Amber Phillips of The Washington Post wrote about the fissures within the Republican Party, which have made incapable of putting forth a coherent agenda or passing any significant legislation. The heart of their disunity is the split between a dwindling number of reasonable Republicans—that is, those CD who are willling to engage in bipartisanship—and a growing number of extremists who abhor compromise, even with other Republicans.
Phillips wrote:
This week, we’re reviewing some of the most important political stories of 2023. Today: How — and why — Republicans are struggling to govern.
The Republicans’ struggles to be a cohesive party are probably most evident in their tumultuous year in the House of Representatives.
Republicans narrowly took over the majority of the House in the 2022 midterms, took days to elect a speaker, then careened toward legislative crisis after legislative crisis that would have hurt the economy (the debt ceiling showdown; government shutdown threats). They opened an impeachment inquiry into President Biden that has struggled to get off the ground with actual facts. They kicked out their speaker and froze the House for three weeks while they fought over choosing another. It ended up being one of the least-productive sessions of Congress in modern times.
Republican strategists I talked to agreed that something irreparable has happened to the party. Healthy parties don’t freeze an entire legislative chamber that they control.
“They fought so hard to be a governing majority,” said strategist Alice Stewart, referring to House Republicans, “and they can’t even agree among themselves. And that’s bad.”
Other Republicans say the House speaker drama reflects a broader problem for the party, one that has been metastasizing for decades. Depending on how you look at it, almost every Republican speaker since Newt Gingrich in the mid-1990s has been pushed out or has stepped down over deep ideological splits within the party between moderates and the hard right.Then there’s the Republican presidential primary, where the front-runner is a candidate who has been twice impeached (including with votes from members of his own party), is facing 91 criminal charges, could face jail time and has been ruled by the Colorado Supreme Court as ineligible to appear on that state’s primary ballot.
“The party has been damaged for years,” said one Republican strategist, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations with party leaders. “And it’s not recoverable.”
Historian Thomas Balcerski, at Eastern Connecticut State University, went as far as to write for CNN this fall that we could be witnessing “the possible collapse of the Republican Party as we know it.”
“A failure to reach a majority consensus signals the doom of an American political party,” he wrote.
Leaders don’t seem to have an answer on what to do next.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Does today’s abortion struggle bear a resemblance to the fugitive slave law conflict in the 1850 by criminalizing anti slavery actions across state borders and imposing slavery mandates upon non slave state citizens?
Thanks for making the point.
It was the fugitive slave issue that destroyed the Whig party and produced the Republican Party, so I can see why you would ask.
The difference I see is that thee we issue of abortion goes to the heart of the relationship between a citizen and a federal or state government, whereas the fugitive slave law required a person who opposed slavery to actively support it by helping apprehend a fugitive from the system. In a lot of ways, these issues are opposite the ones raised in the fugitive slave act
Roy-
Would you elaborate, including a broader perspective? “The heart of the (abortion ban laws) relationship,” is between the right wing religious power brokers and the government. The “heart” of the (fugitive law) relationship was between slaveowners/their sympathizers and the government.
Btw- The majority of citizens oppose the abortion ban (where it’s been on the ballot).
The fugitive act forced opponents of slavery to act against their duty to protect human rights. In some states, laws are forcing opponents of abortion bans from their duty to protect the human rights of women.
Linda: I see the anti-abortion crowd as attempting to force society to accept a singular view of the beginning of life. Their view may or may not be actually motivated by this belief, since there are various other reasons people want to restrict women’s behavior. This is an issue relating to the idea of what role the government should play in the life of the individual. People who support the right of a citizen to make medical decisions in consultation with a professional see the issue this way.
The Fugitive Slave Act created a system that made local law enforcement in states where people opposed slavery a part of the enforcement of laws that existed in other states. This might become analogous to the abortion issue if federal restrictions on abortion begin to go into place in the future.
I hope this is reasonable and readable.
Roy
Respectfully, IMO, 4 out of 5 of your sentences in the first paragraph are immaterial to the discussion.
A role of government is to protect the rights of citizens from those who would deny them. The husband found criminally complicit in aiding his wife in getting an abortion, the abortion doctor charged with murder when he/she saves the life of a pregnant woman, both are forced to deny human rights for the purpose of satisfying proponents of right wing religion. It is similar to law enforcement or citizens forced to return slaves, depriving them of their rights because it satisfies the slave owner.
I thought the discussion was about whether the abortion controversy was analogous to the Fugitive Slave Act. I was trying to highlight some differences while agreeing with the original idea that there were similarities.
Sorry if I am not being clear. Can I blame it on age, or would you rather go with mental infirmity?
Roy-May I have option C?
Adding, I appreciate your willingness to help me understand your view.
The number of governors who are Republican and their popularity counter the journalist’s claims.
The question is, how many, “only vote Republicans,” exist. The number in the eastern corridor may be diminishing but, that may not extend to the flyover states.
Ms. Phillps should have gotten quotes from midwest professors not just Eastern Connecticut’s. She could have asked the Koch network in the central states and lobbyists from the Catholic Conferences in Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, Arkansas, etc.
The contemporary version of the GOP is quite obviously dominated by the figure of Trump. He seems the only path that exists to their elective victories. This is because their base is a strange combination of rural poor and urban wealth. Their method is to get as many populist votes as they can with fear appeals, and dilute the strength of urban areas with gerrymandering them into suburban areas.
None of this indicates real policy other than to assert that government is the problem.
I do not see the party splitting because it cannot function. I see the GOP wanting to prevent functional government in order to create entities that serve them in lieu of a government.
Agree with the assessment, Roy.
If the extremist supermajority on the Extreme Court has a clue, they will take Trump out of the picture for the 2024 election, clearing a path for Nikki Haley, who is probably capable of pulling their party together again into a semi-functioning unit. And, of course, as Timothy Snyder says in his essay yesterday on this subject, their doing so would simply be a matter of ruling in accordance with what the amendment actually says. It couldn’t be clearer. You cannot attempt an insurrection and hold office. Trump attempted to effect insurrection against the elected government of the United States IN SEVERAL DIFFERENT WAYS–by sending a mob to stop the counting of the ballots, by pressuring the Vice President not to accept the ballots, by carrying out this fake electors scheme, by getting “his” Supreme Court to invalidate the election, by getting Secretaries of State to invalidate their elections or to “find” ballots for him. So, Trump is not only an insurrectionist, clearly, HE IS AN INSURRECTIONIST MULTIPLE TIMES OVER. And his candidacy is CLEARLY illegal under U.S. law. As Snyder points out, what is soon to be seen is whether the right-wing justices will apply the law or are simply political hacks. And if the latter, they are doing their own party a disservice because a) Trump might lose and b) their own party will not survive a second Trump maladministration. LOL.
I have wondered the same thing. I read that the Koch brother has departed from the Trump trailer. Will the bought court rule he is unable to run? Will they rule he can run until he is convicted of insurrection? Will they decline to rule and leave it to the states?
I see the ability to keep a candidate off the ballot as a power the conservatives would love to have. I can see them convicting a person of insurrection as a way to clear the way for their own in some future election.
Charles Koch told his monied network that he is supporting Nikki Haley.
Koch’s Haley moment is just noise/distraction, IMO.
just curious, what does Koch have against Christie?
Bob Shepherd,
Jennifer Rubin wrote about two books in The Washington Post. One is called “Tyranny of the Minority.” I thought about a comment you wrote when I read this yesterday.
She wrote:
“Levitsky and Ziblatt explain that elements designed to prevent mob rule and emergence of an executive despot have become a fortress for a political minority — mostly White, rural and Christian. The essence of democracy, majoritarian rule, is therefore thwarted. The authors enumerated numerous antidemocratic devices such as the filibuster, the electoral college, the rural-state biased Senate, gerrymandering, lifetime-appointed Supreme Court justices and voting restrictions that have been adopted by the Republican Party. The latter no longer can compete for majority support in an increasingly pluralistic country, so it relies on these devices to stay in power. As Ziblatt explained in an interview, “The Republican Party in particular doesn’t actually need to win majorities of voters to win power. So that’s why we need to reform our institutions and consider things like reducing the power of the filibuster, maybe eliminating the electoral college to encourage the Republican Party to have to win majorities.” He added, “If they had to win majorities, they wouldn’t radicalize. If they didn’t radicalize, we wouldn’t have the dysfunction that we have today.””
Ms. Ziblatt nailed it, didn’t she?
The following NBC news piece reveals why today’s Traitor Trump loyalist MAGA RINO controlled Republican Party is broken and can’t be put back together again. Humpty Dumpty fell of the wall…
… “GOP faces massive realignment as it sheds college-educated voters
The data suggest that what we are seeing might be more than just a sudden Democratic edge in party affiliation.” — April 2021
“Earlier this month Gallup released data showing a sharp drop in the number of people who chose to identify as Republican in the first quarter of 2021. …
“But another trend in politics suggests that what we are seeing might be more than a somewhat typical election-related bump for Democrats. Data from the Pew Research Center show that, increasingly, different people are populating the two major political parties — with Republicans and Democrats moving in sharply different directions among college-educated voters. …
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/gop-faces-massive-realignment-it-sheds-college-educated-voters-n1264425
The next link says it’s a commentary (an opinion) — not news.
“New research on Trump voters: They’re not the sharpest tools in the box
Now there’s proof: Trump’s voters lack “cognitive sophistication,” often believe Bible is literal word of God”
Still, this commentary is using recent research as evidence to support the writer’s opinion.
That researcher notes: “philosophers and political elites have debated the potential effects of mass political participation” for generations, concerned “about the unsophisticated masses coming under the sway of a demagogue.” In effect, this debate was always about the quality he calls cognitive sophistication, since citizens who lack it “may not be able to understand and access reliable and valid information about political issues and may be vulnerable to political propaganda”
https://www.salon.com/2022/03/23/new-research-on-voters-theyre-not-the-sharpest-tools-in-the-box/
Did trump’s candidacy create a surge of new voters at the polls?
How about, for the candidates he endorsed?
The Republican Party has, for the last few decades, been the party of conserving inherited wealth. Therefore, since the wealthy members of the Kochtopus et al have not lost anything with all the back and forth about abortion, banning books, attacking corporate rivals like Disney, etc, it’s safe to assume that the Republican Party will simply continue to be the party of disparity. The power brokers don’t care if it’s Trump or Jeb Bush, as long as they get their tax cuts.