How Deep Will The Divide Be Between Corporate Republicans And For-Profit Republicans? And Between Real Democrats And ConservaDems?

It's long but Alan Minsky did a thorough biopsy of the tumor debilitating the Beltway Democrats. He starts by acknowledging what the mainstream media won't-- that the shellacking last Tuesday was a debacle for the Blue Dogs and New Dems who make up the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, what Minsky calls "the centrist Clinton/Obama Democratic Party." His premise is that their misery is an opportunity for normal, non-Beltway, non-careerist, progressive, grassroots Democrats. And that opportunity is what the Goldwaterites seized after they disaster in 1965 and what the Tea Party seized in 2009.

[I]f real left progressives are going to try to take center stage in the Democratic Party by mobilizing a mass movement of supporters, they need to put forward a compelling, realistic vision for a more prosperous, freer and socially just America-- one that can be captured in language as simple as Reagan’s (minus the demagoguery) and that is backed up by rock-solid public policy proposals.

The key to winning the hearts and minds of Americans is to address their primary concerns and anxieties, and do so in a way that paints a promising vision for the immediate future. There’s no mystery about the source of the greatest anxiety: Neoliberal capitalism has placed the vast majority of the population in an economically precarious position. The question is: How do we make this country work for everyone?

This is not as hard as it sounds. Once again, we start with a winning hand. America remains the richest country in the world with assets far beyond any nation in history. The problem is with the distribution of these riches. One of the priorities of a modern political party should be to scour the earth for the best strategies for social, economic organization.

It is no secret that the social democracies of Western Europe (and, in a manner, the U.S. after Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidency) represent a public policy blueprint for the most prosperous, equitable, healthy, well-educated, peaceful modern technological societies on record. Applying the logic and specifics of these programs to contemporary America would not only rectify the endemic pathologies that afflict the country (poverty, mass incarceration, mal-education, poor health), but given the wealth of the 21st century United States, it would outstrip the performance of any previous country. In short, we could have an America with little or no poverty and a huge prosperous middle class with a market-driven economy that remains as vibrant as it is today-- and social democracies do wonderful things like offer more vacation time and free health care.

We all know the right-wing media machine would create a cacophony about the horrors of Big Government, but if you list the components of what a left progressive platform might look like, it’s clear that many of the policies would have majority support:

• Social Security funded for the next century (with the possibility of expanding it) by raising the cap on income levels contributing into the system, while maintaining a cap on payments

• A single payer (Medicare for all) health system

• Free public education through college

• A sharp increase in the national minimum wage and two weeks of paid vacation for all workers

• Rapid citizenship for immigrant workers and their families

• Ending the war on drugs and decriminalization

• Ending government spying

• Sane gun laws

• Support for a woman’s right to choose and equal pay legislation

• Reform of the justice system so that it applies equally to all people

• Invest in green energy and take the lead in combating global warming globally

• Shift foreign policy to support people and not every region’s 1 percent

• As for funding fiscal policy, there’s no need for making income tax levels more progressive (since the change in Social Security achieves that already)-- but, in accordance with Capital in the Twenty-First Century author Thomas Piketty, raise the rate on capital gains. Also bring corporate taxes back in to line with pre-Reagan era levels by both closing loopholes and raising the tax rate on profits.

• And finally, a program dear to my late father’s (economist Hyman Minsky) heart-- an employer of last resort (ELR) program, like Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps, in which the government would hire every unemployed person who wants to work at a daily wage that would extrapolate to an annual living wage. (This is probably too radical a proposal for many members of the current CPC, but not for some.) And if not this ambitious plan, a basic national income. I think ELR would work much better and also make a real contribution to elements of the economy that the market addresses inadequately; and it can be organized so that localities have control over ELR projects. ELR’s possibilities for transforming society are immense, but either ELR or a basic income program would conquer poverty like nothing we’ve seen in our lives and empower workers who would no longer fear leaving wretched jobs.

• If the tax increases on the wealthy and corporations aren’t enough to cover the costs, there’s a bloated military budget to shrink.

A program like this would take America off of its neoliberal course. It directly addresses the fears and anxieties of a precarious, under-compensated citizenry, and it’s no more radical than the approach espoused by the greatest Democrat of the 20th century, FDR.

And the other side of the coin... well we saw it today when the Republican extremist wing was ranting and raving about mass deportation, shutting down the government again, repealing the Affordable Care Act and sandbagging Loretta Lynch, Obama's Attorney General nominee. Other than die-hard Confederate secessionists, Republicans are well aware that is exactly what the public does not want to see. In Sunday's NY Times Jeremy Peters gave everyone a nice look at the Republican Party civil war that's already flaring up again. "As most Republicans were taking a victory lap the morning after the elections," he wrote, "a group of conservatives huddled anxiously in a conference room not far from Capitol Hill and agreed that now is the time for confrontation, not compromise and conciliation." He didn't really mean "conservatives" like Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn and John Thune in the Senate and John Boehner, Kevin McCarthy and Paul Ryan in the House. But The Times doesn't allow its writers to use words like fascists or neo-fascists to describe Republican Party elected officials who are fascists or neo-fascists-- like Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson, Joni Ernst and Mike Lee, and the whole sick menagerie from the lunatic fringe they just elected to House seats. They have to call them "conservatives," just like actual conservatives. To distinguish, Peters tried referring to the fascists as "the party’s activist wing" and the actual conservatives as "establishment Republicans." The former apparently fears the latter, who have discouraged the kind of impeachment and lynching talk that works so well back home on the local Hate Talk Radio shows with no ratings, are "being too timid with Obama."

“If the new Republican leadership in the Senate is only talking about what they can’t do, that’s going to be very demoralizing,” said Thomas J. Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a conservative advocacy group that convenes a regular gathering called Groundswell. Any sense of triumph at its meeting last week was fleeting.

“I think the members of the leadership need to decide what they’re willing to shut down the government over,” Mr. Fitton said.

Establishment Republicans, who had vowed to thwart the Tea Party, succeeded in electing new lawmakers who are, for the most part, less rebellious. And when the new Congress convenes in January, the Republican leaders who will take the reins will be mainly in the mold of conservatives who have tried to keep the Tea Party in check.

But they have not crushed the movement’s spirit.

As Republicans on Capitol Hill transition from being the opposition party to being one that has to show it can govern, a powerful tension is emerging: how to move forward with an agenda that challenges the president without self-destructing.

Some conservatives believe that the threat of another shutdown is their strongest leverage to demand concessions on the health care law and to stop the president from carrying out immigration reform through executive order. Yet their leadership has dismissed the idea as a suicide mission that could squander the recent gains.

One thing that will prove popular among the base is a commitment by Senator Mitch McConnell, the presumptive new majority leader, to bring up a bill that would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, which he is expected to do next year.

Whether the party can reconcile more demands of its base with the will of its leadership could determine how enduring the Republican Senate majority will be. The crop of senators up for re-election in 2016 includes those elected in the first Tea Party wave of 2010. And in a sign of what is at stake, even some of them are sounding notes of compromise and caution that would have been unthinkable at the height of the right’s resurgence.

“I understand the frustrations of the conservative base; I am one of them,” said Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, one of the original class of Tea Party-inspired senators. “I also recognize reality.”

“We’re not going to pass the entire conservative agenda tomorrow. We can certainly lay it out,” Mr. Johnson added. “Let’s start with the things we can pass. Doesn’t that make more sense?”

But in a stark reminder of the difficulties Republican leaders will face from within their own ranks, other lawmakers popular with the Tea Party base are saying the fight is on.

As votes were still being counted on election night Tuesday, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said Republicans could still work through Congress to dismantle the Affordable Care Act-- even though the president is guaranteed to veto anything Congress passes that undermines it. “After winning a historic majority, it is incumbent on us to honor promises and do everything humanly possible to stop Obamacare,” Mr. Cruz said in an interview.

Some Republican senators rejected that outright. “There are intelligent things to do, and there are some not-so-intelligent things to do,” said Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah. “And one of the first things we should do is find some areas of common ground with our Democrat friends.”

Tea Party conservatives, many of whom argue that the government shutdown last year was a sound strategy, said they were baffled by remarks after the election by Mr. McConnell that the Senate under his control would prioritize policies that Republicans knew Democrats would also support.

...Any perception that Mr. McConnell is not sufficiently committed to repealing the health care law, despite his running hard against it in his own re-election campaign, would renew the same fissures among Republicans that preceded the government shutdown.

“That would cause a civil war inside the Republican Party,” said Richard Viguerie, a longtime conservative activist, referring to anything the party’s base saw as a halfhearted attempt at repeal. “There’s almost zero trust between the base and the Republican leaders.”

No one did more to demoralize Tea Party candidates and conservative agitators than Mr. McConnell, who vowed to “crush” every Republican primary challenger. (He did; none defeated an incumbent senator.) He also blacklisted Republicans who worked with groups supporting insurgents.

Privately, McConnell aides say they are less concerned these days about the impact of senators like Mr. Cruz, whom they describe as an “army of one.” Mr. McConnell believes his standing with conservative voters is solid. And he has the votes to prove it. He won his own primary over a Tea Party conservative, 60 percent to 35 percent. An NBC News/Marist College poll showed him beating his main primary opponent 53 percent to 33 percent among Tea Party voters.

He and his allies dismiss their Tea Party opponents as “for-profit conservatives” because of the fund-raising they do in the name of purifying the Republican brand.

“The for-profit wing of the Republican Party will always have a voice, but after this last election, they don’t have much credibility,” said Scott Reed, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s senior political strategist. “I’m not sure many folks will listen to it much longer. Governing still matters, and the good news is, everybody who was elected is into governing.”

Most of the Republicans just elected to the Senate appear to be team players. Cory Gardner of Colorado, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Steve Daines of Montana are all low-key members of Congress. Thom Tillis of North Carolina is the speaker of the State House and a favorite of the party establishment.

Still, Tea Party conservatives are a formidable voting bloc. Mr. McConnell will have to negotiate an especially cautious balance between their demands and those of the senators in his conference who are contemplating running for president in 2016, and so need the support of the party’s base. With no one is this more fraught than Mr. McConnell’s fellow Kentuckian, Senator Rand Paul. Mr. Paul and his advisers say that they recognize Tea Party supporters helped deliver the Senate for the Republicans, and that the party ignores them at its peril.

“They showed up,” said Doug Stafford, a senior adviser to Mr. Paul. “You can’t look at the turnout models, the polling pre-election and the results, and not think that conservatives showed up for this. They did.”