What we call the
Republican establishment is really a network of organizations that
represent donor interests because they’re supported by donor money.
These organizations impose ideological purity with a combination of
carrots and sticks: assured support for politicians and pundits who toe
the line, sanctions against anyone who veers from orthodoxy —
excommunication if you’re an independent thinking pundit, a primary
challenge from the Club for Growth if you’re an imperfectly reliable
politician.
To a very casual
observer, it may look as if this movement infrastructure engages in
actual policy analysis and discussion, but that’s only a show put on for
the media. Can you even imagine being unsure how a Heritage Foundation
study on any significant issue will come out? The truth is that the
right’s policy ideas haven’t changed in decades. Paul Ryan’s innovative
idea on Medicare — let’s replace it with vouchers! — is the same
proposal Newt Gingrich offered in 1995.
So why are we seeing a
crackup of this system now? It’s not because events have called the
orthodoxy into question; that has never mattered in the past. On the
contrary, failed predictions have never caused even the slightest change
in claims: the same people who predicted that Bill Clinton’s 1993 tax hike
would kill jobs and that Obamacare would be an economic disaster are
making confident predictions about the salutary effects of tax cuts now.
The problem, instead,
seems to be demography — an increasingly diverse population means that
the party needs to go beyond white resentment, but the resentful whites
are having none of it. Oh, and the base never cared about the ideology.
