The Nihilist Party

The Republican Party Is Dead. The New Party in it's Wake is "The Nihilist Party." We Need to Call it That.

The Republican Party is Dead.

Don’t blame Matt Gaetz for his stupid move to remove Kevin McCarthy. He didn’t kill it. Don’t blame Tucker Carlson or the phonies on Fox News, they didn’t kill it either, merely described and pushed what was already occurring within the party in the same direction. Don’t blame Donald Trump either; he was just the end result of the natural conclusion of a whole host of factors that were at play for decades.

The fact is, it’s been dead for a long time we just never fully realized it until now. All those things mentioned above demonstrated it over and over again; they were symptoms of what we were unwilling to see with our own eyes.

The Republican Party is no more.

Thing is, it’s easy to go along and say nothing has changed. It takes no work at all to keep calling things the same. But in the same vein as “The Ship of Theseus” paradox¹, where if you remove and replace every plank of the ship it is both the same ship and a completely different one, the Republican Pary has had every plank of its ship removed and is no longer the same Party. It is in form and function, a completely different vessel. Because of that, we need to acknowledge that the Republican Party is dead and that something else entirely has taken its place.

As with all downfalls, it tends to go slow over a long time and then off the cliff all at once. From what I can gather, here were the phases of the Republican Party’s demise:

The “Conservative” Phase (1980-1993)

You may be thinking, “Wait a minute, this is the START of the Republican revolution, it was it’s peak in popularity, when Reagan completely re-aligned the parties and the Republican Party was ascendent.” You would be correct in that regard. However, just like small holes in dams can weaken and destroy the dam altogether over time, the seeds of the eventual demise were layed back in this yonder time, and are still so powerful that the party today still gives them lip service.

The central tenet, the core idea of Reagan Republicanism, was that government was an irrefutable evil, a villain to be removed or at least corralled and minimized. Now, back in 1980, when government was still largely bloated and taxes still high,² this idea had merit and some resonance, hyperbole aside. It was a conservative view, standing athwart history yelling “Stop!” But it was also a reductionist one too—to simply go back and reduce, well, everything.

The seeds of the party’s destruction begin with this simple concept. Because, over time, as government became hollowed out and barely able to fulfill much of its basic duties, it became barely functional. Republicans continued to use that as more proof government doesn’t work and continued to gut it out even further.³ Party adherents today still pay lip service to the Reagan aura and the mantras concocted in those days, even though many of the problems that prompted them back then no longer exist. The memorized spin and the prefabricated soundbites are Republican orthodoxy; however its ability to further cut and gut, and provide reductions in revenue are not limitless, and they have been up against that wall for well over a decade now.

Voters no longer want them to reduce government further, although it still sounds good. Ask them what to cut and its erroneous billions of dollars from parts of the budget actually smaller than that. The single largest holes in our balance sheet are caused by ruinous tax cuts with no offsets, but Republicans would never support raising taxes. So GOP elected officials have been saying they would do something for a long time, and nothing ever happens because nothing further can be cut without voters rebelling.

The “Deconstruction” Phase (1994-2010)

Prior to this period, Republicans had their interests but they still worked with Democrats to get things done. There was a level of respect, coordination and a common working relationship that required a level of courtesty, tact and diplomacy. Much of the business of the country and governing required it. There were still moderates in both parties across the country who could be cajoled and appealed to for bipartisan legislation.

Then came Newt Gingrich.

Gingrich was no longer content with just lessening the size of government, he bought into the idea of deconstructing it, all the governing norms, and any semblance of bipartisanship altogether.⁴ The incendiary manner of his rhetoric became copied by other Republican legislators and is now dogma within the party. He took a house of reverence and diplomacy where the “people’s business” gets done and took a wrecking ball to it. With a more radicalized Republican majority in both the House and the Senate, he went to work eliminating large swaths of the federal government, and he didn’t need to work with Democrats to do it. When he went toe to toe with President Clinton over the budget, federal shutdowns started occurring.⁵ Republicans lost the art of dealmaking, and instead focused on just hammering through legislation by themselves, because they had the votes to do it.⁶ Some of these were deeply unpopular cuts and plans to cut popular programs like Medicare and Social Security, that were viewed by most all voters as sacred and untouchable. This kind of governing backfired, with the Republicans losing seats in 1996 and 1998.⁷

With the election of 2000, the red state/blue state walls hardened, and each district became fought over harshly. This is when polarization within the parties became much more familiar. Gone were the moderate Republicans or the conservative Democrats. The parties self-segregated into urban/coastal and rural/southern parties and fought over fringe-y suburban neighborhoods in metropolitan areas and a handful of swing states.

Following 9/11, George W. Bush softened the hard edges of Gingrich’s approach (remember “compassionate conservatism”?) but still governed from the Right. He greatly increased the size of the military and domestic policing with the Patriot Act, The Department of Homeland Security and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which was typically Republican policy, but fiscally were uncharacteristically unconservative. He continued deregulating industries but the size and cost of government exploded. When the costs of the wars skyrocketed, Katrina hit New Orleans, and the Housing Bubble burst, the GOP had demonstrated that their policies were unpopular, ungovernable and unconservative. GOP voters were angry and wanted something else.

They got a glimpse of it in the 2008 election with McCain’s selection of a V.P., but they wouldn’t truly realize it until 2010.

The Nihilist Phase

Obama was elected in 2008 to help steady the ship. The economy collapsed only 2 months before his election, bailouts that started in the Bush Administration were still being sorted out. Policies to help stem the bleeding and right the course were necessary but very unpopular, of which Obama would take much of the blame for implementing.

Then on February 19, 2009, Rick Santelli reporting from the floor of the Chicago Exchange called for the start of a new Tea Party.

This struck a chord with a lot of disillusioned conservatives, utterly dismayed at the disaster that the Bush years had resulted in. They were angry at the bailouts, angry at the banks, angry at the politicians, angry at everybody even remotely associated with government. The way they would’ve handled the housing meltdown is they would let the economy tank into another depresssion and start over again; kind of a first world reset of sorts. Watching the big banks fail was the essence of laissez-faire capitalism, and they had been screwed out of it by bailouts and a ton of moral hazard. ⁸ They had been cheated out of it; this is the start of that undercurrent of nihilism that still exists today.

Obama’s policies did right the ship, but nobody felt good about what happened. They wanted to see people pay for nearly collapsing the world economy and nobody really did. The energy was all on the Tea Party side. Republicans successfully incorporated the new energetic activists into their party and the result was a complete shellacking of Democrats in 2010. The most popular legislators were no longer party leaders, they were the hollow, vapid bomb throwers with large social media followings who mocked, ridiculed and provided nothing but empty rhetoric (Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, Jim Jordan, etc). However, these insurgents weren’t just content in just holding the reins of power; they genuinely wanted to destroy many of the norms and institutions of government itself. Think Gingrich to the nth power.

Who were their first targets? They went to work primarying GOP members to get them to go even further to the right, towards this “nihilist Tea Party caucus.” Majority Leader Eric Cantor lost his primary, as did many seasoned legislators. They forced Speaker John Boehner out. The goal of winning elections was no longer to decide whose vision of America was what everyone wanted, or to govern, it was to get everyone as far to the right, in line, without any dissent possible. It was to be as outrageous, receive the most clicks, the most cable soundbites and get all the attention. The old guard establishment was wiped away; the new generation of mindless “burn it all down” extremists took it’s place.

The natural extension of that was the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Here was a candidate with genuinely no interest in governing at all, only the trappings of power and in attaining the adulations and benefits of everything that comes with it. Consider this; it took Trump 16 months to pass a tax cut, something that is central to every Republican governing philosophy and core to Republican actions.

And so it continued, until we get to this point, today, two days after Kevin McCarthy was done in by a bunch of renegade buffoons, who wouldn’t even let him become Speaker of the House unless they could kick him out whenever they wanted. When the Republican party no longer has any interest in actually governing, and by every word they only utter that they want to tear the whole institution of governance down, it no longer exists as the Republican Party it once was. It’s not even a conservative one. Nihilism reigns.

What Could Have Stopped It

There have been plenty of opportunities to stop this slide. All it took was for the bulk of members to speak up as one and put the senseless in their place instead of playing it safe and going along with the flow. They could have even defected, choosing to work with Democrats in areas of mutual beneficial interest, but chose to keep things in-house in the caucus. They chose to follow the crowd like lemmings off the cliff and that is why they are where they are now.

In Paradise Lost, there’s a story of Abdiel, who follows his own beliefs and singularly challenges Satan in front of all the Devils' hosts. Abdiel is not swayed by Satan's arguments and taunts him, then heroically deserts Satan. Abdiel is the only one of the angels present who has the fortitude and moral character to oppose the mighty archangel, and is booed and shamed by the other fallen angels as he does so. When Abdiel returns to heaven he is praised by God and the other archangels for his loyalty and avoiding the temptation to go with the other rebellious angels.

It’s exceptionally easy to go along with bad choices, particularly when it is apparent there appears to be no cost to it; but there is ALWAYS a cost. Republicans have been sliding down the path to nihilism for years. All they needed was to rally around more tempered individuals who simply say “This goes too far.” Instead of doing the right thing, they greased the wheels for their eventual damnation. Now the Party is completely ensconced in this hellish netherland, and the most likely leaders are the ones who only want to venture into the pit even further. The bill has come due, and there is no way out for them.

• Its the reason all of them went along with everything Trump said and did during his four years, even though they knew him to be an idiot and danger to the US.

• It’s the reason they didn’t confront him or stand up against him on January 6th.

• It’s the reason there was zero support from them for a 1/6 Committee.

• It’s the reason most of them refused to vote for Impeachment even though they knew what Trump did was deserving of it.

• It’s the reason they keep their mouths shut now and plan on supporting Trump again in 2024.

And that is why the Republican Party is dead. It’s no longer the party of Reagan, nor even the party of Gingrich. It’s a party of empty slogans, hollow promises, and spineless characters. It’s the party of a bunch of narrow minded terrorists who want to get on screen, get the likes on social media and do nothing but talk about blowing it all up, and also the party of a bunch of spineless hacks who let them do it. There’s still a chance, if the sane legislators out there spoke up as one in public, lamenting the self-flagellating and self-defeating actions of the more ludicrous members of their caucus, instead of being cowards baring their issues behind closed doors. But they won’t do that. It’s easier for them to go along and watch, rather than actually lead.

So we need to call it what it is. It’s a far cry from the “Grand Old Party/GOP” that we like to use as shorthand. It’s the Republican Party no more., that ship has long sailed.

It’s now The Nihilist Party.

PurpleAmerica’s Final Word on the Subject

Yesterday, we gave it to Satan from Paradise Lost. Today, we give it to Abdiel from the same book:

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Footnotes and Fun Stuff

1. This was first proposed by Archimedes. It states if the Ship of Theseus has had every board in it removed and replaced with a different board, can it still truly be called “The Ship of Theseus?” Logic would say “no, it is entirely a new ship” but the answer isn’t so simple. For instance, if every player on a team is changed, are you still supporting the same team? You are maybe the uniforms but the people who comprise the team are completely different—its a different team. Or even, if every molecule or cell in your body has been replaced by new cells or new molecules, are “you” still “you?” This paradox is one of the central thoughts of philosophy.

2. The tax rates seen in 1980 would be considered confiscatory today.

3. I always find it ironic when people complain about government in some capacity, that the service is lackluster and that the spectrum of services are too narrow, and then they vote to reduce it even further.

4. A famous quote by Grover Norquist, a colleague of Gingrich, was “My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”

5. These normalized the shutdowns. Before Gingrich, they were rare occurences.

6. This became known as “The Hastert Rule” after one of Gingrich’s successors to the Speakership, Dennis Hastert. His rule said never to bring a vote to the floor unless you had the majority votes from within your own caucus to do it.

7. Gingrich would eventually lose the speakership, for what many associate with his hypocrisy over Impeaching Clinton over an affair, of which Gingrich also was at the time; however, many in his caucus thought he was too quick to give in on the shutdowns and negotiate with Clinton, and thus he was discarded by hard liners for not being hard enough.

8. One of the more interesting things I’ve read in the past 10 years was the idea that the current popularity of apocalypse and zombie shows stems from this idea; that we all wanted to see the mighty brought down and were cheated out of it.