Image by Damien Baldino via Flickr

In his New York Times Op-Ed piece this morning, regular contributor Paul Krugman is perhaps overly eager in his quickness to assign to the entire Republican Party the “emotional maturity of a bratty 13-year-old.” There, though he may be generally correct in using that characterization to describe the reactionary response of a handful of media blowhards to the city of Chicago’s loss of the 2016 Olympics (a loss for Obama is a win for Rush!), he ignores what looks to be the central internal issue for the G.O.P in advance of the 2010 mid-terms and, worse, in so doing, commits a classic U.S. lefty (if there really is such a thing) sin: underestimating the capability and draw of the conservative movement.

Krugman seems to have missed Lindsay Graham’s on-going take-down of Glen Beck. As the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein reported on Sunday, Graham, in an appearance on Fox News Sunday “didn’t mince words or, for that matter, duck the question when he was asked why he said Beck was ‘aligned with cynicism’ at a conference earlier in the week.” Nope. Instead, he continued his attack, implying that the teary-eyed Fox News anchor was a backward-looking malcontent who “doesn’t represent the Republican Party.” What’s more is that this came on the heels of a Politico report (perhaps also overlooked by Krugman) that detailed the attempts of aging Senator and Obama-’08-shellac-ee John McCain “to reshape the Republican Party in his own center-right image.” “Those familiar with McCain’s thinking,” writers contributor Alex Isenstadt, “say he has expressed serious concern about the direction of the party and is actively seeking out and supporting candidates who can broaden the party’s reach. In McCain’s case, that means backing conservative pragmatists and moderates.”

Let’s take a minute to put all of this together. Graham, a key McCain ‘08 lieutenant, and McCain, a veteran conservative — who, let’s remember, is that, despite any of his claims to maverickness — are taking steps to tell the voters that, as loud, ugly, and (therefore) fun to look at and listen to as the Becks, Limbaughs, and Savages of the world are, they are not a part of the Republican establishment — and so their hyped-for-the-public overreactions can’t be assigned to the greater Republican party. In fact, it’s fair to say that a good portion of the elephant clan seems so nauseated by the appearance of such a possible characterization, they are getting ready to do battle to make their less-angry vision of the G.O.P the dominant race of the red-stater.

Which is to say that, superficially at least, Krugman has committed only a sin of the semantically debatable variety. And that would be a whatever if it wasn’t for the fact that, by failing to understand the complexity of the issue — read: making the character of the over-dramatic attention whore the target of his attack — he attempts to marginalize something that, if the U.S. left were a cohesive, strategically-capable group (you know, something that might even resemble a political force), would not be so easily dismissed. Why, Krugman should have asked himself, do the rightist media personalities so cater to the emotional, angry side of the voting populace? And better yet, why is that segment of the population so angry — particularly so at a party that is such a non-threat that it hasn’t been able to seat a capable executive since 1968?

But instead, Krugman settled for the easy, unprobing approach — the one that succeeds in only engaging the most superficial attributes, and therefore a quick dismissal, of a very complex and very capable organization. The trouble for the Democrats is that, in doing so, he joins a long list of underestimating political hacks, who, in their failure to completely understand the opposition are almost assuredly setting themselves up for another quick loss of power. In this light, Krugman’s mischaracterization goes far beyond something that might be debated at a cafe, at least if the Dems ever want to achieve true post-partisanship.

The Republican Party Casts Out the Infidels, Goes the Way of All Flesh

The last few months have been a bit of a catastrophe for the Republican Party. From the defection of Arlen Specter to the ideological battles between popular moderate Colin Powell and Prince of Darkness Dick Cheney to the firing of small-time party officials who dared to question the words of Rush Limbaugh, the Party has managed to shrink its tent down to the size of the Confederacy (minus Virginia and North Carolina and Florida) and a few Plains States, give or take. Of greatest concern isn’t why Specter left, or who’s speaking for the party, or even how these events just might give Democrats the elusive filibuster-proof majority that will finally allow them to push through all their favorite Marxist,  Stalinist, and Maoist pet projects. The real issue for Republicans is the fact that they have successfully purged from their party almost everyone with even a hint of moderate feeling in them. Cut Maine out of the Union and the Republican Party might as well  be the political wing of the 700 Club.

The most amazing thing is that conservative Republicans appear to be happy about the situation. From RNC Chairman Michael Steele to Senate leader Mitch McConnell, from Jim DeMint to Newt Gingrich, from Sean Hannity to Rush Limbaugh, conservatives are celebrating the expulsion of the infidels from their holy army, as if purity and not political viability were the name of the Washington power game. Recent events go beyond the triumph of conservatives over moderates. They even go beyond the triumph of righteousness over compromise. What is really frightening for moderate Republicans worried about their party becoming an irrelevant fringe group is that the events of the past few months signify the triumph of orthodoxy over political competence, a doomed approach to democracy if ever there was one. Just ask Barry Goldwater.

Tossing the notion of a broad-based coalition out the window, the Republicans have staked everything on ideological fundamentalism, choosing to view political pragmatism and wide appeal as heterodoxy and sins worthy of banishment, even going so far as to promote the insane belief that it’s more important to win a primary election than it is to win the office. Former moderate Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee, who underwent a serious primary challenge from the conservative zealots in the Club for Growth back in 2006 (just as Specter would have in 2010), mourns this approach as “the celebration of ideological purity at the cost of winning elections.” Carrying on that tradition, Limbaugh celebrated Specter’s defection by pleading with the senator to take John McCain with him. And then there’s Republican strategist and Fox News contributor Andrea Tantaros, who was able to put an optimistic spin on Specter’s leaving the same way she rationalized the switching of some 200,000 registered Republicans to the Democratic party during last year’s presidential primary: by claiming that “the pool has been skimmed of its lukewarm constituency.” Translation: We may never win a national election again, but let no one ever question our purity.

If the whole tone of this discussion is starting to sound a little religious, it’s because the Republican Party’s current struggles begin and end with religion. Particularly Christianity. And even more particularly, Evangelical Christianity. The Christianity of Pat Robertson and Ralph Reed. The Christianity of the Christian Coalition and Focus on the Family. The Christianity that got George W. Bush elected twice. With the rise of Obama, the loss of Specter, the defiance of the centrists, and the decline of the Republican Party to a regional regime serving cranky creationist white men who feel besieged by a rising tide of Other-ness (including, but not limited to, brown-ness, gay-ness, and science-ness), the chickens born out of the conservatives’ 20-year love affair with the Christian Right have finally come home to roost.

These days the Republican Party is almost exclusively the stomping ground of religious ideologues and moral arbiters. Gone is the necessary backroom dealing and clever compromising of politics, the oil that greases the wheels of the republic; gone is the strategic big-tent pragmatism of the Reagan years, replaced by the un-nuanced sermonizing, unquestioning devotion, and self-assured moral purity of a religious sect. For more than 10 years, the Republican Party has been led by men who either sprang from the Christian Right or were swept into power by them, so it makes sense that their approach to politics would take on a tone of zealotry. Take that, subtlety! Move over, compromise! We’ve got God on our side, and God does not make deals!

No wonder the Republican Party is so ill-equipped to deal with changing demographics, shifting landscapes, internal defections, and evolving voter priorities: Religious fanatics don’t tolerate changes, shifts, or defections, much less evolution. It’s a political philosophy that seeks for unambiguous fundamentalism in a world of messy reality. And what could be more Christian than looking for meaning and order in the meaningless and the chaotic?

Let’s take that notion a step further. Republicans have argued that a Jim Toomey loss in Pennsylvania in November 2010 would be better for the Party than a Specter win, for the reason that they will have proven the strength of their convictions and inspired fellow conservatives to double their efforts for the cause. But a Toomey loss wouldn’t be merely better; it would be glorious – an act of ritual sacrifice performed in the name of righteousness and the realization of God’s will.

In Christian theology, the ultimate loss is also the ultimate gain. Jesus was willing to sacrifice himself, to lose everything, in order to save the world. As such, Christianity is a religion predicated entirely on the idea of the triumphant defeat. Martyrdom, sacrifice, liturgical devotion in the face of secular temptation: These are the tropes of the Christian faith. So it makes perfect sense for a political party that’s been devoted to the tenets of that faith to see virtue and redemption – even godliness – in defeat, so long as that defeat comes at the hand of infidels and is suffered in the name of ideological purity.

Republicans are now facing a perfect storm of political irrelevance, a confluence of two inevitable and destructive outgrowths of their generation-long courtship of Christian fundamentalists. Not only have they grown political unsavvy as a result of all that ideological complacency – dooming themselves to appeal to an ever-shrinking constituency – they’ve also driven away the very constituency they grew so unsavvy courting. After years of disappointment in the party and their theologically imperfect approach to legislating, Christian conservatives have grown impatient with even the minor compromises Republicans have had to make in order to stay politically relevant, and, as a consequence, they’re starting to flee politics in droves. According to a recent article in The Washington Post by Kathleen Parker, there’s a war brewing among Christian conservatives, with the old-school, politically motivated wing of the movement, exemplified by James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, losing ground to a new generation that views the impiety and shaky morality of the political world as the devil’s playground. As a result, more and more Christians are leaving the Beltway and retreating to the home, the church, the family, and the soul – where unspoiled idealism actually stands a fighting chance.

Once Christian conservatives realized they were only choosing a slightly lesser evil by siding with the Republican Party, while getting almost nothing in return – once they figured out that George Bush wasn’t going to make abortion illegal; once it dawned on them that Congress wasn’t going to push for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage; once they saw that opposition to federally funded stem-cell research was a millstone around their party’s neck; once they realized that they were being taken for granted by a cynical political force looking to gain an advantage in the electoral math – they were bound to pack up their things and leave Washington. Because unlike gun-rights advocates or environmental lobbyists, evangelical Christians don’t need the political realm to do their work; they can afford to be idealistic. If that group of Republicans couldn’t get the job done, they’re starting to realize, then no one in Washington ever will. So it’s farewell Babylon, and back to Jerusalem we go. Back to our homes and our churches and our shelters, to do whatever quiet work pleases Jesus best.

So where does this leave Republicans, that once-proud coalition now teetering on the edge of political irrelevance? With a party that’s not pure enough for the religious constituents that make up its base yet too pure for the rough-and-tumble, philosophically malleable, morally questionable world of politics.

Caught, it seems, between the sacred and the profane.