conservative websites and make the point that most Republicans did not like the people they claim to represent. About a third of the party's elected officials would prefer to be in the other party, but circumstances forced them into the GOP. They said what needed to be said, but they resented having to say it in order to get elected.

We see this with the ongoing Speaker debacle. About a third of the Republican caucus revolted at the notion of a conservative Speaker, so they blew up the process in a secret vote last week. Jordan is certainly not "our guy" but he is what the Republicans sell themselves as in every election. He is pro-business, patriotic and uncomfortable with the social experiments conducted by the ruling class.

According to the people who organized the opposition to him, Jim Jordan is a click away from wearing khaki and demanding the deportation of the Jews. This mild, center-right guy is an extremist, as far as they are concerned. In fairness, this probably has nothing to do with Jordan and everything to do with McCarthy. The vote against Jordan is spite for having removed that block of wood Kevin McCarthy.

One of the truths of Washington politics is that things are at the nastiest when the stakes are the smallest. That is because they all agree on the big items, so they save their venom for the small items. This fight over the Speaker job is the smallest of small potatoes so it is the nastiest of political dramas. The people who sunk Jordan's campaign for the job did it because they hate Matt Gaetz.

Even so, this is the result of the ongoing unraveling of our political culture that has been going on publicly since George Bush. The regime finds ways to paper over the cracks and defend itself against challenges, but in so doing it becomes weaker because it is becoming decreasingly coherent. Every patch up job gnaws away at the fundamental logic of the system, which is how we have a crisis in the opposition party.

Unspoken, but hanging over the Republican Party like a fog, are the questions that must animate all human organizations. Who are we? What is our purpose? What is the goal of our collective activity? Right now, if you polled the Republican caucus in the House, you probably get no answer from most of them. The answers you did get would be contradictory and incoherent.

They cannot pick a leader, because they have no idea where this person should lead them or why they are even in the same party. Again, at least a third of the members would bolt to the other party if they were not cursed by gerrymandering to identify with the Republican Party back home. Note also that these are the members who live full-time in Washington and part-time in their district.

The thing is, this does not mean that the other two-thirds of the party are conservatives or however you want to define right-wing. At least a third, maybe half, of the party is simply there because it is a great job. They like playing the role because they love being in Washington. They get to live a fun and exciting lifestyle that offers few risks as long as they never cause any trouble.

These are the members who truly resent the handful of troublemakers who want the party to behave as advertised. They resent the hell out of people like Matt Gaetz for rocking the boat. His antics make their life difficult. They have to explain to their friends in Washington why their party is a mess. They have to deal with thorny issues that put their easy life at risk. The GrillerCon is well-represented in the party.

This model actually worked for a long time. That small group of conservatives in the party was good at selling the message to the voters, but the mushy middle was the ballast that kept those guys from ever getting their way. The RINO concept was manna from heaven for the party, as it created a good cop - bad cop dynamic within the party that the party could use to manipulate the voters.

What we may be seeing is that old model collapsing. On the one hand, the voters are getting wise to this game. The Trump phenomenon pulled the curtain aside and too many people saw this reality and can never unsee it. On the other hand, the issues that animate the public are no longer easily concealed within this model. The old do-si-do on immigration, for example, does not work during an invasion.

Probably the biggest problem for this old model is the fact that the people the party needs for support are increasingly aware of demographic reality and they are increasingly partisan. Just think about how much more racially aware normie is today versus ten years ago. The Matt Walsh Effect is a real thing. He and other chattering skulls are not driving it but reacting to a general racial awakening.

Partisanship is where things get curious. The suburban peasant is following the Douglas Mackey case and the J6 cases. He is watching what they are doing to Donald Trump in the courts. The result is they are noticing that unbridgeable gap between how they want to live and how the people on the other side want to rule. To normie, the people on the other side are not wrong. They are un-American.

This presents a massive problem for the two-party system. In a world where most Americans assumed everyone wanted the same things, as far as the general goals, things like a good economy, plentiful healthcare and safe streets, the collusion of the two parties could be cast as practical and prudent politics. It was the art of the possible, not one side versus the other in a pissing match.

In a world where most Americans think the other side is nuts and dangerous, the word bipartisan means treason. As the population the GOP needs to fool with their good government schtick dwindles and is replaced by people who think their neighbor with the BLM sign should be deported, the Republican model is failing. The bulk of the voters agree with Gaetz, but the bulk of the party agrees with Biden.

One final thought. If you look back at the collapse of the Republican Party in California, it followed a similar arc. It turns out that a party built to serve the needs of sensible middle-class white people has no future in a world where sensible middle-class white people are a dwindling minority. Like California, Washington is on the road to becoming a one-party operation, taking the country with it.