washingtonmonthly--2020-07-07--Why Can’t Republicans Elect Women?

Why Can’t Republicans Elect Women?

In the long and mostly disappointing history of women in American politics , 1992 is widely considered a pivotal year .
Fueled in part by outrage over Anita Hill ’ s treatment by an all-male Senate Judiciary Committee during Clarence Thomas ’ s Supreme Court nomination hearings the previous fall , voters elected a record number of women to the House and Senate .
Headline writers would soon dub 1992 “ The Year of the Woman.
” In the popular imagination , that phrase has come to evoke the beginning of a decisive upward trajectory for women in elective office @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of a misnomer .
Of the 24 women elected to the House in 1992 , 20 were Democrats—as were all four of the newly elected senators .
A more accurate description would have been “ The Year of the Democratic Woman.
” That label would also have foreshadowed the path of progress for women in the years since .
The next 30 years of data tell a consistent story of two lines diverging .
In 2004 , 52 Democratic women were elected to Congress , compared to 30 on the Republican side .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s caucus was reduced to 21 , while Democrats had climbed up to 69 .
Today , partly on the strength of another “ year of the woman ” in 2018 , Democrats are up to 105 women .
And Republicans ?
Twenty-two .
In fact , while there are currently more Democratic women serving in the House than at any point in history , the number of Republican women in the House is the lowest it ’ s been since 1992 .
In light of the attrition , some Republicans are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ elected in 2020 .
As of this writing , a record 220 ( and counting ) Republican women have filed to run in congressional primaries .
Susan Brooks , a Republican congresswoman who has been vocal about getting more women to run , was put in charge of the National Republican Congressional Committee ’ s ( NRCC ) candidate recruitment efforts .
Elise Stefanik , another House Republican , launched E-PAC , a political action committee , to support and raise money for GOP women candidates , with a focus on supporting their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” stands for “ Engage , Empower , Elevate , and Elect.
” ) And more than half of the NRCC ’ s 22 “ young guns ” —House candidates that the party identifies as especially promising—are women .
If Republicans are going to reverse the trend of the past nearly 30 years , it ’ s going to be thanks to candidates like Tiffany Shedd , who is running to represent Arizona ’ s First District .
Her CV boasts a wide range of talents : natural resource lawyer , farmer , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and 4-H certified shotgun coach .
She grew up in Arizona and stuck around for law school .
She realizes that she checks certain boxes for the party .
“ I don ’ t really have to guess or figure out , like , so-called ‘ messaging , ’ because I am the demographic we ’ re trying to win , ” she told me in April .
Her campaign ad tells the story of facing off drug smugglers trying to cross her land , interspliced with video of people climbing over border @ @ @ @ @ @ @ angrily , and Shedd shooting a rifle .
On her campaign site , she pledges to work with Donald Trump to secure the border .
The Republican establishment has lined up behind her .
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has endorsed her , and the NRCC named her a “ contender , ” one tier below a young gun .
She ’ s got support from more than a dozen members of Congress , the Arizona Farm Bureau , a handful of woman-focused conservative PACs , and more .
She ran in 2018 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the primary , but this year she has outraised her only remaining primary opponent by more than five to one .
Her district is currently represented by a Democrat , but it voted for Trump in 2016 .
With all that backing , Shedd and candidates like her are a test case .
The GOP has been remade in Trump ’ s image .
Is there any room left for Republican women ?
There ’ s a Godwin ’ s law of conversations about women running for office : As a discussion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bringing up EMILY ’ s List approaches 100 percent .
Founded in 1985 to back Democratic women who support abortion rights , it ’ s the bar against which other efforts to support women candidates are measured .
The name is an acronym for “ Early Money Is Like Yeast ” —as in , it makes dough rise .
Financial support at the start of a campaign signals a candidate ’ s legitimacy and helps bring in other donors .
Many of the women it has backed have not only gone on to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for decades .
Barbara Mikulski , one of the first two women the group supported in the 1986 midterms , went on to become the longest-serving woman in the history of Congress .
( She retired in 2016 . )
In 1992 , the organization was profiled on 60 Minutes , drawing national attention , and it grew its network of donors by more than sixfold .
Some of the women elected in 1992 , like Patty Murray and Dianne Feinstein , are still serving and have ascended to leadership roles in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s List started to help women who were running for state and local office as well , in effect building out the front end of the congressional candidate pipeline .
For the 2018 midterms , the organization raised more than $ 100 million for the candidates they had endorsed .
( Between Trump ’ s election in 2016 and the 2018 midterm elections , the group says , an unprecedented 42,000 women reached out to them to talk about running for office , compared to just 900 in the previous cycle .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s List recruits women to run for office .
Staff spread across the country often spend months identifying women with potential .
“ Take a look at somebody like Kyrsten Sinema , ” said Emily Cain , the organization ’ s coincidentally named executive director .
EMILY ’ s List worked with Sinema when she was a state legislator running for the U.S. House , and then backed her again when she ran for Senate .
It was the same with Maggie Hassan , who springboarded from the New Hampshire state senate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the U.S. Senate .
EMILY ’ s List backed all six of the current Democratic women governors , who outnumber Republican women governors two to one .
Some , like Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan , have gained national exposure during the coronavirus pandemic .
Whitmer has become the subject of Trump ’ s harshest attacks on governors , and is widely considered to be on Joe Biden ’ s list of potential running mates .
EMILY ’ s List is so effective that it plays an important complementary role to the formal Democratic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ given state is quite happy if they can nominate a woman who is going to get EMILY ’ s List support , ” Debbie Walsh , the director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University , told me .
“ It takes the pressure of fund-raising off the local party , and they can use those resources elsewhere.
” Other factors have driven Democratic women ’ s steady gains .
First , many of the Democratic women elected in the 1990s—like Nancy Pelosi—are now in powerful positions , setting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have five women in leadership roles in the Senate and 11 in the House , compared to one and one on the Republican side .
More women in the caucus means more advocates for promoting women within the party , and more role models for those considering a run for office .
Policy commitments are also important .
The party has consistently focused on issues that disproportionately affect women , like abortion , sexual assault , paid leave , and , more broadly , safety net programs , which women are more likely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ exclusively benefited from the gains in Congress made by women of color , who helped drive the Democratic wave in 2018 .
Currently , there are 47 women of color serving in Congress , and 46 of them are Democrats .
On the Republican side , there ’ s a long history of failed attempts to copy the success of EMILY ’ s List .
WISH List , founded in 1992 , was a PAC aimed at backing Republican women who were in favor of abortion rights .
But by the early 2000s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and in 2010 it folded in with another group .
Then that group , Republican Majority for Choice , shut down in 2018 .
The Susan B. Anthony List PAC was created in 1992 to support women , on either side of the aisle , who oppose abortion access .
( The name is an apocryphal reference to the legendary suffragist ’ s supposed pro-life worldview .
The editor of Anthony ’ s papers has called that notion an “ invented memory.
” ) The SBA List still exists , but it has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ female candidates .
VIEW PAC was founded in 1997 to elect more Republican women to Congress , but according to the organization , it has raised a total of less than $ 10 million since its founding .
She-PAC , a group formed in 2012 to back Republican women running for state and federal office , barely got started before it shut down in 2016 .
Other groups have formed in the past decade—Maggie ’ s List in 2010 , Winning for Women in 2017 , and Representative Stefanik ’ s E-PAC in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the record number of women running this year as evidence that the tide may be turning .
The Republican Party typically avoids supporting one candidate over another during the primaries , so when Stefanik pledged to throw her weight behind women in primaries , she got pushback .
Tom Emmer , then the incoming NRCC chairman , said it was a “ mistake.
” Stefanik fired back , tweeting , “ NEWSFLASH : I wasn ’ t asking for permission.
” It seems now , though , that party leaders back the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Scalise have stepped up in tremendous ways , ” Stefanik told me , referring to GOP leaders in the House , “ and I think our model is working.
” Both McCarthy and Scalise wrote checks to E-PAC soon after its launch .
Still , history suggests tempering optimism .
Women voters have shifted sharply away from the GOP under Trump .
But even before Trump , Republican pro-women groups were making an identity politics pitch at odds with conservative ideology .
Republican donors “ reject affirmative action–type activities , ” Laurel Elder @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hartwick College in New York , told me .
The candidates with the most merit , the thinking goes , will rise to the top .
“ They ’ re essentially opposed to making specific efforts to recruit women—or to recruit any group based on demographics—so it makes it challenging for these groups that are explicitly designed to try to recruit women to have a comfortable home in the party.
” This aversion to identity politics gets in the way of the groups ’ ability to make a full-throated case for their cause @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spokesperson for Winning for Women , why her organization thought it was important to get more women into Congress , her first answer was that Congress should reflect the country .
But that quickly came with a caveat .
They ’ re backing their chosen candidates , she said , “ not because they ’ re women , but because they ’ d be great members of Congress , and they ’ re great fits for their districts.
” Winning for Women , though , doesn ’ t support male candidates—even if they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and great fits for their district .
Above all , the effort to elect more Republican women has sputtered because there simply isn ’ t much demand for change among Republicans .
A survey by the Public Religion Research Institute in 2016 found that just under 40 percent of Republicans agreed that the country would be better off with more women in public office .
According to another study from the Pew Research Center , a majority of Republicans think we ’ ve already done enough on gender equality as a society , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ve gone too far .
That puts groups like E-PAC in a pickle .
Republican voters don ’ t think the problem they ’ re trying to solve is really a problem at all .
Meanwhile , the trends that drove Democratic gains were mirrored on the Republican side , cutting in the opposite direction .
The party , which had once had room for Nelson Rockefeller–style liberals , grew uniformly conservative , its base of power shifted to the South , and it became increasingly dependent on the votes of white evangelicals @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Elder said , is that that conservatism , “ which used to hold back women across the board , is only holding back Republican women.
” Her research demonstrates that the more conservative a district is , the less likely it is to elect a woman .
“ When the Republican Party started moving in a more conservative direction , that tracks almost perfectly with the emergence of the partisan gap and deteriorating performance of Republican women , ” she told me .
Michele Swers , a political scientist at Georgetown University @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you look at the type of congressional districts over time that tend to elect women , these districts are usually more urban , more racially and ethnically diverse , and higher income , she says .
“ These days , that kind of district is electing Democrats.
” As a result , not enough Republican women have risen through the ranks to create the kind of virtuous cycle that Democrats benefit from .
Typically , leadership positions are filled by members who have been in Congress for years , often decades .
There @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who fit that description ; many of the women elected decades ago have since lost their seats or resigned .
Research shows that elected Republican women have historically been more moderate than their male colleagues , which has driven their attrition as the party has drifted ever rightward .
“ One of the lessons is that you have to have Republican women in all sorts of seats , not just swing seats , ” Stefanik said .
When women win office in deep red districts , they ’ re more likely to stick @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ To some extent , ” she continued , “ that ’ s still a challenge we need to work through.
” A week after the 2018 midterm elections , newly elected members of Congress descended on the Capitol for orientation .
Ethical guidelines were reviewed ; services of the Capitol police explained ; catered meals eaten .
Newcomers to the House gathered to take a group photo .
Included in the snapshot were a record 38 women : 36 Democrats and two Republicans .
Then , that caucus of two faltered .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ headed to D.C. for orientation , votes in her Orange County district were still being counted .
When the tabulation was complete , it turned out that her ( male ) Democratic opponent had narrowly won .
Out of the more than 120 Republican women who had run for the House , only one new member , Carol Miller of West Virginia , would be taking a seat in the Capitol .
Democrats had beaten their own records .
Including incumbents , 89 women had been elected to the House on the Democratic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ first two Muslim women , the first two Native American women , and the youngest woman ever elected to Congress .
But in a year of record wins for women in Congress overall , Republican women had actually posted losses .
A combination of retirements and unsuccessful campaigns meant that their ranks in the House had shrunk by almost half .
In the Senate , the news was better , as the GOP increased from six to eight women—but still lagged behind the Democrats ’ 17 .
( Since then , Kelly Loeffler @ @ @ @ @ @ @ open seat , bumping their total up to nine . )
“ A record number of [ Republican ] women ran , but that certainly wasn ’ t reflected in the Election Day results , ” said Perez-Cubas , the Winning for Women spokeswoman .
“ It was disappointing.
” Two thousand eighteen seemed like a low point , and yet 2020 could be worse .
Two out of the 13 Republican women currently in the House have announced that they won ’ t be running for reelection—including Susan Brooks , who chairs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Nearly half of the nine Republican women serving in the Senate are at risk of losing their seats in November : Martha McSally in Arizona , Susan Collins in Maine , Joni Ernst in Iowa , and Kelly Loeffler in Georgia .
Loeffler , in fact , may turn out to be a good case study in how Republican efforts to promote women lose steam .
She was appointed to the Senate by Georgia Governor Brian Kemp to fill a vacancy created by a resignation .
Kemp ’ s logic appeared to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had come within striking distance of the governor ’ s mansion on the strength of a young , diverse , urban coalition .
The reliably red state was at risk of shifting to purple .
If the Republican Party was going to maintain its power , it needed to expand its support among white suburban women .
But most Republican elected leaders in the state were white men .
Enter Loeffler , a longtime conservative donor , CEO of a financial services company , and co-owner of Atlanta ’ s WNBA team—and , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , however , preferred Doug Collins , a loyal defender of his in the House and on many a cable news show .
Kemp stuck with Loeffler , who took office in January and is up for election in November .
During her first few months in the Senate , though , Loeffler has already gotten into hot water .
In late January , before the public was alerted to the severity of the coronavirus crisis , she began selling stocks that would be adversely affected by it .
In fact , she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Senate Health Committee , on which she sits , held a members-only hearing about the pandemic .
( Loeffler says that a third party makes trades on her and her husband ’ s behalf , without their knowledge . )
Her odds of winning in November look shaky for other reasons , too ; Collins has declared that he ’ ll be challenging her in Georgia ’ s primary .
Since her appointment , The Cook Political Report has downgraded the Georgia Senate race from “ Likely Republican ” to “ Lean Republican.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Collins or a Democrat—Trump will be emboldened to say “ I told you so ” and other Republicans may be less likely to promote women with the goal of expanding the party ’ s voting base in the future .
If GOP women are to expand their footprint , it will likely be thanks to people like Tiffany Shedd : candidates with ample backing and funding who are running in swing districts or districts where the incumbent isn ’ t running for reelection .
There are other women who fit that description , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Republican , who is running again in 2020 .
Or Beth Van Duyane , who is competing for an open seat in a Texas district rated “ Republican toss up.
” Or Ashley Hinson , campaigning for a toss-up district in Iowa currently represented by freshman Democrat Abby Finkenauer .
If these Republicans do well in 2020 , it could give the effort to elect more women some momentum .
But a spate of congressional wins would almost surely mean that Trump , at the top of the ticket , had won as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ women voters away from the party in striking numbers would continue to define its goals and values .
“ Frankly , at this point , the Republicans are still able to win elections , even though they ’ re fielding such a paltry share of female candidates , ” Jennifer Lawless , a political scientist at the University of Virginia , told me .
“ Unless there are electoral consequences , it doesn ’ t really seem likely that there ’ s going to be a fundamental shift.
” But say 2020 is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ likely outcome given rising unemployment claims and coronavirus deaths .
Republican political elites might draw the opposite conclusion : that their efforts to elect women like Shedd were a waste , and that trying to get more women elected isn ’ t worth the investment .
It ’ s possible , Rutgers ’ s Debbie Walsh said , that Democrats could elect equal numbers of men and women to Congress in 2020 .
“ But , ” she said , “ we are never going to get to parity overall if only one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ women.
” Correction : A previous version of the article stated that Geneivieve Collins was competing for an open seat in Texas .
That is not accurate , she is running against first-term congressman Colin Allred .
We regret the error .

In the long and mostly disappointing history of women in American politics, 1992 is widely considered a pivotal year. Fueled in part by outrage over Anita Hill’s treatment by an all-male Senate Judiciary Committee during Clarence Thomas’s Supreme Court nomination hearings the previous fall, voters elected a record number of women to the House and Senate.
Headline writers would soon dub 1992 “The Year of the Woman.” In the popular imagination, that phrase has come to evoke the beginning of a decisive upward trajectory for women in elective office. But it was always a bit of a misnomer. Of the 24 women elected to the House in 1992, 20 were Democrats—as were all four of the newly elected senators. A more accurate description would have been “The Year of the Democratic Woman.”
That label would also have foreshadowed the path of progress for women in the years since.
The next 30 years of data tell a consistent story of two lines diverging. In 2004, 52 Democratic women were elected to Congress, compared to 30 on the Republican side. But by 2008, the Republican women’s caucus was reduced to 21, while Democrats had climbed up to 69. Today, partly on the strength of another “year of the woman” in 2018, Democrats are up to 105 women. And Republicans? Twenty-two. In fact, while there are currently more Democratic women serving in the House than at any point in history, the number of Republican women in the House is the lowest it’s been since 1992.
In light of the attrition, some Republicans are making a push to get more women elected in 2020. As of this writing, a record 220 (and counting) Republican women have filed to run in congressional primaries. Susan Brooks, a Republican congresswoman who has been vocal about getting more women to run, was put in charge of the National Republican Congressional Committee’s (NRCC) candidate recruitment efforts. Elise Stefanik, another House Republican, launched E-PAC, a political action committee, to support and raise money for GOP women candidates, with a focus on supporting their primary bids. (The “E” stands for “Engage, Empower, Elevate, and Elect.”) And more than half of the NRCC’s 22 “young guns”—House candidates that the party identifies as especially promising—are women.
If Republicans are going to reverse the trend of the past nearly 30 years, it’s going to be thanks to candidates like Tiffany Shedd, who is running to represent Arizona’s First District. Her CV boasts a wide range of talents: natural resource lawyer, farmer, bilingual kindergarten teacher, homeschool mom, and 4-H certified shotgun coach. She grew up in Arizona and stuck around for law school. She realizes that she checks certain boxes for the party. “I don’t really have to guess or figure out, like, so-called ‘messaging,’ because I am the demographic we’re trying to win,” she told me in April. Her campaign ad tells the story of facing off drug smugglers trying to cross her land, interspliced with video of people climbing over border walls, clips of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaking angrily, and Shedd shooting a rifle. On her campaign site, she pledges to work with Donald Trump to secure the border.
The Republican establishment has lined up behind her. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has endorsed her, and the NRCC named her a “contender,” one tier below a young gun. She’s got support from more than a dozen members of Congress, the Arizona Farm Bureau, a handful of woman-focused conservative PACs, and more. She ran in 2018 and didn’t make it out of the primary, but this year she has outraised her only remaining primary opponent by more than five to one. Her district is currently represented by a Democrat, but it voted for Trump in 2016. With all that backing, Shedd and candidates like her are a test case. The GOP has been remade in Trump’s image. Is there any room left for Republican women?
There’s a Godwin’s law of conversations about women running for office: As a discussion runs longer, the probability of someone bringing up EMILY’s List approaches 100 percent. Founded in 1985 to back Democratic women who support abortion rights, it’s the bar against which other efforts to support women candidates are measured. The name is an acronym for “Early Money Is Like Yeast”—as in, it makes dough rise. Financial support at the start of a campaign signals a candidate’s legitimacy and helps bring in other donors.
Many of the women it has backed have not only gone on to win office but have stayed in power for decades. Barbara Mikulski, one of the first two women the group supported in the 1986 midterms, went on to become the longest-serving woman in the history of Congress. (She retired in 2016.) In 1992, the organization was profiled on 60 Minutes, drawing national attention, and it grew its network of donors by more than sixfold. Some of the women elected in 1992, like Patty Murray and Dianne Feinstein, are still serving and have ascended to leadership roles in the Democratic Party. In 2000, EMILY’s List started to help women who were running for state and local office as well, in effect building out the front end of the congressional candidate pipeline. For the 2018 midterms, the organization raised more than $100 million for the candidates they had endorsed. (Between Trump’s election in 2016 and the 2018 midterm elections, the group says, an unprecedented 42,000 women reached out to them to talk about running for office, compared to just 900 in the previous cycle.)
In addition to fund-raising, EMILY’s List recruits women to run for office. Staff spread across the country often spend months identifying women with potential. “Take a look at somebody like Kyrsten Sinema,” said Emily Cain, the organization’s coincidentally named executive director. EMILY’s List worked with Sinema when she was a state legislator running for the U.S. House, and then backed her again when she ran for Senate. It was the same with Maggie Hassan, who springboarded from the New Hampshire state senate to the governor’s mansion to the U.S. Senate. EMILY’s List backed all six of the current Democratic women governors, who outnumber Republican women governors two to one. Some, like Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan, have gained national exposure during the coronavirus pandemic. Whitmer has become the subject of Trump’s harshest attacks on governors, and is widely considered to be on Joe Biden’s list of potential running mates.
EMILY’s List is so effective that it plays an important complementary role to the formal Democratic Party. “The party in any given state is quite happy if they can nominate a woman who is going to get EMILY’s List support,” Debbie Walsh, the director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, told me. “It takes the pressure of fund-raising off the local party, and they can use those resources elsewhere.”
Other factors have driven Democratic women’s steady gains. First, many of the Democratic women elected in the 1990s—like Nancy Pelosi—are now in powerful positions, setting off a positive feedback loop. Democrats have five women in leadership roles in the Senate and 11 in the House, compared to one and one on the Republican side. More women in the caucus means more advocates for promoting women within the party, and more role models for those considering a run for office.
Policy commitments are also important. The party has consistently focused on issues that disproportionately affect women, like abortion, sexual assault, paid leave, and, more broadly, safety net programs, which women are more likely to access. Democrats have also almost exclusively benefited from the gains in Congress made by women of color, who helped drive the Democratic wave in 2018. Currently, there are 47 women of color serving in Congress, and 46 of them are Democrats.
On the Republican side, there’s a long history of failed attempts to copy the success of EMILY’s List. WISH List, founded in 1992, was a PAC aimed at backing Republican women who were in favor of abortion rights. But by the early 2000s, its fund-raising was in decline, and in 2010 it folded in with another group. Then that group, Republican Majority for Choice, shut down in 2018. The Susan B. Anthony List PAC was created in 1992 to support women, on either side of the aisle, who oppose abortion access. (The name is an apocryphal reference to the legendary suffragist’s supposed pro-life worldview. The editor of Anthony’s papers has called that notion an “invented memory.”) The SBA List still exists, but it has shrugged off its rule of only supporting female candidates. VIEW PAC was founded in 1997 to elect more Republican women to Congress, but according to the organization, it has raised a total of less than $10 million since its founding. She-PAC, a group formed in 2012 to back Republican women running for state and federal office, barely got started before it shut down in 2016.
Other groups have formed in the past decade—Maggie’s List in 2010, Winning for Women in 2017, and Representative Stefanik’s E-PAC in 2019 are a few. They point to the record number of women running this year as evidence that the tide may be turning. The Republican Party typically avoids supporting one candidate over another during the primaries, so when Stefanik pledged to throw her weight behind women in primaries, she got pushback. Tom Emmer, then the incoming NRCC chairman, said it was a “mistake.” Stefanik fired back, tweeting, “NEWSFLASH: I wasn’t asking for permission.” It seems now, though, that party leaders back the effort. “Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise have stepped up in tremendous ways,” Stefanik told me, referring to GOP leaders in the House, “and I think our model is working.” Both McCarthy and Scalise wrote checks to E-PAC soon after its launch.
Still, history suggests tempering optimism. Women voters have shifted sharply away from the GOP under Trump. But even before Trump, Republican pro-women groups were making an identity politics pitch at odds with conservative ideology. Republican donors “reject affirmative action–type activities,” Laurel Elder, a political scientist and sociologist at Hartwick College in New York, told me. The candidates with the most merit, the thinking goes, will rise to the top. “They’re essentially opposed to making specific efforts to recruit women—or to recruit any group based on demographics—so it makes it challenging for these groups that are explicitly designed to try to recruit women to have a comfortable home in the party.”
This aversion to identity politics gets in the way of the groups’ ability to make a full-throated case for their cause. When I asked Olivia Perez-Cubas, spokesperson for Winning for Women, why her organization thought it was important to get more women into Congress, her first answer was that Congress should reflect the country. But that quickly came with a caveat. They’re backing their chosen candidates, she said, “not because they’re women, but because they’d be great members of Congress, and they’re great fits for their districts.” Winning for Women, though, doesn’t support male candidates—even if they’d be great members of Congress and great fits for their district.
Above all, the effort to elect more Republican women has sputtered because there simply isn’t much demand for change among Republicans. A survey by the Public Religion Research Institute in 2016 found that just under 40 percent of Republicans agreed that the country would be better off with more women in public office. According to another study from the Pew Research Center, a majority of Republicans think we’ve already done enough on gender equality as a society, and almost 20 percent say we’ve gone too far. That puts groups like E-PAC in a pickle. Republican voters don’t think the problem they’re trying to solve is really a problem at all.
Meanwhile, the trends that drove Democratic gains were mirrored on the Republican side, cutting in the opposite direction. The party, which had once had room for Nelson Rockefeller–style liberals, grew uniformly conservative, its base of power shifted to the South, and it became increasingly dependent on the votes of white evangelicals. The result of this ideological sorting, Elder said, is that that conservatism, “which used to hold back women across the board, is only holding back Republican women.” Her research demonstrates that the more conservative a district is, the less likely it is to elect a woman. “When the Republican Party started moving in a more conservative direction, that tracks almost perfectly with the emergence of the partisan gap and deteriorating performance of Republican women,” she told me. Michele Swers, a political scientist at Georgetown University, makes a similar point. If you look at the type of congressional districts over time that tend to elect women, these districts are usually more urban, more racially and ethnically diverse, and higher income, she says. “These days, that kind of district is electing Democrats.”
As a result, not enough Republican women have risen through the ranks to create the kind of virtuous cycle that Democrats benefit from. Typically, leadership positions are filled by members who have been in Congress for years, often decades. There simply aren’t many Republican women who fit that description; many of the women elected decades ago have since lost their seats or resigned. Research shows that elected Republican women have historically been more moderate than their male colleagues, which has driven their attrition as the party has drifted ever rightward. “One of the lessons is that you have to have Republican women in all sorts of seats, not just swing seats,” Stefanik said. When women win office in deep red districts, they’re more likely to stick around in Congress and build seniority. “To some extent,” she continued, “that’s still a challenge we need to work through.”
A week after the 2018 midterm elections, newly elected members of Congress descended on the Capitol for orientation. Ethical guidelines were reviewed; services of the Capitol police explained; catered meals eaten. Newcomers to the House gathered to take a group photo. Included in the snapshot were a record 38 women: 36 Democrats and two Republicans.
Then, that caucus of two faltered. As California’s Young Kim had headed to D.C. for orientation, votes in her Orange County district were still being counted. When the tabulation was complete, it turned out that her (male) Democratic opponent had narrowly won. Out of the more than 120 Republican women who had run for the House, only one new member, Carol Miller of West Virginia, would be taking a seat in the Capitol.
Democrats had beaten their own records. Including incumbents, 89 women had been elected to the House on the Democratic side, a cohort that included the first two Muslim women, the first two Native American women, and the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. But in a year of record wins for women in Congress overall, Republican women had actually posted losses. A combination of retirements and unsuccessful campaigns meant that their ranks in the House had shrunk by almost half. In the Senate, the news was better, as the GOP increased from six to eight women—but still lagged behind the Democrats’ 17. (Since then, Kelly Loeffler of Georgia was appointed to fill an open seat, bumping their total up to nine.) “A record number of [Republican] women ran, but that certainly wasn’t reflected in the Election Day results,” said Perez-Cubas, the Winning for Women spokeswoman. “It was disappointing.”
Two thousand eighteen seemed like a low point, and yet 2020 could be worse. Two out of the 13 Republican women currently in the House have announced that they won’t be running for reelection—including Susan Brooks, who chairs the candidate recruitment efforts for the NRCC. Nearly half of the nine Republican women serving in the Senate are at risk of losing their seats in November: Martha McSally in Arizona, Susan Collins in Maine, Joni Ernst in Iowa, and Kelly Loeffler in Georgia.
Loeffler, in fact, may turn out to be a good case study in how Republican efforts to promote women lose steam. She was appointed to the Senate by Georgia Governor Brian Kemp to fill a vacancy created by a resignation. Kemp’s logic appeared to go like this: Democrat Stacy Abrams had come within striking distance of the governor’s mansion on the strength of a young, diverse, urban coalition. The reliably red state was at risk of shifting to purple. If the Republican Party was going to maintain its power, it needed to expand its support among white suburban women. But most Republican elected leaders in the state were white men. Enter Loeffler, a longtime conservative donor, CEO of a financial services company, and co-owner of Atlanta’s WNBA team—and, of course, a woman. Trump, however, preferred Doug Collins, a loyal defender of his in the House and on many a cable news show. Kemp stuck with Loeffler, who took office in January and is up for election in November.
During her first few months in the Senate, though, Loeffler has already gotten into hot water. In late January, before the public was alerted to the severity of the coronavirus crisis, she began selling stocks that would be adversely affected by it. In fact, she commenced the sell-off the same day the Senate Health Committee, on which she sits, held a members-only hearing about the pandemic. (Loeffler says that a third party makes trades on her and her husband’s behalf, without their knowledge.) Her odds of winning in November look shaky for other reasons, too; Collins has declared that he’ll be challenging her in Georgia’s primary. Since her appointment, The Cook Political Report has downgraded the Georgia Senate race from “Likely Republican” to “Lean Republican.” If Loeffler loses her seat—either to Collins or a Democrat—Trump will be emboldened to say “I told you so” and other Republicans may be less likely to promote women with the goal of expanding the party’s voting base in the future.
If GOP women are to expand their footprint, it will likely be thanks to people like Tiffany Shedd: candidates with ample backing and funding who are running in swing districts or districts where the incumbent isn’t running for reelection. There are other women who fit that description, like Young Kim, the Orange County Republican, who is running again in 2020. Or Beth Van Duyane, who is competing for an open seat in a Texas district rated “Republican toss up.” Or Ashley Hinson, campaigning for a toss-up district in Iowa currently represented by freshman Democrat Abby Finkenauer. If these Republicans do well in 2020, it could give the effort to elect more women some momentum.
But a spate of congressional wins would almost surely mean that Trump, at the top of the ticket, had won as well. A man who has driven women voters away from the party in striking numbers would continue to define its goals and values. “Frankly, at this point, the Republicans are still able to win elections, even though they’re fielding such a paltry share of female candidates,” Jennifer Lawless, a political scientist at the University of Virginia, told me. “Unless there are electoral consequences, it doesn’t really seem likely that there’s going to be a fundamental shift.”
But say 2020 is a bad year for the GOP—an increasingly likely outcome given rising unemployment claims and coronavirus deaths. Republican political elites might draw the opposite conclusion: that their efforts to elect women like Shedd were a waste, and that trying to get more women elected isn’t worth the investment. It’s possible, Rutgers’s Debbie Walsh said, that Democrats could elect equal numbers of men and women to Congress in 2020. “But,” she said, “we are never going to get to parity overall if only one party is working on recruiting and supporting women.”
Kristina Karisch contributed reporting.
Correction: A previous version of the article stated that Geneivieve Collins was competing for an open seat in Texas. That is not accurate, she is running against first-term congressman Colin Allred. We regret the error.


washingtonmonthly--2020-07-07--How the GOP Built a Loyal Hispanic Base

How the GOP Built a Loyal Hispanic Base

What ’ s the deal with Hispanic Republicans , anyway ?
For anyone following Hispanic politics , it ’ s a perplexing question .
The GOP is associated with the rollback of policies that are intended to benefit minorities and communities at the economic margins—the very policies that made the vast majority of Latinos Democrats .
The current standard-bearer of the party launched his presidential campaign by calling Mexicans rapists , and is regularly , famously , deeply insulting .
And yet roughly 30 percent of Hispanics voted for him .
Indeed , Republican candidates for the presidency have generally @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 35 percent of the Latino vote for most of the past century .
How could the party build a base of support stable enough to withstand what seems like constant attack ?
It ’ s a question that Geraldo Cadava , a professor of history at Northwestern University who specializes in politics , policy , and American Latinos , gets from his students and attempts to answer in his most recent book , The Hispanic Republican .
As he explains , there are many reasons why some Latinos have embraced the GOP .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ deep roots in Cold War anticommunism .
Some Mexican Americans in the Southwest identify strongly with Spanish roots going back centuries , and , as Cadava writes , for complex reasons , identification with Spain became one of the hallmarks of Hispanic Republican identity .
Some Puerto Ricans , for their part , connected to the party in the years during which Republicans flirted with the possibility of statehood for the island .
And many Hispanics , like other Americans , simply embraced the GOP for its generalized commitments to free enterprise and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that Hispanic loyalty to the party can ’ t be understood through the simple lens of conservatism , and the book is a deep dive into the specific history that created a relatively stable and resilient base of Hispanics among the Republican ranks .
Cadava introduces us to individual leaders who fostered ties between the Republican Party and their communities and details the outreach efforts that Republicans ultimately adopted in order to keep—and hopefully grow—a Latino base .
What results is a chronicle of the ways in which a segment of the community @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , worked with the party to create both substantive connections and symbolic signals of respect and inclusion .
These tactics helped ensure that roughly 30 percent of Latino voters remain stalwart Republicans even now .
Cadava introduces us to the political evolution of various Hispanic subgroups , beginning with the Eisenhower years .
The book gets off to a bit of a dizzying start ( there are a lot of constituencies to get to know , and each of them is quite different ) , but it hits its stride as it takes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , one of Cadava ’ s first major subjects is Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater , who in some ways symbolizes the GOP ’ s tortured political relationship with Latino constituents .
Like many future Republican candidates , Goldwater ’ s staunch anticommunism attracted some Hispanics , but his opposition to civil rights put others off .
“ The views Goldwater expressed about civil rights contributed to his extremist reputation and to the suspicion of many Hispanics that he just didn ’ t like them , ” Cadava writes .
In a sense , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Republican Party ’ s abandonment of the civil rights mantle—firmly seized in the 1960s by Democrats—helped spur its aggressive courting of Hispanics .
But after the Civil Rights Act was passed , the party had to search for ways to make up the support it knew it would no longer receive from African Americans .
To help do so , Republican operatives turned to leaders in the Mexican American and Cuban American communities who had a deep allegiance to values like religion , free enterprise , and anti-communism .
These leaders , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , hoped that they could move the GOP toward adopting greater respect for immigrants and greater educational opportunity .
They became some of the party ’ s earliest Hispanic boosters .
The Nixon administration worked with these leaders to nurture a strong anti-communist base ( remember those Cuban American Watergate burglars ? )
and devise new patronage-focused strategies to engage Latino leaders .
Nixon concentrated on delivering federal programs to support minority entrepreneurs , including Hispanics .
He also oversaw important milestones .
Notably , Nixon became the first president to appoint a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
His selection of Romana Acosta Bañuelos was understood at the time to be a strong signal of Nixon ’ s respect for the community and his inclusionary intent .
She also provided an irresistible PR opportunity ; he could point to the dollars people carried in their pockets , which for the first time had a Latina ’ s signature on them .
It is worth noting that this strategy has been followed by nearly every president since Nixon to diminishing effect ; of the past 11 U.S. treasurers , seven have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ appointment helped provide a foothold for Hispanic loyalists who were eager to show their community that the party was responsive to their presence .
And as time went on , these activists became more visible and influential in the GOP .
The first Hispanic presidential candidate , Republican Benjamin Fernandez , made three runs for the presidency starting in the late 1970s , and became a significant party power broker .
Hispanic Republicans proved important to electing candidates in the Southwest like Texas Senator John Tower , and in helping Ronald Reagan wrest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who had won the state in 1976 .
This had policy impacts .
As Cadava chronicles , Reagan shifted toward a more ideological approach , including policy positions intended to demonstrate respect , rather than just appointments .
For example , Reagan opposed a border wall and signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 , which ultimately legalized three million undocumented immigrants .
If Reagan ’ s more balanced approach provided a more solidified , loyal Hispanic base , the years under both George H. W. and George W. Bush illustrated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ respect can help such a base grow .
Both Bushes appointed multiple Latinos to their cabinets as well as other key posts , and both took policy positions that showed a better understanding of the community and its concerns , if not alignment with the majority of its people .
They were visibly pro-immigrant , and both made policy overtures on issues like education and trade , which were important to Hispanic Republican leaders .
Both Bushes were important counterweights to the GOP ’ s growing restrictionist wing .
The younger Bush , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nonemergency health care , public schooling , and other services to undocumented immigrants while governor of Texas , and supported bilingual education .
He was rewarded with high-water marks of Hispanic support for a Republican presidential candidate : 40 percent in 2000 , and 44 percent in 2004 .
Republican politicians at the presidential level are not positioning themselves to win the majority of Hispanic voters .
They don ’ t have to .
A Republican presidential candidate who can push that support north of a generally reliable 30 percent , as Ronald @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can take the Electoral College .
And the ones who don ’ t get close to that marker , like Bob Dole in the 1990s , will lose .
This is what makes Cadava ’ s examination of how the loyal 30 percent was built , and what it took to sustain it , so interesting and important .
But it also highlights a big weakness of the book , which is that it does so little to explore the decade between George W. Bush and Donald Trump .
The departure of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ left the party ’ s virulent anti-immigrant wing unchecked .
Cadava spends too little time exploring what this meant for the party ’ s relationship with its loyal Latino voters and its ability to climb above roughly 30 percent .
He entirely misses a chance to explore the career and candidacy of John McCain , for example , who had strong relationships and excellent Hispanic vote margins during his career as a senator .
Republican presidential primary politics forced McCain to reverse the pro-immigrant positions of his Senate career , causing his Hispanic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Cadava gives only modest insight into the most vexing question : why even 30 percent of Hispanics remain loyal to the party despite the insults of its current standard-bearer in 2016 , and what they might do after a devastating four years .
It ’ s an admittedly difficult topic , but Cadava ’ s answer , which amounts to a tentative suggestion that people are choosing their party over the man , is unsatisfying .
The issue would benefit from a look at what can be gleaned from survey data , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ within the party .
The uncomfortable gyrations of prominent figures like Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Texas Senator Ted Cruz , who have visibly struggled to adjust to this moment in their party , would also be worth some exploration .
Still , the story of Hispanic Republicans has been misunderstood , and in its detailed history , Cadava ’ s book provides a useful introduction .
The Hispanic community may not get the respect we deserve , especially from Republican leaders , but at least we have the satisfaction of knowing that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you have carried dollars in your pockets with a Latina ’ s signature on them .

What’s the deal with Hispanic Republicans, anyway? For anyone following Hispanic politics, it’s a perplexing question. The GOP is associated with the rollback of policies that are intended to benefit minorities and communities at the economic margins—the very policies that made the vast majority of Latinos Democrats. The current standard-bearer of the party launched his presidential campaign by calling Mexicans rapists, and is regularly, famously, deeply insulting. And yet roughly 30 percent of Hispanics voted for him. Indeed, Republican candidates for the presidency have generally been able to count on 25 to 35 percent of the Latino vote for most of the past century. How could the party build a base of support stable enough to withstand what seems like constant attack?
The Hispanic Republican:
The Shaping of an
American Political Identity,
from Nixon to Trump
by Geraldo Cadava
Ecco, 448 pp.
It’s a question that Geraldo Cadava, a professor of history at Northwestern University who specializes in politics, policy, and American Latinos, gets from his students and attempts to answer in his most recent book, The Hispanic Republican. As he explains, there are many reasons why some Latinos have embraced the GOP. Among Cuban Americans, Republican support has deep roots in Cold War anticommunism. Some Mexican Americans in the Southwest identify strongly with Spanish roots going back centuries, and, as Cadava writes, for complex reasons, identification with Spain became one of the hallmarks of Hispanic Republican identity. Some Puerto Ricans, for their part, connected to the party in the years during which Republicans flirted with the possibility of statehood for the island. And many Hispanics, like other Americans, simply embraced the GOP for its generalized commitments to free enterprise and liberty.
But Cadava makes the point that Hispanic loyalty to the party can’t be understood through the simple lens of conservatism, and the book is a deep dive into the specific history that created a relatively stable and resilient base of Hispanics among the Republican ranks. Cadava introduces us to individual leaders who fostered ties between the Republican Party and their communities and details the outreach efforts that Republicans ultimately adopted in order to keep—and hopefully grow—a Latino base. What results is a chronicle of the ways in which a segment of the community, inclined toward Republicanism for historical reasons, worked with the party to create both substantive connections and symbolic signals of respect and inclusion. These tactics helped ensure that roughly 30 percent of Latino voters remain stalwart Republicans even now.
Cadava introduces us to the political evolution of various Hispanic subgroups, beginning with the Eisenhower years. The book gets off to a bit of a dizzying start (there are a lot of constituencies to get to know, and each of them is quite different), but it hits its stride as it takes the reader through time. After Eisenhower, one of Cadava’s first major subjects is Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, who in some ways symbolizes the GOP’s tortured political relationship with Latino constituents. Like many future Republican candidates, Goldwater’s staunch anticommunism attracted some Hispanics, but his opposition to civil rights put others off. “The views Goldwater expressed about civil rights contributed to his extremist reputation and to the suspicion of many Hispanics that he just didn’t like them,” Cadava writes.
In a sense, then, it’s paradoxical that the Republican Party’s abandonment of the civil rights mantle—firmly seized in the 1960s by Democrats—helped spur its aggressive courting of Hispanics. But after the Civil Rights Act was passed, the party had to search for ways to make up the support it knew it would no longer receive from African Americans. To help do so, Republican operatives turned to leaders in the Mexican American and Cuban American communities who had a deep allegiance to values like religion, free enterprise, and anti-communism. These leaders, not willing to abandon civil rights altogether, hoped that they could move the GOP toward adopting greater respect for immigrants and greater educational opportunity. They became some of the party’s earliest Hispanic boosters.
The Nixon administration worked with these leaders to nurture a strong anti-communist base (remember those Cuban American Watergate burglars?) and devise new patronage-focused strategies to engage Latino leaders. Nixon concentrated on delivering federal programs to support minority entrepreneurs, including Hispanics. He also oversaw important milestones. Notably, Nixon became the first president to appoint a Latina as treasurer of the United States. His selection of Romana Acosta Bañuelos was understood at the time to be a strong signal of Nixon’s respect for the community and his inclusionary intent. She also provided an irresistible PR opportunity; he could point to the dollars people carried in their pockets, which for the first time had a Latina’s signature on them. It is worth noting that this strategy has been followed by nearly every president since Nixon to diminishing effect; of the past 11 U.S. treasurers, seven have been Latinas.
Showing respect via political appointment helped provide a foothold for Hispanic loyalists who were eager to show their community that the party was responsive to their presence. And as time went on, these activists became more visible and influential in the GOP. The first Hispanic presidential candidate, Republican Benjamin Fernandez, made three runs for the presidency starting in the late 1970s, and became a significant party power broker. Hispanic Republicans proved important to electing candidates in the Southwest like Texas Senator John Tower, and in helping Ronald Reagan wrest Texas away from President Jimmy Carter, who had won the state in 1976. This had policy impacts. As Cadava chronicles, Reagan shifted toward a more ideological approach, including policy positions intended to demonstrate respect, rather than just appointments. For example, Reagan opposed a border wall and signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which ultimately legalized three million undocumented immigrants.
If Reagan’s more balanced approach provided a more solidified, loyal Hispanic base, the years under both George H. W. and George W. Bush illustrated the ways in which demonstrating familiarity and respect can help such a base grow. Both Bushes appointed multiple Latinos to their cabinets as well as other key posts, and both took policy positions that showed a better understanding of the community and its concerns, if not alignment with the majority of its people. They were visibly pro-immigrant, and both made policy overtures on issues like education and trade, which were important to Hispanic Republican leaders. Both Bushes were important counterweights to the GOP’s growing restrictionist wing. The younger Bush, for example, resisted attempts to deny nonemergency health care, public schooling, and other services to undocumented immigrants while governor of Texas, and supported bilingual education. He was rewarded with high-water marks of Hispanic support for a Republican presidential candidate: 40 percent in 2000, and 44 percent in 2004.
Republican politicians at the presidential level are not positioning themselves to win the majority of Hispanic voters. They don’t have to. A Republican presidential candidate who can push that support north of a generally reliable 30 percent, as Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush did, can take the Electoral College. And the ones who don’t get close to that marker, like Bob Dole in the 1990s, will lose. This is what makes Cadava’s examination of how the loyal 30 percent was built, and what it took to sustain it, so interesting and important.
But it also highlights a big weakness of the book, which is that it does so little to explore the decade between George W. Bush and Donald Trump. The departure of the Bush family from the GOP center stage left the party’s virulent anti-immigrant wing unchecked. Cadava spends too little time exploring what this meant for the party’s relationship with its loyal Latino voters and its ability to climb above roughly 30 percent. He entirely misses a chance to explore the career and candidacy of John McCain, for example, who had strong relationships and excellent Hispanic vote margins during his career as a senator. Republican presidential primary politics forced McCain to reverse the pro-immigrant positions of his Senate career, causing his Hispanic support to plummet.
In the end, Cadava gives only modest insight into the most vexing question: why even 30 percent of Hispanics remain loyal to the party despite the insults of its current standard-bearer in 2016, and what they might do after a devastating four years. It’s an admittedly difficult topic, but Cadava’s answer, which amounts to a tentative suggestion that people are choosing their party over the man, is unsatisfying. The issue would benefit from a look at what can be gleaned from survey data, and an honest conversation with Hispanic functionaries within the party. The uncomfortable gyrations of prominent figures like Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who have visibly struggled to adjust to this moment in their party, would also be worth some exploration.
Still, the story of Hispanic Republicans has been misunderstood, and in its detailed history, Cadava’s book provides a useful introduction. The Hispanic community may not get the respect we deserve, especially from Republican leaders, but at least we have the satisfaction of knowing that, for most of your lives, you have carried dollars in your pockets with a Latina’s signature on them.


washingtonmonthly--2020-07-07--Humans Don’t Have a Monopoly on Culture

Humans Don’t Have a Monopoly on Culture

It was mid-April , and the petals from Washington , D.C. ’ s famed cherry blossoms had just fallen to the ground .
Several weeks into my coronavirus self-isolation , the most frequent visitors to my third-story apartment were songbirds that alighted on my tiny balcony—the doves , starlings , blue jays , mockingbirds , and , most frequently , sparrows , shrilling and swirling as they searched for mates .
I spend a lot of time staring out the window nowadays .
While COVID-19 sweeps the planet , infecting millions of people , the birds ’ courtships continue uninterrupted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to find solace or malice in their unchanged rituals .
Nature is neither cruel nor kind , but simply carries on .
Chief among the sparrows is one I ’ ve named Puffy , for his glorious abundance of feathers .
On an overcast Sunday afternoon , Puffy lands on the railing and cocks his neck sideways as he preens his chest feathers , making sure everything is ready for the big show .
And then he chirps—sometimes faster , sometimes slower ; sometimes he punctuates a high-pitched refrain with a gruffer note @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bit along the railing , perhaps checking the acoustics .
Now a female has appeared , light brown and smaller .
Their courtship is brief and clumsy .
Puffy is nearly a perfect sphere , with russet-brown feathers on his head .
I can ’ t help but imagine the iconic British nature film narrator David Attenborough making gently humorous observations .
But the remarkable thing is that Puffy wasn ’ t born a chanteur ; his skill , as with many other songbirds , was learned .
Several decades ago , scientists @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were born with a set of innate skills , and then simply lived their lives according to instinct—as mechanical as a wooden cuckoo in a clock .
But while some utterances are innate ( much like a human scream ) , birds ’ mating songs are generally learned .
And depending on where a bird learned to sing , and from whom , their tunes may vary considerably , even among the same species .
Birds that scientists consider “ vocal learners ” —including sparrows , canaries , zebra finches , and many @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the birds by whom they are raised .
It takes practice .
Local variations are passed down between generations , like family stories .
Sometimes knowing the hometown song is an advantage in finding a sweetheart .
Perhaps that ’ s because it implies other shared preferences , like valuing the same twigs for nests , or preferring the same berries for snacks , or supporting the Nationals .
While birds were once assumed to be , well , bird brained , scientists now marvel at the complexity of what they can learn—and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ birds learn new songs each mating season , and others , like mockingbirds , can imitate the songs of many other species .
Parrots can famously mimic human speech .
This is especially remarkable when you consider that our closest genetic relatives , the great apes , never developed such sophisticated vocal communication .
Many scientists believe that birdsong may be the closest analog to human language in the nonhuman world , perhaps rivaled only by whales ’ and dolphins ’ underwater sonatas .
The ecologist and nature writer Carl Safina takes these @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his new book , Becoming Wild .
Not only do animals develop distinct strategies for living and communicating in different locations , he argues , but the useful habits learned and preserved through generations constitute distinct “ animal cultures.
” There is no single way that sperm whales rear their young , or that scarlet macaws select mates , for instance .
How they live depends on what they learn .
Here ’ s how Safina explains it : “ The natural does not always come naturally .
Many animals must learn from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were born to be .
They must learn the local quirks , how to make a living , and how to communicate effectively in a particular place among their particular group.
” He ’ s anticipated that some readers may object to the word culture , or insist that such knowledge is a uniquely human attribute .
But we ’ re not so special , he argues .
“ Learning ‘ how we live ’ from others is human .
But learning from others is also raven .
Ape and whale .
Parrot @ @ @ @ @ @ @ indicates that many species have more complex minds than we once assumed .
So why not grant that some animals may also have learned traditions , perhaps even cultures ?
A recent trickle of academic articles makes a similar case , but Safina has written one of the first popular and accessible books to present this idea to a general audience .
“ We become who we are not by genes alone , ” he writes .
“ Culture is also a form of inheritance .
Culture stores important information not in gene @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Becoming Wild is twofold : to document how cultural learning works , focusing on three intelligent species—sperm whales , parrots , and chimpanzees—and to show why that matters for how we think about conservation .
In these early months of the COVID-19 pandemic , Safina ’ s travel seems dreamlike and luxurious .
He reports from the Peruvian Amazon and from a ship traversing the Caribbean , among other sites .
His work is deeply grounded in science , but he writes with passion and a sense of humor .
For instance @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Peru have figured out how to distinguish tourists from locals , knowing that the visitors are likely to bear it with more equanimity if the big parrots descend noisily at breakfast to snatch some pancakes .
Sixty years ago , Jane Goodall observed that some chimpanzees had learned to use sticks to fish termites out of a mound—a simple demonstration of “ tool use.
” Before that , many researchers believed that only humans were capable of using tools .
Since then , scientists have documented that different groups of chimpanzees have fashioned @ @ @ @ @ @ @ habitats .
Some use rock anvils to crack open nuts ; others don ’ t eat nuts at all .
Some use moss sponges to soak up water .
These local variations are not only fascinating , but also vital to the chimps ’ survival .
It ’ s not easy to guess that a tasty morsel lies within the hard shell of a nut .
You have to learn it from someone else .
If there ’ s no one around to teach such tricks to youngsters , the knowledge dies out—and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the food source .
Safina wants scientists to re-frame how they generally talk about conservation and biodiversity .
“ Ecologists usually think of biodiversity as having three main levels : the ‘ genetic diversity ’ within any particular species ; ‘ species diversity , ’ or the number of species in a given region ; and ‘ habitat diversity , ’ ” he explains .
“ But does that cover it ?
Not really .
There ’ s a fourth level we are just becoming aware of : cultural diversity .
Skills , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ innovated and passed along culturally are crucial to helping many populations survive and perpetuate.
” While Safina is evidently fascinated by animal ingenuity—his last book , Beyond Words , was about nonhuman minds—he is also making a pragmatic argument .
Most conservation programs set goals around the number of individuals or species present .
Often those targets are too low , he believes , leaving little margin for error in the event of further catastrophes , such as outbreaks of infectious diseases .
Diversity , both genetic and cultural , allows species the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ What I do hope is that conservationists can advance the case for preserving wide cultural diversity and ease the public out of a perilous satisfaction with precariously minimal populations , ” he writes .
Safina ’ s aim is to raise ideas and question assumptions , not to lay out precise policy blueprints .
But there are a handful of real-world examples of conservation programs that have stumbled , and sometimes adapted , after initially failing to account for the fact that many young animals need to learn from past generations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bighorn sheep in parts of the American West revealed that the animals aren ’ t born knowing how or where to migrate to take advantage of the changing foraging landscape in different seasons , as biologists documented in a 2018 research paper in Science .
Of 80 translocated sheep , 73 at first showed no inclination to migrate .
The seven sheep that did were ones that had previously been integrated into established large herds .
The researchers ascribed the sheep ’ s knowledge to “ cultural transmission.
” Sometimes conservationists have tried @ @ @ @ @ @ @ advance .
Because whooping cranes learn to migrate socially , scientists faced a puzzle when attempting to reintroduce the birds back to areas of the U.S. where they had become locally extinct .
The solution was to fly light aircraft between western Florida and Wisconsin , training the cranes—with the planes acting , in effect , as surrogate parents—to follow on their first northward migration .
While it ’ s handy that the cranes could learn to trail planes , it might not be so simple for humans to teach wild chimps how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ explain to wild elephants where to find water after a long drought—something that experienced elephant matriarchs can do , drawing on their famously long memories .
In general , the simplest conservation strategy is to protect enough animals to allow species to learn from their own kind .
The idea of cultural learning in animals is becoming more mainstream , at least among field biologists .
Last year , 12 researchers with expertise in the behavior of whales , gorillas , birds , and other species coauthored a “ policy forum ” —a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that “ animal cultures matter for conservation.
” The challenge is always in translating such research into policy , especially at a time when global pandemic recovery will likely drain away government resources and attention .
But perhaps Safina ’ s book will help in that regard , by appealing to a larger audience and reminding readers to contemplate the natural world as they think about their own points of vulnerability and resilience .

It was mid-April, and the petals from Washington, D.C.’s famed cherry blossoms had just fallen to the ground. Several weeks into my coronavirus self-isolation, the most frequent visitors to my third-story apartment were songbirds that alighted on my tiny balcony—the doves, starlings, blue jays, mockingbirds, and, most frequently, sparrows, shrilling and swirling as they searched for mates.
Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families,
Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace
by Carl Safina
Henry Holt, 375 pp.
I spend a lot of time staring out the window nowadays. While COVID-19 sweeps the planet, infecting millions of people, the birds’ courtships continue uninterrupted. I can’t decide whether to find solace or malice in their unchanged rituals. Nature is neither cruel nor kind, but simply carries on.
Chief among the sparrows is one I’ve named Puffy, for his glorious abundance of feathers. On an overcast Sunday afternoon, Puffy lands on the railing and cocks his neck sideways as he preens his chest feathers, making sure everything is ready for the big show. And then he chirps—sometimes faster, sometimes slower; sometimes he punctuates a high-pitched refrain with a gruffer note at the end. He hops a bit along the railing, perhaps checking the acoustics.
Now a female has appeared, light brown and smaller. Their courtship is brief and clumsy. Puffy is nearly a perfect sphere, with russet-brown feathers on his head. I can’t help but imagine the iconic British nature film narrator David Attenborough making gently humorous observations.
But the remarkable thing is that Puffy wasn’t born a chanteur; his skill, as with many other songbirds, was learned. Several decades ago, scientists assumed that most birds and other animals were born with a set of innate skills, and then simply lived their lives according to instinct—as mechanical as a wooden cuckoo in a clock. But while some utterances are innate (much like a human scream), birds’ mating songs are generally learned. And depending on where a bird learned to sing, and from whom, their tunes may vary considerably, even among the same species.
Birds that scientists consider “vocal learners”—including sparrows, canaries, zebra finches, and many others—gain the ability to sing by imitating the birds by whom they are raised. It takes practice. Local variations are passed down between generations, like family stories. Sometimes knowing the hometown song is an advantage in finding a sweetheart. Perhaps that’s because it implies other shared preferences, like valuing the same twigs for nests, or preferring the same berries for snacks, or supporting the Nationals.
While birds were once assumed to be, well, bird brained, scientists now marvel at the complexity of what they can learn—and how varied individual communities are. Some birds learn new songs each mating season, and others, like mockingbirds, can imitate the songs of many other species. Parrots can famously mimic human speech. This is especially remarkable when you consider that our closest genetic relatives, the great apes, never developed such sophisticated vocal communication. Many scientists believe that birdsong may be the closest analog to human language in the nonhuman world, perhaps rivaled only by whales’ and dolphins’ underwater sonatas.
The ecologist and nature writer Carl Safina takes these ideas of generational learning even further in his new book, Becoming Wild. Not only do animals develop distinct strategies for living and communicating in different locations, he argues, but the useful habits learned and preserved through generations constitute distinct “animal cultures.” There is no single way that sperm whales rear their young, or that scarlet macaws select mates, for instance. How they live depends on what they learn.
Here’s how Safina explains it: “The natural does not always come naturally. Many animals must learn from their elders how to be who they were born to be. They must learn the local quirks, how to make a living, and how to communicate effectively in a particular place among their particular group.” He’s anticipated that some readers may object to the word culture, or insist that such knowledge is a uniquely human attribute. But we’re not so special, he argues. “Learning ‘how we live’ from others is human. But learning from others is also raven. Ape and whale. Parrot. Even honeybee.”
Recent scientific research indicates that many species have more complex minds than we once assumed. So why not grant that some animals may also have learned traditions, perhaps even cultures? A recent trickle of academic articles makes a similar case, but Safina has written one of the first popular and accessible books to present this idea to a general audience. “We become who we are not by genes alone,” he writes. “Culture is also a form of inheritance. Culture stores important information not in gene pools but in minds.”
The mission of Becoming Wild is twofold: to document how cultural learning works, focusing on three intelligent species—sperm whales, parrots, and chimpanzees—and to show why that matters for how we think about conservation.
In these early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Safina’s travel seems dreamlike and luxurious. He reports from the Peruvian Amazon and from a ship traversing the Caribbean, among other sites. His work is deeply grounded in science, but he writes with passion and a sense of humor. For instance, he observes that scarlet macaws in Peru have figured out how to distinguish tourists from locals, knowing that the visitors are likely to bear it with more equanimity if the big parrots descend noisily at breakfast to snatch some pancakes.
Sixty years ago, Jane Goodall observed that some chimpanzees had learned to use sticks to fish termites out of a mound—a simple demonstration of “tool use.” Before that, many researchers believed that only humans were capable of using tools. Since then, scientists have documented that different groups of chimpanzees have fashioned sundry tools to exploit their various local habitats. Some use rock anvils to crack open nuts; others don’t eat nuts at all. Some use moss sponges to soak up water.
These local variations are not only fascinating, but also vital to the chimps’ survival. It’s not easy to guess that a tasty morsel lies within the hard shell of a nut. You have to learn it from someone else. If there’s no one around to teach such tricks to youngsters, the knowledge dies out—and, with it, the access to the food source.
Safina wants scientists to re-frame how they generally talk about conservation and biodiversity. “Ecologists usually think of biodiversity as having three main levels: the ‘genetic diversity’ within any particular species; ‘species diversity,’ or the number of species in a given region; and ‘habitat diversity,’ ” he explains. “But does that cover it? Not really. There’s a fourth level we are just becoming aware of: cultural diversity. Skills, traditions, and dialects that animals have innovated and passed along culturally are crucial to helping many populations survive and perpetuate.”
While Safina is evidently fascinated by animal ingenuity—his last book, Beyond Words, was about nonhuman minds—he is also making a pragmatic argument. Most conservation programs set goals around the number of individuals or species present. Often those targets are too low, he believes, leaving little margin for error in the event of further catastrophes, such as outbreaks of infectious diseases. Diversity, both genetic and cultural, allows species the best chances of adapting to new circumstances. “What I do hope is that conservationists can advance the case for preserving wide cultural diversity and ease the public out of a perilous satisfaction with precariously minimal populations,” he writes.
Safina’s aim is to raise ideas and question assumptions, not to lay out precise policy blueprints. But there are a handful of real-world examples of conservation programs that have stumbled, and sometimes adapted, after initially failing to account for the fact that many young animals need to learn from past generations.
For instance, efforts to reintroduce bighorn sheep in parts of the American West revealed that the animals aren’t born knowing how or where to migrate to take advantage of the changing foraging landscape in different seasons, as biologists documented in a 2018 research paper in Science. Of 80 translocated sheep, 73 at first showed no inclination to migrate. The seven sheep that did were ones that had previously been integrated into established large herds. The researchers ascribed the sheep’s knowledge to “cultural transmission.”
Sometimes conservationists have tried to troubleshoot the cultural learning question in advance. Because whooping cranes learn to migrate socially, scientists faced a puzzle when attempting to reintroduce the birds back to areas of the U.S. where they had become locally extinct. The solution was to fly light aircraft between western Florida and Wisconsin, training the cranes—with the planes acting, in effect, as surrogate parents—to follow on their first northward migration.
While it’s handy that the cranes could learn to trail planes, it might not be so simple for humans to teach wild chimps how to crack open nuts. Or to explain to wild elephants where to find water after a long drought—something that experienced elephant matriarchs can do, drawing on their famously long memories. In general, the simplest conservation strategy is to protect enough animals to allow species to learn from their own kind.
The idea of cultural learning in animals is becoming more mainstream, at least among field biologists. Last year, 12 researchers with expertise in the behavior of whales, gorillas, birds, and other species coauthored a “policy forum”—a reported editorial—in Science, making the case that “animal cultures matter for conservation.”
The challenge is always in translating such research into policy, especially at a time when global pandemic recovery will likely drain away government resources and attention. But perhaps Safina’s book will help in that regard, by appealing to a larger audience and reminding readers to contemplate the natural world as they think about their own points of vulnerability and resilience.


washingtonmonthly--2020-07-07--What Motivates the Republican Party?

What Motivates the Republican Party?

In the fall of 2014 , the Obama White House was busy trying to stop the spread of Ebola .
The administration sent advisers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to assist the afflicted countries ’ health ministries , and it sent troops to West Africa to build emergency hospitals .
It began screening people arriving in the United States from at-risk nations .
It isolated and treated several American medical personnel who contracted the virus abroad and brought it back home .
Toward the end of his new book , The Imposters , Steve Benen reminds us @ @ @ @ @ @ @ while all of this was happening : As Election Day neared .
.
.
Kentucky Republican [ Rand Paul ’ s ] eagerness to exploit public anxieties started to spin out of control .
Paul publicly questioned Ebola assessments from the actual experts , blamed “ political correctness ” for the Ebola threat , and traveled to battleground states questioning whether Obama administration officials had the “ basic level of competence ” necessary to maintain public safety .
He added soon after , describing a hypothetical flight , “ If this was a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , you ’ d be at grave risk of getting Ebola .
If a plane takes twelve hours , how do you know if people will become symptomatic or not ?
” Fast-forward five and a half years .
In March 2020 , Paul was infected with COVID-19 , the disease caused by the novel coronavirus , and did not self-quarantine .
Instead , he spent time in the Capitol Hill swimming pool while waiting for his test results , potentially exposing his Senate colleagues .
After he recovered , Donald Trump appointed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ quickly “ reopening ” the economy .
Benen , a blogger and producer for Rachel Maddow at MSNBC ( and , as it happens , my predecessor as principal contributor to the Washington Monthly ’ s Political Animal blog ) , obviously could not have anticipated the pandemic when he wrote of Paul ’ s exploits .
But the example does show his eerie ability to identify GOP hypocrisy .
And in many ways , it ’ s representative of what the entire book is : a staggering chronicle of Republican duplicity .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ points and win elections , the Republican Party is willing to engage in completely contradictory behavior—even when it ’ s a matter of life and death .
The Imposters is a skillful illustration of how rank cynicism allowed Donald Trump to easily take control of the Republican Party .
Republicans , Benen shows , already had subordinated their traditions and alleged values to unprincipled hypocrisy , indifference to facts and empirical data , and self-serving partisanship long before Trump arrived .
The GOP created a vacuum in its own soul that the 45th @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his inflated self-regard and his uninhibited politics of lies and polarization .
To prove this , Benen focuses much of his attention on the eight years of Barack Obama ’ s presidency , when Republican politicians made everything the 44th president did or tried to do the object of unremitting hostility .
The book is most effective in analyzing the destructive austerity policies Republicans insisted on during and immediately after the Great Recession .
The party , he notes , now cheers for budget deficits and debt ( as it did under George @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as fiscal disciplinarians as long as Obama was in office .
Benen writes , The economic conditions that Barack Obama inherited couldn ’ t have been more dire .
And yet , upon taking office , the Democrat from Illinois faced immediate demands to balance the budget from the same Republicans who ’ d uprooted the nation ’ s fiscal foundations .
The GOP ’ s overwhelming hypocrisy and cynicism were obvious , but what was less appreciated was the degree to which the party was generally incoherent on the subject .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , for example , many Republican leaders with indefensible fiscal records struggled to explain their metamorphoses .
Senator Orrin Hatch , for example , told the Associated Press that “ it was standard practice not to pay for things ” during the Bush-Cheney era .
When Trump came along , it became standard practice again : Benen is rightfully concerned with the consequences this flip-flopping has for America .
And in a long chapter on Republican brinkmanship , which was expressed in threats to shut down the federal government and the actual shutdowns @ @ @ @ @ @ @ power , he displays the ultimate fruits of post-policy politics : a complete inability to govern : “ In 2013 the Washington Post ’ s Karen Tumulty described the dynamic as ‘ governing by near-death experience , ’ adding , ‘ It is as though Washington has had backward evolution— operating as a primitive , leaderless village where petulance passes for governance.
’ ” And that was before Trump took office .
Since his election , the GOP has effectively proved that non-governing is its operating procedure .
The party closed down the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2018 to January 2019 , the longest shutdown in U.S. history .
For part of it , Republicans controlled both houses of Congress .
It ended with Trump , who proudly took ownership over the shutdown , accepting a deal he could have had from the get-go .
The Imposters is a valuable reference book on Republican irresponsibility .
But I believe the hollowness and cluelessness on which Benen focuses is not purely the product of wanting to win , as he sometimes implies .
Instead , it has roots in conservative ideology @ @ @ @ @ @ @ And this ideology helps explain the party ’ s ruthlessness .
Over the last several decades , the Republican Party has been conquered by the Christian right and the overwhelmingly white Tea Party movement .
The former has a theocratic vision for America .
The latter militantly opposes economic redistribution .
These movements converged with a realization that demographic trends were unfriendly to their party ’ s older base , generating a white identity politics that found its natural expression in the intensely divisive and intermittently racist stylings of Trump .
Consider , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to “ Make America Great Again.
” It is effectively a pledge to return to the days when white men walked tall in America , Christianity was a quasi-official creed , and foreign influences were on the margins of national life—precisely the world that most Republicans yearn for .
Trump ’ s steady appointment of conservative judges gives evangelicals , many of whom believe that abortion is literal murder , exactly what they want .
His heavy ( if erratic ) investment in restrictionist immigration policies has always been central to his appeal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ GOP in that direction after George W. Bush and John McCain championed a more diverse future was far from being just another area of Republican electoral opportunism .
Indeed , some of what Benen sees as simple cynicism is arguably ideological as well .
Consider , for example , the party ’ s embrace of devious voter suppression and gerrymandering .
Benen treats these as a by-product of Republican opportunism .
But for a party existentially committed to restoring ( or preserving ) white , Christian supremacy in the face of increasing diversity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ delivering that dominance .
Similarly , the determination of Republicans to resist any hint of gun regulation , despite public opinion ( which The Imposters documents thoroughly ) , isn ’ t just a matter of gun lobby campaign contributions .
Instead , it comes from a genuine belief among grassroots conservatives that armed struggle against what Trump calls “ radical Democrat elites ” must remain an option if conventional politics fails .
Arguably the root problem with the GOP , then , isn ’ t extreme partisanship or a lazy dependence on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It is the belief that a virtual civil war is necessary to impose Red America ’ s will on Blue America , now and forever .
Donald Trump , with his contempt for democratic norms and his authoritarian narcissism , knows about as much as he needs to for the task of banana republic rule .
He is a suitable vessel for this project .
But regardless of whether Benen is right about the GOP ’ s motivations , he knows what must occur to make them to stop their assault : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ later .

In the fall of 2014, the Obama White House was busy trying to stop the spread of Ebola. The administration sent advisers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to assist the afflicted countries’ health ministries, and it sent troops to West Africa to build emergency hospitals. It began screening people arriving in the United States from at-risk nations. It isolated and treated several American medical personnel who contracted the virus abroad and brought it back home.
Toward the end of his new book, The Imposters, Steve Benen reminds us of what the Republican Party was doing while all of this was happening:
As Election Day neared . . . Kentucky Republican [Rand Paul’s] eagerness to exploit public anxieties started to spin out of control. Paul publicly questioned Ebola assessments from the actual experts, blamed “political correctness” for the Ebola threat, and traveled to battleground states questioning whether Obama administration officials had the “basic level of competence” necessary to maintain public safety. He added soon after, describing a hypothetical flight, “If this was a plane full of people who were symptomatic, you’d be at grave risk of getting Ebola. If a plane takes twelve hours, how do you know if people will become symptomatic or not?”
Fast-forward five and a half years. In March 2020, Paul was infected with COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, and did not self-quarantine. Instead, he spent time in the Capitol Hill swimming pool while waiting for his test results, potentially exposing his Senate colleagues. After he recovered, Donald Trump appointed him to a task force focused on quickly “reopening” the economy.
The Impostors:
How Republicans Quit Governing and Seized American Politics
by Steve Benen
William Morrow, 384 pp.
Benen, a blogger and producer for Rachel Maddow at MSNBC (and, as it happens, my predecessor as principal contributor to the Washington Monthly’s Political Animal blog), obviously could not have anticipated the pandemic when he wrote of Paul’s exploits. But the example does show his eerie ability to identify GOP hypocrisy. And in many ways, it’s representative of what the entire book is: a staggering chronicle of Republican duplicity. Benen shows that in order to score points and win elections, the Republican Party is willing to engage in completely contradictory behavior—even when it’s a matter of life and death.
The Imposters is a skillful illustration of how rank cynicism allowed Donald Trump to easily take control of the Republican Party. Republicans, Benen shows, already had subordinated their traditions and alleged values to unprincipled hypocrisy, indifference to facts and empirical data, and self-serving partisanship long before Trump arrived. The GOP created a vacuum in its own soul that the 45th president was easily able to fill with his inflated self-regard and his uninhibited politics of lies and polarization.
To prove this, Benen focuses much of his attention on the eight years of Barack Obama’s presidency, when Republican politicians made everything the 44th president did or tried to do the object of unremitting hostility. The book is most effective in analyzing the destructive austerity policies Republicans insisted on during and immediately after the Great Recession. The party, he notes, now cheers for budget deficits and debt (as it did under George W. Bush), but it posed as fiscal disciplinarians as long as Obama was in office. Benen writes,
The economic conditions that Barack Obama inherited couldn’t have been more dire. And yet, upon taking office, the Democrat from Illinois faced immediate demands to balance the budget from the same Republicans who’d uprooted the nation’s fiscal foundations. The GOP’s overwhelming hypocrisy and cynicism were obvious, but what was less appreciated was the degree to which the party was generally incoherent on the subject. In the first year of the Obama era, for example, many Republican leaders with indefensible fiscal records struggled to explain their metamorphoses. Senator Orrin Hatch, for example, told the Associated Press that “it was standard practice not to pay for things” during the Bush-Cheney era.
When Trump came along, it became standard practice again:
Eight years of rhetoric about a “debt crisis” came to an abrupt halt on Inauguration Day, January 20, 2017—not because the fiscal picture changed, but because the need to maintain the scam ended. To believe that the GOP changed its mind between the Obama and Trump presidencies is to believe that Republicans were occasionally sincere about their fiscal philosophy.
Benen is rightfully concerned with the consequences this flip-flopping has for America. And in a long chapter on Republican brinkmanship, which was expressed in threats to shut down the federal government and the actual shutdowns the GOP engineered in and out of power, he displays the ultimate fruits of post-policy politics: a complete inability to govern: “In 2013 the Washington Post’s Karen Tumulty described the dynamic as ‘governing by near-death experience,’ adding, ‘It is as though Washington has had backward evolution—
operating as a primitive, leaderless village where petulance passes for governance.’”
And that was before Trump took office. Since his election, the GOP has effectively proved that non-governing is its operating procedure. The party closed down the government for 35 days, from December 2018 to January 2019, the longest shutdown in U.S. history. For part of it, Republicans controlled both houses of Congress. It ended with Trump, who proudly took ownership over the shutdown, accepting a deal he could have had from the get-go.
The Imposters is a valuable reference book on Republican irresponsibility. But I believe the hollowness and cluelessness on which Benen focuses is not purely the product of wanting to win, as he sometimes implies. Instead, it has roots in conservative ideology that go deeper than partisan expediency. And this ideology helps explain the party’s ruthlessness.
Over the last several decades, the Republican Party has been conquered by the Christian right and the overwhelmingly white Tea Party movement. The former has a theocratic vision for America. The latter militantly opposes economic redistribution. These movements converged with a realization that demographic trends were unfriendly to their party’s older base, generating a white identity politics that found its natural expression in the intensely divisive and intermittently racist stylings of Trump.
Consider, for example, Trump’s promise to “Make America Great Again.” It is effectively a pledge to return to the days when white men walked tall in America, Christianity was a quasi-official creed, and foreign influences were on the margins of national life—precisely the world that most Republicans yearn for. Trump’s steady appointment of conservative judges gives evangelicals, many of whom believe that abortion is literal murder, exactly what they want. His heavy (if erratic) investment in restrictionist immigration policies has always been central to his appeal, and the sudden lurch of the GOP in that direction after George W. Bush and John McCain championed a more diverse future was far from being just another area of Republican electoral opportunism.
Indeed, some of what Benen sees as simple cynicism is arguably ideological as well. Consider, for example, the party’s embrace of devious voter suppression and gerrymandering. Benen treats these as a by-product of Republican opportunism. But for a party existentially committed to restoring (or preserving) white, Christian supremacy in the face of increasing diversity, they are a direct means of delivering that dominance. Similarly, the determination of Republicans to resist any hint of gun regulation, despite public opinion (which The Imposters documents thoroughly), isn’t just a matter of gun lobby campaign contributions. Instead, it comes from a genuine belief among grassroots conservatives that armed struggle against what Trump calls “radical Democrat elites” must remain an option if conventional politics fails.
Arguably the root problem with the GOP, then, isn’t extreme partisanship or a lazy dependence on lobbyists or a taste for fact-free demagoguery. It is the belief that a virtual civil war is necessary to impose Red America’s will on Blue America, now and forever. Donald Trump, with his contempt for democratic norms and his authoritarian narcissism, knows about as much as he needs to for the task of banana republic rule. He is a suitable vessel for this project.
But regardless of whether Benen is right about the GOP’s motivations, he knows what must occur to make them to stop their assault:
Throughout American history, the most powerful force for partisan change has been the incentive to win elections. Major parties overhaul their tactics and perspectives not after victories but in the wake of multiple defeats. With this in mind, the Republican Party is likely to become a governing party again when American voters tell the GOP it has no other choice.
It needs to happen sooner rather than later.