How Do You Solve a Problem Like the GOP?

The Faces of the Tea Party: Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Gov.
Sarah Palin of Alaska

As a Democrat, I'm not in the practice of giving out advice to the GOP.  After all, the Civil War within the GOP in the past few years has been most beneficial to my party.  It's hard to imagine that Joe Donnelly, Claire McCaskill, Chris Coons, Michael Bennet, and even Harry Reid would be in the Senate right now were it not for the Tea Party (for those doing the math, yes, that would mean Mitch McConnell would be in the majority right now, at least until Wednesday night).  The GOP's implosion has been good for business, as it were.

But as has been illustrated in the past few weeks, it does the country no good to have one of its political parties be in dire need of help.  Because, that, quite frankly, is the situation that the Republican Party has put itself in since the Tea Party formation in 2010.  Trying to figure out how the problem started is easy, trying to figure out how to fix it is damn near impossible.

The easy answer to how the Tea Party emerged happened in 2008 when Sen. John McCain was losing the presidential election.  Sen. McCain has always been a man who liked a political risk, and no matter what people say about it afterwards, the choice of Sarah Palin as his 2008 running mate was a bold, smart political hail mary.  Palin added an energy to the ticket that no other contender for the nomination could have brought to his campaign.  Had she been able to better handle the issues and political interviews, there's an outside chance that she would have been our nation's first female Vice President.

What McCain's choice also did, though, was leave Palin as the most prominent Republican leader in the country after the 2008 elections.  Both John Boehner and Mitch McConnell were minority leaders, McCain was yesterday's news as a failed Republican candidate, and George W. Bush just wanted to head back to Texas and stay out of the limelight.  That left only Palin to assume the mantlepiece as the Republican leader of the country, and her brand of no-nonsense, anti-media and anti-government leadership style allowed the development of the Tea Party movement.

The Tea Party movement may have provided a strong sense of momentum in 2010 (few would argue with that, even though it also cost them some pivotal seats), but it has since become a virus in the GOP. The Tea Party has become less about winning elections and more about blackmailing incumbent Republicans into being less moderate and willing to compromise.  Thanks to gerrymandering in states like Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, and Michigan, the GOP has become far safer for incumbents, and many Republican members of Congress have to worry more about their primary right flank than their general election left flank.  This has left a huge gap in the GOP's ability to compromise (see this excellent piece about Rep. Renee Ellmers to see how this has made the GOP the target of much ire from the more moderate public).

There are a few solutions for the GOP, none of which are easy and none of which would be considered very enjoyable.  The first, and most obvious, is to marginalize the Tea Party.  The Republicans eventually need to say that while they appreciate the support, pragmatism is crucial in a divided government.  This course of action requires quite a bit of unity and political backbone, however, neither of which the GOP is in strong supply of these days.  Governors like Chris Christie and Susana Martinez have made good on this promise by occasionally towing the middle-of-the-road on social issues or working well with their state legislatures, but they are decidedly the exception, not the rule.  They are also not Washington politicians, where the stakes are higher and the organization within the Tea Party is fiercer.  The GOP needs someone like John Boehner or Mitch McConnell to stand up and say "Unless we control all three branches of government, we cannot get rid of something like Obamacare," but both are too afraid of losing their job.  The Ellmers piece above illustrates why; someone who is to the right of Michele Bachmann should never have her conservative credentials questioned, and yet she is even being flanked from her right.  The GOP's best bet is that someone like Chris Christie wins the presidential primary (which would require a small miracle in the current GOP environment) and shows them why moderates used to vote for the Republicans.

The other option is one that's going to sound a bit self-serving coming from a Democrat, but if you're open-minded, you'll see that I'm right: the Tea Party (not just the Republicans, but the Tea Party specifically) has to lose big in 2016.  Sen. Ted Cruz is currently the go-to guy in the Tea Party, and his conservative credentials couldn't be remotely questioned.  One of the illusions of the Tea Party and the hard conservative right is that people like John McCain and Mitt Romney lost because they abandoned conservative ideology (ignoring the mountains of evidence to the contrary).  Were someone who is as beloved and unimpeachable as Cruz to be the nominee, they would have to admit that it isn't that the candidates aren't conservative enough that they are losing-it's that the country doesn't respect that ideology.  The 2014 election could also serve as a wake-up call, though 2016 would be more crucial because there would be a specific face to the loss; if Nancy Pelosi took over the House, the Republicans would see what a truly "liberal" government would pass (immigration reform, the elimination of the sequester, multiple progressive judicial nominees, and the farm bill, for four examples) and probably be willing to learn their lesson.

Either way, this debt ceiling showdown has illustrated how terrifying it is to have one of our main political parties hijacked by extremists.  Whether its through a party-changing leader or a series of intense, unlikely losses, the Republican Party is in desperate need of a wakeup call.