A party where any self-selecting yahoo can come off the street and replace a powerful incumbent is not a party worthy of the name. In a real political party, these “primary challengers” would not be feared and placated — they’d be derided and expelled. It’s not as though we don’t have models for what that looks like. Remember the primary challenge to Lieberman? Even though the challenger was technically the Democratic candidate, he was effectively a third-party candidate and lost easily to Lieberman. That’s the way you make sure people know primary elections are an empty gesture. The fact that Lieberman was one of the most hated figures among the party’s “base” only reinforced the message.
That’s how a proper ruling party conducts itself. It doesn’t embrace some random candidate endorsed by people on the internet — the party decides who’s in the party, and the base can either accept it or go vote for the other guy. This is incredibly simple and basic. If you want to be a ruling party, you have to go for the self-perpetuating elite model. Otherwise you’re just a pointless protest party.
Even the existence of protest candidates is a betrayal of American values, however.
The Founders, in their infinite wisdom, gave us the gift of a political system so convoluted as to evade all popular accountability. Every two years, you can vote only a few of the bastards out of office — and the more powerful the bastards are, the less often the public gets to chime in. One benefit of this system is that nothing like a coherent political agenda or program can be implemented.
The only policies that can get passed are those that are already supported by a broad consensus of the American ruling class. Out of respect for local control, the Founders also made room in their system for corrupt local interests to be bought off rather than bowled over in implementing these consensus decisions. This allows for greater buy-in across a wider range of elites and has the further benefit of increasing opacity and thus diminishing the possibility of popular accountability. In short, it’s a really robust system.
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Deprived of the means of placating the local elites they represent, members of Congress have increasingly been forced to advocate ideas and, even worse, principles. The result has been the absolute deadlock that now threatens the to disrupt the operations of the government and even the state’s special role in propping up business elites via the national debt. Obama has tried to tap into the Zeitgeist by elevating his party’s opportunism to the level of a principle in itself, yet without the means to buy votes by making sure important contributors get no-bid contracts, the whole exercise is hopeless.
The whole point of principles is that you don’t compromise them — which is why the Founders created a constitutional system in which compromise was mandatory and principles were decidedly unwelcome.
In short, establishment Republicans must reassert their power by expelling the Tea Party protest candidates. They should consult with their Democratic colleagues on how best to crush populist hopes and inculcate an attitude of resigned hopelessness in their “base.” Ideally, of course, primary elections would be entirely abolished, but failing that, the Democrats have a rich array of techniques for ensuring that they remain the empty gesture they were intended to be. It will take real resolve to overcome the idealists and reclaim the party for corrupt insiders, but at this point, the Republicans owe it to themselves and to the American people to revert to being the kind of opportunistic nihilists the American constitutional system was designed for.
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