GOP: Finding Unity in Opposition

To my Republican Friends:  Don't Worry, the GOP will unite.    To my Democratic Friends:  Don't Celebrate, the GOP will unite.

Paul Ryan just announced that he will not be a candidate for president.  We misunderstood, he said.   That lovely ad was not a bookmark holding his place in a contested Republican convention.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECxH4uIswiA

It was branding the House of Representatives, not Ryan for president, he says.

Republican members of the House of Representatives need separation from presidential politics, and the ad attempts to transform gridlock and disputation into something good and democratic: the arena for the competition for ideas.   

Sellouts.   That is what the two Republican presidential frontrunners, Trump and Cruz, call the House Republicans under Paul Ryan.  Both Trump and Cruz make attack Paul Ryan.   I watched crowds come to their feet in cheers as Cruz and Trump blasted Ryan for following Boehner's footsteps in passing a budget which kept the government open.   Voters who attend Trump and Cruz rallies identify Ryan (and Boehner and McConnell) as villains, not partners.

Gridlock.  Meanwhile, the mainstream establishment press and conventional thinking is that the House  Republicans are so fractured and disputatious that they are the primary cause of disfunction in government, as they fight within themselves and intentionally sabotage efforts to pass bi-partisan legislation since members are so afraid of being "primaried" by a Tea Party candidate. The "Freedom Caucus" block of some 50 Tea Party Republicans were elected to stop the other 190 or so Republican House members from selling out with bi-partisan compromise--which is why Boehner had to leave and Ryan came in to become speaker.  When it works, nothing gets done.   When it doesn't work, Republican crowds are in uproar.   There is no common denominator within the Republican House; Paul Ryan was just the guy they could agree on as speaker, but not the guy they could agree with in politics and tactics.

So, Paul Ryan is attempting a re-brand of the House: we are the place where ideas come forward to compete, he said.   We are different from the presidential race, which is mired in identity politics, he said, describing a Republican House caucus that is 90% white males, and only 12 of 246 members are minorities.   But Ryan is not describing a condition.  He is asserting a brand for Republican House members to campaign under.   The Democratic House caucus reflects diversity, and from Ryan's point of view, primarily diversity, when in fact the most important thing to Ryan is good conservative policy.  

The House Republican caucus is a caucus primarily of white males, and being white male is a default identity, the identity that is "normal", the identity that is not "an identity."  So while Hillary fights for women, blacks, Hispanics, and gays, and Trump fights for white males angry about being displaced Ryan and his House members will fight for identity-neutral ideas, he says.  If we could only agree on something.

Meanwhile, Trump.

In the presidential level Trump does what has worked best for him--double down on a position.  Trump doesn't accept disappointment; he says the process must have been bad.  Cruz stole Iowa, he claimed.   NowTrump says his delegates are being "stolen" in Colorado, that the rules are "rigged".  He is de-legitimizing a process that may well lead to a contested convention and then the nomination going to Lie'n Cruz.   

There is an unsettled policy difference between the establishment GOP (Romney, Ryan, McConnell) and the Cruz GOP (more conservative and anti- immigrant) or the Trump GOP (anti-immigrant, protectionist, nativist, less internationalist) but by delegitimizing the process for settling who has the majority the convention may not settle the dispute.  If Trump loses his supporters need not accept the verdict.  

This suggests a divorce: irreconcilable differences.

Don't celebrate, Democrats.

There remains one point of unity for Republicans.  Hating Hillary Clinton. Republicans do not agree on policy but they do agree they don't like Hillary.  Republicans do not view her as moderate, nor as similar to themselves in her hawkishness on foreign policy, nor as slow to embrace homosexuality, nor as tough on crime, nor as business friendly with Wall Street.  Democrats, and particularly Bernie Sanders supporters, perceive her that way--as an Eisenhower Republican--but Republican voters have been accustomed to hating Hillary for a generation. 

There is no Republican consensus on a replacement for Obamacare, only a consensus that it is terrible and should be replaced with something better. 

There is no Republican consensus on immigration and the variety of ethnicities in America, only that Obama/Clinton must be wrong.

There is no Republican consensus on helping young people afford college, or help the middle class deal with globalization, or how best to change the tax code, or how to sustain Social Security and Medicare, only that these are disasters that Obama/Clinton made worse.

Finding the Republican Sweet Spot

There is no Republican consensus on how front-and-center should be the effort to ban or punish abortion, on how aggressively to condemn homosexuality, on how much political capital should be used to re-establish Christianity in the public square, only that Obama/Clinton have been attacking traditional and sacred values.

The Republicans have Hillary Clinton, the hateful feminist bitch lesbian socialist enabler of Bill Clinton, the pervert.   That is enough to unify them.