Oct 19th 2015

Seriously. Is the GOP Establishment Failing?

by Charles J. Reid, Jr.

Charles J. Reid, Jr. was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he majored in Latin, Classics, and History, and also did substantial coursework in classical Greek and modern European languages. It was during his undergraduate days that he developed an interest in canon law, doing a year of directed research in Roman and canon law under the supervision of James Brundage. Reid then attended the Catholic University of America, where he earned J.D. and J.C.L. (license in canon law) degrees. During his time at Catholic University, he organized a series of symposia on the bishops' pastoral letter on nuclear arms. The proceedings of these symposia were published under Reid's editorship as "Peace in a Nuclear Age: The Bishops' Pastoral Letter in Perspective" (Catholic University of America Press, 1986). This book was called by the New York Times "among the most scholarly and unsettling of responses" to the pastoral letter (December 28, 1986).Reid then attended Cornell University, where he earned a Ph.D. in the history of medieval law under the supervision of Brian Tierney. His thesis at Cornell was on the Christian, medieval origins of the western concept of individual rights. Over the last ten years, he has published a number of articles on the history of western rights thought, and is currently completing work on a book manuscript addressing this question.In 1991, Reid was appointed research associate in law and history at the Emory University School of Law, where he has worked closely with Harold Berman on the history of western law. He collaborated with Professor Berman on articles on the Lutheran legal science of the sixteenth century, the English legal science of the seventeenth century, and the flawed premises of Max Weber's legal historiography.While at Emory, Reid has also pursued a research agenda involving scholarship on the history of western notions of individual rights; the history of liberty of conscience in America; and the natural-law foundations of the jurisprudence of Judge John Noonan. He has also published articles on various aspects of the history of the English common law. He has had the chance to apply legal history in a forensic setting, serving as an expert witness in litigation involving the religious significance of Christian burial. Additionally, Reid has taught a seminar on the contribution of medieval canon law to the shaping of western constitutionalism.  Recently, Reid has become a featured blogger at the Huffington Post on current issues where religion, law and politics intersect.

This is an important question. Indeed, the dominant news story of the 2015/2016 election cylcle might well prove to be the steady implosion of the Republican Party establishment.

At the risk of painting with a very broad brush, we should begin by defining the difference between establishment and insurgent Republicans. Establishment Republicans tend to be affluent. Their principal policy objectives tend to be economic -- lower tax rates and a deregulated business environment. By and large, they are indifferent to the issues that excite social conservatives, from gay marriage, to gun rights, to the teaching of evolution in the public schools.

Insurgent Republicans, on the other hand, tend to come from more difficult economic circumstances. By and large, they are not well off or even financially stable. They tend to be motivated by the same social issues that matter little to the establishment. Repealing or limiting Dodd-Frank does not stir their passions. Mention the Federal Reserve and interest rate policy and that may stimulate more talk of conspiracy than investment strategy. International trade agreements are apt to arouse fear, not enthusiasm. To the establishment, Medicare is an "entitlement" that should be limited, reduced, or privatized. To the base, Medicare is an important part of the social contract.

In other words, there is a real divergence between establishment and insurgent wings of the party -- they come from different social backgrounds and have widely divergent needs, interests, and policy concerns. It is hard to see the stars from reality television shows like Duck Dynasty or Nineteen Kids and Counting (or, better, their fans), socializing with Hank Paulson, the Koch Brothers, or the principal shareholders of Halliburton. But these two very different groups have shared the same political party for a long time.

Indeed, from 1988 to 2012, the Republican primary contests had a predictable structure. There would be an establishment favorite and one or more insurgent outsiders. In 1988, the establishment's choice was the sitting Vice President George H.W. Bush and the insurgent was Pat Robertson. In 1992, Pat Buchanan played the part of the insurgent. In 1996, Bob Dole was the insiders' choice while Alan Keyes was the darling of the social conservatives. In 2000, Alan Keyes reprised his role, but shared the stage with Gary Bauer. And so forth and so on. Thus in 2012, Rick Santorum played the insurgent to the establishment's favorite son, Mitt Romney.

The pattern seemed almost genetically wired into the Republican nominating process. With the exception of the pugnacious Pat Buchanan, whose speech at the 1992 Republican Convention popularized the expression "culture war," the insurgent candidate played an important but subsidiary and carefully-choreographed role: Arouse so-called "base voters," turn them out for the primary, keep them engaged and enthused, and at the end of the day graciously endorse the establishment's choice.

A chief reason for these foreordained outcomes was money. Establishment candidates, by definition, attract large sums of insider money. Insurgent candidacies have never, and almost by definition, can never be well-funded. And steady streams of unanswered negative advertising, such as the barrage Mitt Romney directed at Rick Santorum in the 2012 South Carolina primary, will take its toll.

But it is this pattern that seems to be shredding before our eyes. Journalists have had difficulty grasping what is occurring. Thus we have been witness to a plethora of columns and news reports predicting the eminent collapse of Donald Trump or Ben Carson or explaining how the establishment will soon rally the Party to its candidate of choice.

So far, none of these predictions show even the prospect of coming true. And until they do, we might want to entertain an alternative hypothesis: perhaps we are catching a glimpse of what certainly appears to be the dissolution of what had been the most stable if improbable of coalitions.

Just consider what is happening. Let's begin by dividing the candidates roughly into two large camps: "insurgent" candidates and "establishment" candidates. For the sake of analysis, let's group the religious right candidates with the insurgents. Rand Paul is in many respects his own special case, but his support is barely more than negligible, so let's leave his numbers out.

And to put names with categories, we should place Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, and Rick Santorum among the insurgents. Included among the establishment candidates are Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, Chris Christie, Lindsey Graham, and George Pataki. The categories are not air-tight. Fiorina could well be acceptable to some portions of the establishment and Rubio might be acceptable to some elements of the insurgent right wing. Ted Cruz has raised the kind of money usually associated with an establishment candidate and he is a sitting Senator, but his campaign is based on opposition to the establishment. Still, the dividing lines seem to work well enough.

And if we sort the candidates into these two large categories, we see a pattern that has held steady for a couple of months now. The insurgent side of the equation receives somewhere around 55 percent and 65 percent of the vote, according to Huff Post Pollster. The most recent round of polls only confirms this trend. I am using poll results posted for October 16, 2015. According to the latest Ipsos Reuters poll, Trump, Carson, Cruz, Fiorina, Huckabee, and Santorum combine for 63 percent. In the latest NBC poll, this sextet receives 66 percent. The establishment candidates, on the other hand, are supported by 24 percent in Ipsos Reuters, while in the NBC poll that support drops to 19 percent. Thus if we look at this contest as insurgency vs. establishment, the insurgent candidates, as a group, are consistently receiving double the support of the establishment, if not more.

This analysis leads to two further questions: Why is this primary contest seemingly so different from those that have gone before? And what will the establishment do about it?

To ask why this primary is different, we must consider what amounts to a sociological question: Why have Republican base voters become so intensely alienated from the establishment?

It is a question that deserves a book. It is impossible to answer this question in a single column, let alone a paragraph or two. Still, we might impressionistically list a few factors. Conservative media has long profited from cultivating a sense of almost apocalyptic alienation among the most fervent true believers. Whole segments of the conservative movement, furthermore, such as the religious right, appear to be steadily withdrawing from association with the larger culture, a withdrawal that is highlighted by campaigns to obtain religiously-based exemptions from neutrally-applicable law. The Republican establishment -- think Lee Atwater and a host of others like him -- grew expert at emitting coded signals on questions like race. And the entire mix has become super-charged by the various opportunities presented by social media.

And what will the establishment do about it? Certainly, the establishment has money on its side. And in election cycles past that money was put to good use in opposition research and in carpet-bombing underfunded opponents with negative advertisements. Surely, those tactics will be tried again. But what if the old standbys no longer work? Will there be a convention fight? Then what? Stay tuned.

 


This article is brought to you by the author who owns the copyright to the text.

Should you want to support the author’s creative work you can use the PayPal “Donate” button below.

Your donation is a transaction between you and the author. The proceeds go directly to the author’s PayPal account in full less PayPal’s commission.

Facts & Arts neither receives information about you, nor of your donation, nor does Facts & Arts receive a commission.

Facts & Arts does not pay the author, nor takes paid by the author, for the posting of the author's material on Facts & Arts. Facts & Arts finances its operations by selling advertising space.

 

 

Browse articles by author

More Essays

Nov 28th 2024
EXTRACT: "Researchers analysed data from two major prostate cancer prevention trials, linking them with Medicare health records to track outcomes for over 29,000 participants. Among these, nearly 4,000 men were diagnosed with prostate cancer. Of this group, 655 underwent surgery to remove the prostate (prostatectomy), 1,056 received radiotherapy, and 2,235 did not receive treatment."
Nov 17th 2024
EXTRACT: "The weight-loss jab Wegovy made its debut on June 4 2021. It was the first new weight-loss drug to be approved by the US Food and Drug Administration since 2014. There has been a lot of excitement since the launch. Not only is the drug extremely effective (people lose about 15% of their body weight in a year), it also appears to have many benefits beyond just weight loss. It’s worth noting that the drug (generic name: semaglutide) was first used to treat diabetes, and indeed is still a blockbuster diabetes drug. So that’s two benefits already. Let’s look at some of the other potential benefits. Here are eight (and the list isn’t exhaustive)."
Oct 11th 2024
EXTRACTS: "Between 1939 and 1945, around 10% of concentration camp guards were women, yet these Aufseherinnen (overseers) as they were known, barely feature in Holocaust history or literature." ------ "One little Aufseherin, twenty years old, who had so little knowledge that she said 'excuse me' when walking in front of a prisoner, and who was visibly frightened by the first round of brutality she saw, needed exactly four days to adjust her tone and procedures, although it was totally new to her." ----- " 'The most frightening news brought about by the Holocaust and by what we learned of its perpetrators was not the likelihood that ‘this’ could be done to us, but the idea that we could do it.' ---- The true horror of genocide is found in the similarity between us and the perpetrators, not in the difference."
Oct 9th 2024
EXTRACT: "In 1928, Walt Disney's fledgling animation studio lost most of its staff to a rival company, his two latest cartoons had not found a buyer, and he had had to sell his car to meet payroll.  Disney's innovative response changed his industry, and American popular culture."
Sep 26th 2024
EXTRACT: "When it comes to economic policy, Carter is sometimes blamed for excessive regulation, government spending, and runaway inflation. His successor, Ronald Reagan, is often credited with ending the era of “big government.” But the conventional narrative fails to acknowledge that it was Carter who launched the deregulatory push that bore fruit during the Reagan years."
Sep 26th 2024
EXTRACT: "Buffett's status as the Oracle of Omaha stemmed from his ability to develop the wisdom and judgment that transformed him from a good conceptual investor into an exceptional experimental one."
Sep 26th 2024
EXTRACT: "Last year, a social-media trend featured women asking men how often they thought about the Roman Empire. The answer, it seemed, was “very”: many men claimed that the ancient empire crossed their minds weekly or even daily. That did not surprise Mike Duncan, the host of the popular 'History of Rome' podcast, and probably not Tom Holland, who has written multiple bestselling books on the topic. Mary Beard certainly understands the popular fascination, too. Her study of ancient Rome – together with her unpretentious style and brash charisma – has made her what one observer called 'a national treasure, and easily the world’s most famous classicist.' ” ----- "Beard challenges this mythology of whiteness, arguing in her 2016 book SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome that the story of the Roman Empire, which was necessarily ethnically diverse, is 'the history of people of color'. In fact, the book concludes with Emperor Caracalla’s grant of citizenship to all the empire’s subjects. The old Roman aristocracy lost its privileges, because it had not shared them."
Sep 22nd 2024
EXTRACTS: "Since the golden age of Athenian democracy, freedom of speech has been viewed as a defining feature of open societies, even as it remains under constant attack. The Athenians believed that the proper functioning of government depended on free and honest exchange of ideas, no matter how controversial or unpopular. In ancient Rome, by contrast, only senators enjoyed anything resembling free speech – and even then, as the statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero learned the hard way, speaking out could have deadly consequences." ----- "In our hyper-connected world, where mobile phones outnumber people and most of the global population has internet access, the decline of traditional news outlets has deepened our dependence on social media. As opaque algorithms shape the news we consume and our perception of reality, the corporations and oligarchs controlling these platforms pose a growing threat to free speech. Although they claim to be its ultimate defenders, their business model, by amplifying disinformation and identity-based grievances for profit, renounces the responsibility that sustains it."
Jul 27th 2024
EXTRACT: "Some conservative intellectuals think the west has already adopted Christianity-lite. Many point to the book Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind (2019), by historian Tom Holland. Holland argues that despite declining religious belief, Christian ideas remain central to western civilisation. He views liberalism – our dominant political philosophy – as secularised Christianity. For him, core western ideas, like universal human rights, equality and dignity, stem from Christianity."
Jul 26th 2024
EXTRACTS: "We often hear about the importance of the human microbiome – the vast collection of bacteria and fungi that live on and inside us – when it comes to our health. But there’s another, equally important part of this microbial community that remains far less known: the virome." ----- "Viruses are the most abundant biological entities on Earth, with an estimated 10³¹ viral particles globally and about 10¹³ in each human being." ----- "Understanding the virome could revolutionise medicine and public health."
Jul 16th 2024
EXTRACTS: "Trump joins tens of thousands of Americans treated for non-fatal gunshot wounds each year. Such experiences can shatter people’s assumptions that they are living in a safe, understandable and controllable world, leaving them feeling unworthy, unsafe and unsure. As a result, survivors of non-fatal gun violence face increased risks of depression, anxiety, substance use and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD can feel overwhelming." ---- ".... some trauma survivors experience post-traumatic growth. They may develop greater empathy, stronger relationships, deeper spirituality and find new meaning in life. After being shot in 1981, the then president Ronald Reagan’s trauma seemed to deepen his sense of empathy and humility. He felt God had spared him for a reason, spurring him to reduce nuclear tensions with the Soviet Union."
Jul 15th 2024
EXTRACTS: "Artificial sweeteners such as sucralose are not metabolised by the human body so they are excreted – this is what makes them low-calorie sugar alternatives. And that’s where the environmental problem begins. Current wastewater treatment plants are unable to remove these sugar mimics, meaning they end up in our environment – in our water, rivers and soil." --- "Forever chemicals are increasingly present in our streams, rivers and oceans – most notably per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) that don’t degrade. PFAS are synthetic chemicals found in many consumer products, including skincare products, cosmetics and waterproof clothing. PFAS can remain in the human body for many years, and some present significant risks to our health – potentially causing liver damage, thyroid disease, obesity, infertility and cancer."
Jul 3rd 2024
EXTRACTS: "Psychologist, James Hillman had concerns about what I like to call the 'loneliness-as-pathology' "---- "....Hillman went on to argue...: 'If loneliness is an archetypal sense built into us all from the very beginning, then, to be alive is also to be lonely. Loneliness, therefore, will come and go as it chooses in the course of a lifetime, quite apart from our efforts to deny or avoid this reality.' "
Jul 3rd 2024
EXTRACT: "How can we be at least 15 times richer than our pre-industrial Agrarian Age predecessors, and yet so unhappy? One explanation is that we are not wired for it: nothing in our heritage or evolutionary past prepared us to deal with a society of more than 150 people. To operate our increasingly complex technologies and advance our prosperity, we somehow must coordinate among more than eight billion people."
Jun 25th 2024
EXTRACTS: "What’s interesting about the entire Russia-North Korea showy display of camaraderie is China’s response: silence. China has misgivings about how things are unfolding, which reports suggest prompted Chinese president Xi Jinping’s call to Putin to call off the latter’s visit to Pyongyang. Obviously, Putin didn’t heed Xi’s request." ----- "The Sino-Korean animosity dates back centuries and took shape when Korea was a vassal state of imperial China. Unfortunately, this animosity extended to modern times when Mao Zedong decided to station Chinese troops in North Korea even after the conclusion of the Korean war, and when Beijing did not aid Pyongyang in its nuclear ambitions. It didn’t help either that the founding leader of North Korea, Kim Il-sung, was suspected of espionage and was nearly executed by the Chinese Communist party in the 1930s."
Jun 19th 2024
EXTRACT: "Ultra-processed foods (such as packaged snacks, sugary drinks, instant noodles and ready-to-eat meals) often contain emulsifiers, microparticles (such as titanium dioxide), thickeners, stabilisers, flavours and colourants. While research on humans is limited, studies on mice have shown that these ingredients alter the gut microbiome (the community of microorganisms living in the intestines) in several ways. These many microbiome changes can in turn affect the way the immune system functions."
Jun 9th 2024
EXTRACT: "Alzheimer’s disease can be split in two subgroups, familial and sporadic. Only 5% of patients with Alzheimer’s are familial, inherited, and 95% of Alzheimer’s patients are sporadic, due to environmental, lifestyle and genetic risk factors. Consequently, the most effective tactic for tackling Alzheimer’s is preventative and living a healthy lifestyle. This has led researchers to study risk factors associated with Alzheimer’s."
Mar 8th 2024
EXTRACT: "This study suggests that around 10% of people diagnosed with dementia may instead have underlying silent liver disease with HE causing or contributing to the symptoms – an important diagnosis to make as HE is treatable."
Jan 28th 2024
EXTRACT: "Health disparity is a powerful weapon in the savage class warfare otherwise known as neoliberalism. (In 2020, the RAND Corporation did a study of the transfer of wealth over the last several decades from the working-class and the middle-class to the top one percent. Their estimate is a staggering $47 trillion – that is how much the “upward redistribution of income” cost American workers between 1975 and 2018.) Neoliberalism is a brutal form of labor suppression, which uses health as a means of maintaining and reproducing a condition in which wealth is constantly being redistributed upwards, and the middle-class is kept in a constant state of fear of sinking into the ranks of the poor. Medical expenses are the leading cause of bankruptcies in America – and that’s according to the American Bankruptcy Institute. The ballooning costs of healthcare serve to maintain a system marked by morally unacceptable health inequity and injustice."
Jan 28th 2024
EXTRACT. "But living longer has also come at a price. We’re now seeing higher rates of chronic and degenerative diseases – with heart disease consistently topping the list. So while we’re fascinated by what may help us live longer, maybe we should be more interested in being healthier for longer. Improving our “healthy life expectancy” remains a global challenge. Interestingly, certain locations around the world have been discovered where there are a high proportion of centenarians who display remarkable physical and mental health. The AKEA study of Sardinia, Italy, as example, identified a “blue zone” (named because it was marked with blue pen),....."