Is the GOP No Good at Politics Anymore?

     Michael Tomasky has a great post today that suggests that the Republicans are now the "incompetent party." As he says, in the recent past people talk about the Democrats as being team disarray and the GOP knowing what it's doing but this may be changing before our eyes.

     As you watch their antics on the fiscal cliff and now their empty threats about the debt ceiling-along with their performance during the 2011 debt ceiling, which as Steve Moore points out, didn't actually work-it's becoming clear that the GOP isn't what it used to be.

   http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/01/forget-mint-coin-as-debt-ceiling-is.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%  3A+DiaryOfARepublicanHater+%28Diary+of+a+Republican+Hater%29

   "Over the weekend, I wrote about how Barack Obama can win the upcoming debt-ceiling fight. I left out one important element of a winning strategy, which I’ll get to further down. But the main point of the piece, which I want to reinforce today, is to flip the current conventional wisdom on its head. The c.w. says the Republicans hold the cards here. But they don’t. And some of them are throwing whatever cards they do have on the bonfire with a lot of loose talk that weakens what I think is their already weak position. What all this adds up to is the following revolutionary proposition, which I invite you to consider: it may be that the Republicans just aren’t very good at politics anymore."

     http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/01/08/the-incompetent-party.html

     As Tomasky says, they used to be. In the 80s I remember, they seemed to score victory after victory over my hapless Dems. That was during the Reagan-Bush years when it looked like the Republicans had a lock on the Presidency. Then came Clinton and they've won the popular vote once since Bush in 1988.

     They have sine then figured out how to get the House back-even during the heady Reagan years they never got back the House. Now, many think they have a lock on the House thanks to gerry mandering.

     However, when you look at recent years, it's true: the GOP hasn't been very successful in terms of getting what they want. All there "my way or the highway posturing" tends to leave them themselves on the highway with nothing to show for it.

    So what happened? To take a diversion, in today's Politico there's a piece remembering Nixon who's 100th birthday would have been today. As the piece suggests, what his ultimate legacy is still is far from agreed on. In many ways, in recent years, he's actually gained lots of liberal fans. This is because when you look at he kinds of policies implemented during his term-lowering the voting age, starting the EPA, starting affirmative action, recognizing China, detente with the USSR, wage and price controls-it sounds like a very liberal Administration in today's terms.

   So many liberals have come to remember him fondly in recent years. The Politico piece is not complimentary

    http://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/happy-birthday-tricky-dick-85869.html?hp=l4

    Nixon, however, actually was the architect of the big Republican landslides in the 70s and 80s. He was the prototype. Many liberals I think see him positively in contrast to future Republican President's like Reagan and the second Bush.

    While he was very different than Reagan in important ways-both Reagan and Bush II were believers whereas Nixon was a total cynic; and yes Nixon's policies on many things were surprisingly liberal-this is more a function of the time he lived in than anything. No doubt he was considerably to the Left of Reagan. However, would he have been had he won in 1988 rather than 1968?

    In part it was a function of time. Interestingly he also was kind of the prototype for debt ceiling chicken. In 1973 he started threatening not to fund government departments at the levels Congress asked for which was another part of the larger constitutional crisis that surrounded his entire Administration.

   Most importantly for our topic-is the GOP no good at politics anymore and if so, why?-Nixon always believed that the GOP could only at best break even on the economy. The economic issue, Nixon believed, was a Dem issue and the best a Republican could hope to do was break even on it. The task was twofold:

   1. Neutralize the economic issue

   2. Win on the Social Issue-at the time, campus violence, riots in the streets, Vietnam, race wars, the rise of drugs and the "counterculture." Nixon was supposed return us to Law and Order.

    So what's going on now? Seems to me the GOP already got all the low hanging fruit. After 30 years of tax cuts, the American people decided they want taxes on the rich to rise-still far from the rates in 1980 before Reagan's tax cuts.

   On many social issues though, the country is not so conservative anymore now even accepting gay marriage in many states. So the country and it's politics have changed a lot.

    Now, let's have a few words from a real live Nixoniam-Pat Buchanan who was there for the revolution. What advice does he give the GOP in the next 4 years?

    "With the GOP splintering, with Democrats running the Senate and White House, conservatives must realize: They cannot make policy.

     "Let the Democrats take the lead, drive the car, propose the tax hikes, refuse to make the spending cuts and answer for where we are in 2016, because, right now, it looks as though we are headed for an even bigger cliff."
 
     "For the next two years, the best offense may be a good defense."

      http://buchanan.org/blog/the-republicans-after-dunkirk-5448

       That's what good GOP politics sounds like, Circa 2013.