A realignment of America’s two major parties is under way. It will not be mostly defined by demographics, as some analysts have suggested. Rather, it will be defined by ideas about democracy and the rule of law. To put it simply, we are headed for an era in which America may well have a Democratic Party and an Anti-democratic Party.
This realignment, in large part, was driven by a crucial strategic choice the Republican Party made over the past decade, as described in a recent piece for The Atlantic by Vann Newkirk II. Soon after the GOP’s 2012 presidential defeat, Reince Priebus, then chairman of the Republican National Committee, led a post-mortem analysis that was unusually blunt and prescient. It said the GOP must make big reforms in its outlook and agenda or risk electoral marginalization. In particular, it called for the GOP to support comprehensive immigration reform, liberalize its views on gay rights, demand reforms on corporate governance, and stop talking like a bunch of “stuffy old men” who leave younger voters “rolling their eyes at what the party represents.”
The GOP did virtually none of this. Instead, it relied on tactics aimed at preserving power for a party that represented a steadily shrinking share of the population, mostly defined by non-urban, lower-educated whites. CONT.
Jeremy D. Rosner (Greenberg Quinlan Rosner), The Hill