Implosion

We are watching the Republican party-in-government collapse before our eyes

Photo by Issy Bailey on Unsplash

Last Friday, after House Republicans finally rid themselves of Jim Jordan, deposed speaker Kevin McCarthy stated the obvious:

We’re in a very bad place right now.

Yes they are.

Choosing a leader is the most fundamental job of a legislative majority party. In fact, it’s the thing that defines you as the majority. You hold the most seats, you get to select the leader.

Since January, there have been eighteen leadership votes on the House floor. Only one produced a speaker, and he lasted just nine months before being brought down by a rebellion in his ranks.

That Republicans have proven unable to perform this foundational task speaks to more than dysfunction and disarray. It raises questions about whether the national Republican party still exists as a governing entity.

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What does it mean for a political party to self-destruct?

Over the past several years, I’ve posed that question to colleagues who study political parties and the answer has been inconclusive. For all its weaknesses, the Republican party has tremendous support in a large number of states and is organizationally entrenched in the political system.

It’s hard to envision Republicans going the way of the Whigs in the 1850s and disappearing from the scene.

Yet national Republicans are in a self-destructive spiral. It was on full display last week, but it has been coming on since the Trump presidency, when the party gave up on governing.

Back in 2016, candidate Trump actually had policy plans. Remember how everyone was going to have the best healthcare? Or how we were going to invest bigly in infrastructure? These may have been empty sentiments but at least Trump talked about them.

Then came the Trump administration, where the only legislative item was tax cuts for the wealthy—the agenda of those bankrolling Republicans. By 2020, the party didn’t even bother to write a platform. Today, Trump is running not on policy but on getting vengeance against his enemies, while the congressional party can’t perform the most perfunctory organizational tasks.

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No platform. No interest in legislating. The inability to choose a leader. These speak to a breakdown in what is called the party-in-government.

The party-in-government encompasses the elected officials of a political party—members of congress and the president at the federal level, governors and state legislators at the state level, mayors and county executives at the local level. Their function is to turn the promises of political campaigns into policy, or at least to try.

The party-in-government can be distinguished from the party-in-the-electorate—the collection of voters who identify with a party and vote for its candidates.

The two are related, of course. A party needs strength in the electorate to win seats in government. And they get to stay in office when voters are satisfied with their performance.

In a normal world, that would mean delivering on policy promises that voters believe will make their lives better. But that is not what interests MAGA Republicans.

They are motivated by anger at a changing world that is threatening the privileged place of people who are white, male, straight, and Christian. They react to the ascendancy of two younger multicultural generations by fearing the loss of power, and they want it to stop.

Possibly because the changes they fear are too powerful to reverse, they have found shelter in a world that inverts everyday experiences. In MAGA reality, Donald Trump is the true winner of the 2020 election, the victim of a deep state conspiracy to deny him power through the machinations of the Biden crime family, which illegitimately occupies the White House.

Photo by Gabriel Soto on Unsplash

They view Democrats—the party of the rising electorate—as the enemy, and want Republican representatives to delegitimize Democrats and any governing institutions they might use to advance the interests of their voters. They cheer the chaos and norm destruction as essential to protecting them from the enemy. They need to disrupt business as usual before a new generation takes power and overwhelms them.

And their elected representatives, who also inhabit this reality, eagerly comply.

They are doing what their voters want.

The Republican party-in-government is failing because the Republican party-in-the electorate is telling it to.

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There are Republicans who still have regard for the institution of congress and would like to govern like they did in the past, but until a few of them mustered the strength to deny Jim Jordan the speakership last week they have been impotent in the shadow of Trump’s bullying. Even then, only 25 Republicans proclaimed their public opposition to Jordan on the House floor Friday, when fully 112 would vote against him in private hours later.

This has left the chaos-mongers holding the balance of power in the Republican conference and expedited the collapse of the Republican party-in-government.

When they don’t have to do anything substantive, MAGA Republicans can engage cost-free in rage-fueled ceremonial rants, but when confronted with a real-world obligation—like raising the debt limit, keeping the government open, or even something simple like choosing a speaker—they and their party implode.

The MAGA party-in-government may be collapsing, but it remains extremely dangerous as long as it holds power. And it will continue to hold power unless voters send it into the wilderness.

This means voting to reject the chaos like in 2018, 2020, and 2022.

Only if Republican leaders see absolutely no path to power with the MAGA electorate will there be motivation to address the havoc they have unleashed on their party and the country.

Only when they have no choice is there a chance they will confront the wrenching process of rebuilding a viable center-right party from the wreckage they have created.

This is what next year has to be about.