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<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/"><img src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/misc/nytlogo153x23.gif" alt="The New York Times" border="0" hspace="0" vspace="0" align="left"></a></div><br></div>
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<div class="timestamp">February 27, 2012</div>
<h1>The Possum Republicans</h1>
<span><h6 class="byline">By <a rel="author" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/davidbrooks/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More Articles by David Brooks" class="meta-per">DAVID BROOKS</a></h6>
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<p>
Politicians do what they must to get re-elected. So it’s not unexpected
that Republican senators like Richard Lugar and Orrin Hatch would swing
sharply to the right to fend off primary challengers. </p>
<p>
As Jonathan Weisman <a title="The article" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/us/politics/republicans-stampede-to-the-right-ahead-of-2012-election.html">reported in The Times</a>
on Sunday, Hatch has a lifetime rating of 78 percent from the
ultra-free market Club for Growth, but, in the past two years, he has
miraculously jumped to 100 percent and 99 percent, respectively. Lugar
has earned widespread respect for his thoughtful manner and independent
ways. Now he’s more of a reliable Republican foot soldier. </p>
<p>
Still, it is worth pointing out that this behavior is not entirely
honorable. It’s not honorable to adjust your true nature in order to win
re-election. It’s not honorable to kowtow to the extremes so you can
preserve your political career. </p>
<p>
But, of course, this is exactly what has been happening in the
Republican Party for the past half century. Over these decades, one
pattern has been constant: Wingers fight to take over the party,
mainstream Republicans bob and weave to keep their seats. </p>
<p>
Republicans on the extreme ferociously attack their fellow party
members. Those in the middle backpedal to avoid conflict. Republicans on
the extreme are willing to lose elections in order to promote their
principles. Those in the mainstream are quick to fudge their principles
if it will help them get a short-term win. </p>
<p>
In the 1960s and ’70s, the fight was between conservatives and
moderates. Conservatives trounced the moderates and have driven them
from the party. These days the fight is between the protesters and the
professionals. The grass-roots protesters in the Tea Party and elsewhere
have certain policy ideas, but they are not that different from the
Republicans in the “establishment.” </p>
<p>
The big difference is that the protesters don’t believe in governance.
They have zero tolerance for the compromises needed to get legislation
passed. They don’t believe in trimming and coalition building. For them,
politics is more about earning respect and making a statement than it
is about enacting legislation. It’s grievance politics, identity
politics. </p>
<p>
Of course, the professional politicians don’t want to get in the way of
this torrent of passion and resentment. In private, they bemoan where
the party is headed; in public they do nothing. </p>
<p>
All across the nation, there are mainstream Republicans lamenting how
the party has grown more and more insular, more and more rigid. This
year, they have an excellent chance to defeat President Obama, yet the
wingers have trashed the party’s reputation by swinging from one
embarrassing and unelectable option to the next: Bachmann, Trump, Cain,
Perry, Gingrich, Santorum. </p>
<p>
But where have these party leaders been over the past five years, when
all the forces that distort the G.O.P. were metastasizing? Where were
they during the rise of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck? Where were they when
Arizona passed its beyond-the-fringe immigration law? Where were they
in the summer of 2011 when the House Republicans rejected even the
possibility of budget compromise? They were lying low, hoping the
unpleasantness would pass. </p>
<p>
The wingers call their Republican opponents RINOs, or Republican In Name
Only. But that’s an insult to the rhino, which is a tough, noble beast.
If RINOs were like rhinos, they’d stand up to those who seek to destroy
them. Actually, what the country needs is some real Rhino Republicans.
But the professional Republicans never do that. They’re not rhinos.
They’re Opossum Republicans. They tremble for a few seconds then slip
into an involuntary coma every time they’re challenged aggressively from
the right. </p>
<p>
Without real opposition, the wingers go from strength to strength. Under
their influence, we’ve had a primary campaign that isn’t really an
argument about issues. It’s a series of heresy trials in which each of
the candidates accuse the others of tribal impurity. Two kinds of
candidates emerge from this process: first, those who are forceful but
outside the mainstream; second, those who started out mainstream but
look weak and unprincipled because they have spent so much time
genuflecting before those who despise them. </p>
<p>
Neither is likely to win in the fall. Before the G.O.P. meshugana
campaign, independents were leaning toward the G.O.P. But, in the latest
Politico/George Washington University Battleground Poll, Obama leads
Mitt Romney among independents by 49 percent to 27 percent. </p>
<p>
Leaders of a party are supposed to educate the party, to police against
its worst indulgences, to guard against insular information loops.
They’re supposed to define a creed and establish boundaries. Republican
leaders haven’t done that. Now the old pious cliché applies: </p>
<p>
First they went after the Rockefeller Republicans, but I was not a
Rockefeller Republican. Then they went after the compassionate
conservatives, but I was not a compassionate conservative. Then they
went after the mainstream conservatives, and there was no one left to
speak for me. </p>
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<br>-- <br>Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)<br><a href="mailto:art.deco.studios@gmail.com" target="_blank">art.deco.studios@gmail.com</a><br>