On 7th November 2006, the Republican Party lost control of the House of Representatives and the Senate. Two years later, the party's presidential nominee John McCain was blown out the water by the young Illinois Senator Barack Obama by a margin of 365 electoral votes to 173. For the first time since 1994, the Republicans control none of American's three levers of governmental power.
The party, for all intents and purposes, lies in a state ruin; rudderless, leaderless.
Like the post-97 British Conservative Party, the numerous disparate voices clamouring for the affections of the party faithful - and the all-important independent voters - stike an imperfect cadence. The modernisers, the traditionalists, the small-staters, the big-staters, the religious conservatives, the urban liberals; the list is almost endless.
In this piece, I intend to explore some of the figures and influences who may help turn the fortunes of the Republican Party around after two of the most devastating election cycles in the party's history.
For leadership or renewal, we need not look too closely at the party's congressional leadership. The management styles of the two parliamentary leaders of the Republican Party, John Boehner in the House of Representatives and Mitch McConnell in the Senate, seem to be more based on partisanship for the sake of partisanship as opposed to formulating policy for the sake of rebuilding their shattered delegations in the House and Senate. As a good American friend said to me just a few days ago, the Republican 'leadership' in the House and Senate are "paralyzed", simply waiting for the Obama administration’s policies to somehow become unpopular, "and that won't translate to victory".
Speaking a couple of weeks ago, the veteran political commentator Stu Rothenberg stated that the "Democrats simply have smarter, tougher, more cold-blooded voices in government at the moment". The strategy Democratic political operatives are implementing in order to maintain the post-Bush unpopularity of the Republican brand suggest that he might well be right.
How the Democrats are characterizing the Republican leadership
Realising the Oogie Boogieman-like figure of George W. Bush is no longer around to act as a political punchbag, Democratic strategists have subtly worked, through TV and radio interviews, to promote the idea of Rush Limbaugh as the de facto leader of the Republican party. Whitehouse Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel, for example, has repeatedly refered to Limbaugh as the "ideological force" behind the Republican Party, going as far as to praise him for his "principled" objection Obama's policies. Any Republican who has so much as dared to criticise him (see Michael Steele later in this post) has been forced to make a humiliating and grovelling apology to the toxic talk radio host.
The Democratic strategy is clever. Amongst voters, the Limbaugh brand is toxic; a January Gallup poll showed 45% of independents have a negative impression of him while a recent Rasmussen poll showed that only 16% of Americans would be more likely to support a candidate he publicly endorsed.
It's not difficult to see why Limbaugh is so despised.
Shortly after the passing of President Obama's multi-billion dollar economic stimulus package, Limbaugh hit the airwaves and declared that he "hoped he would fail" in his attempts to revive the US's flagging economy. On foreign policy, he has accused Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of "waving a white flag" to terrorists. To James Earl Ray, the killer of Martin Luther King, Limbaugh has proposed granting a "posthumous Medal of Honor".
For their own good, the Republican Party must act to shed the intrinsic association of the party with Limbaugh's intemperate rantings. Doing that, however, will require the party to both understand what its principles are and to find a compelling messenger for them.
The impact of Michael Steele
In early January, the black former Lieutenant Governor of Maryland Michael Steele was elected as Chairman of the Republican National Committee, the body responsible for the party's political and fundraising strategy. Steele was, his supporters argued, a great communicator with an ambitious plan to rebuild the party's image with independent, younger and ethnic minority voters.
The initial hope which greeted Steele's election has all but disappeared following a set of widely publicised negative remarks he made about conservative pundit Rush Limbaugh. Further comments Steele made about abortion being a "personal choice" have further infuriated the party's religious right, many of whom are baying for his blood.
Steele's fate is likely to rest on the outcome of a "special election" (by-election) taking place in upstate New York next Tuesday to fill the House seat of Kirsten Gillibrand who was appointed to the Senate to replace Hillary Clinton earlier this year. Given the historically Republican nature of the seat and the strength of their nominee State Assemblyman Jim Tedisco, who has represented parts of the district in the state capitol since 1982, anything other than a win would be fatal for Steele.
"Special election" aside, supporters of the ultra-religious South Carolina Republican Party Chairman Katon Dawson (who finished second to Steele in the original ballot of state party chairmen) are said to be preparing a vote of confidence in Steele's leadership. From a public relations point of view, the ousting of the Republican Party's most senior ever black leader after less than three months in the job can only but help enforce the stereotypes about the party which the Democrats have so successfully played upon amongst black Americans for the past four decades.
The re-emergence of Newt Gingrich
Late in 2007, having largely remained in the shadows since his abrupt resignation as Speaker of the House of Representatives in late 1998 following poor election results, the polarising figure of Newt Gingrich re-emerged onto the political scene with a raft of criticisms of the Bush administration. The party, he argued, has lost its way.
Gingrich, for all his faults, is the closest living thing fiscally conservative Republicans have to a Margaret Thatcher style figure. Nearly fifteen years since the Republicans wrestled control of the House of Representatives after four decades of Democratic control, his 'Contract with America' policy platform and its talk of balanced budgets, tax cuts and government reform continues to excite the Republican grassroots.
Rumours abound that Gingrich is preparing a 2010 Presidential bid. While such a bid is unlikely to advance beyond the primary season starting gate, he is undoubtedly returning ideological vigour - and with it ideas - to the Republican Party. In the past weeks alone, Gingrich has staked out compelling positions on the reform of healthcare, winning 'blue collar' votes and the importance of fiscal responsibility.
Bobby Jindal and Mark Sanford
Personally, Gingrich's time may have come and gone, but he has left two compelling ideological heirs in Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford; two men who share the same political outlook, yet could hardly have come from more different origins. Sanford, a wealthy landowner, can be characterised as coming from the Republican "country club" set while Jindal is the son of Indian immigrants who arrived in the United States in the early 1970s.
While Washington DC is still widely seen as a cesspit of political corruption, nobody could doubt the sincerity of the two men when it comes to cleaning up the corrupt political systems of their two states. Jindal has used his power as Governor to veto the attempts to Louisiana state legislators to massively increase their pay while, in a protest against the reckless "pork barrel" spending of taxpayer's money by state legislators, Sanford walked onto the floor of the South Carolina House of Representatives carrying two live piglets.
Both men were initially reticent to accept any funding provided through Barack Obama's fiscal stimulus package, yet both are now keen to put the money to good use by paying down the debt burdens placed upon their states by previous Democratic and Republican administrations. The consistent closeness of the two men's positions appears to indicate some form of partnership - one that will be fascinating to watch in the coming years.
The symbolism of Michael Steele's election aside, the most compelling advocate for modernisation - or dare I say, "decontamination" - of the Republican brand has come from the most unlikely of states.
Jon Huntsman
Early this year, Jon Huntsman, a former US Ambassador to Singapore, Mormon and Governor of the state of Utah; hardly a renowned bastion of limp-wristed social liberalism, had the following to say about the challenges facing the party:
“I would liken it a bit to the transformation of the Tory Party in the UK. The defeat in ’97, John Major to Tony Blair, after years of strong, conservative rule with Margaret Thatcher setting the mark. They went two or three election cycles without recognizing the issues that the younger citizens in the UK really felt strongly about. They were a very narrow party of angry people. And they started branching out through, maybe, taking a second look at the issues of the day, much like we’re going to have to do for the Republican Party, to reconnect with the youth, to reconnect with people of color, to reconnect with different geographies that we have lost".
Agree or disagree with David Cameron's reforms of the Conservative Party, the focus the party has placed on areas such as the environment, an issue previously judged not to be "Conservative territory" has done much to attract younger voters to the party - something the Republicans desperately need to do.
Huntsman has also gone as far as to endorse same-sex civil unions; something still unthinkable to many in the Republican party.
His position has not won him wide praise in his home state and is unlikely to endear him to party activists. Thinking back, however, to the acrimonious and very public debates in our own party about issues such as the merits or otherwise of the abolition of Section 28, allowing unmarried adoption and permitting civil unions, I cannot help but think those debates were well worth having. While the Conservative Party continues to be seen as the party of the "traditional family unit", public awareness of the existence party's socially liberal wing has undoubtedly helped to broaden the party's appeal, especially amongst younger voters.
Some other Congressional Republicans
Despite the failure of the near absolute failure of the leaderships of John Boehner and Mitch McConnell in the House and Senate respectively, the Congressional Republican is not an entirely barren landscape in terms of talented figures who will play an active role in rebuilding the party.
Republicans have few better communicators than Mike Pence, a fifty year old Indiana congressman who was elected Chairman of the House Republican Conference following the 2008 election debacle. Pence's soft-spoken yet forceful advocacy of conservative principles may go some way to winning back the 'soccer moms' alienated by the fire and brimstone approach to policy presentation utilised by many Republicans over the past half-decade.
In the same vein, Aaron Schock, a twenty eight year old Congressman from Illinois named who began his political career representing a solidly Democratic constituency in the State House of Representatives has become ubiquitous on the television talkshow circuit over the past few weeks. Schock, the youngest member of congress, shares the social conservatism of his congressional elders yet articulates the party's message in a way which places an emphasis on proactively fighting poverty and rooting out corruption in government.
Neither Jim DeMint and Dr Tom Coburn, both staunch fiscal conservatives, received a warm welcome from their Senatorial colleagues when elected in 2004. Viewed as dangerous outsiders who would disrupt the effective and historically congenial operation of Washington government, strong primary challengers were recruited to run against both men in the form of former South Carolina Governor David Beasley and Oklahoma City Mayor Kirk Humphries.
With the demise of the party's fortunes, however, the two men have found themselves in the forefront of the Republican policy debate. Many of the policies the two men have pushed for years, such as reform the ludicrous congressional procedures which allow congressmen and senators to insert their (or, in some cases, their campaign contributors) pet projects into appropriations bills, are now almost accepted wisdom in Republican circles. While Coburn has pledged to return to his medical practice by 2016 at the latest, DeMint's long-term advocacy of government reform and free trade principles is likely to see his stock rise further in Republican ranks in the coming years.
The role of the moderate wing
Conservative principles aside, the moderate wing of the party will also have a key role to play in its rebuilding. Barack Obama, like George W. Bush before him and Bill Clinton before him was elected only on the back of the support of voters in suburban congressional districts. In the past two election cycles the party's congressional representation in areas such as upstate New York and suburban Philadelphia, once Republican fortresses, has been decimated.
The advice of suburban Congressmen such as Mark Kirk, Jim Gerlach and Dave Reichert, all of whom improbably survived tough challenges in their Obama-supporting constituencies in the 2006 and 2008 elections, will be crucial in helping the party rebuild. The carefully honed political messages and campaign themes these three congressmen deployed in order to hold onto their Democratic constituencies will be studied slavishly by party insiders as the party begins its fightback in advance of the 2010 elections.
The Republican Party faces a long and painful path back to power but, if you look hard enough, the "green shoots of recovery" are beginning to show.
