'Bright flight'

The GOP seems to have less of an immigration problem than an emigration problem, which I would characterize as "bright flight." Much as middle-class whites took flight from inner cities' "color problem" in the postwar era and well beyond, both chronologically and geographically, intelligent Republicans are fleeing their party, philosophically and formally, at what appears to be an accelerating rate. (Just to be clear, I am in no way equating the latter's intelligence with the former's bigotry.)

I should emphasize appears (it's the ineradicable skeptic in me). Perhaps it has merely become fashionable for the independently conservative-minded to go public with their loss of faith by hammering their political theses in explosions of alienation on their pious brethren's doors. I can't say, for sure. This particular flight is less amenable to precise quantification than, say, the 1960s' variety. Nonetheless something is happening; it is an observable, empirical, and utterly delightful phenomenon.

The latest émigré is one Michael Stafford, a lawyer, Delawarean and now former officer of his state party. "Today ... I am a registered Republican no longer," he announced yesterday, having had quite enough of the GOP's "dangerous and virulent form of political rabies," "Its fevered hallucinations involv[ing] threats from imaginary communists and socialists," evil conspiracy theories about climate change, "notorious birther[ism]," and "indefensible" economic policies.

For Stafford, the final straw: "few figures in the GOP have the courage to confront them.... Perhaps, one day, a reformed and responsible Republican Party will reemerge." Stafford is Jeb Bush's base; small for now, but snowballing.

I realize that in "bright flight" there's a touch of unwarranted graciousness. The above-referenced gentlemen--and others--have actually been a bit slow on the uptake; conservatism's Sullivans and Frums and assorted perceptive others have been mourning the death of prudence for years. How any intelligent, well-informed Republican could have missed the warnings of these five-alarm observers--or even worse, missed the plain, tangible evidence of the party's intellectual rubble all around them--is beyond customary partisan comprehension. Heroic--if tragic--loyalty, maybe? Or, could be, they were just frogs in heating water. It's hard to know.

What is knowable, however--roughly quantifiable in appearances, anyway--is that Republican self-identification is down, while independent self-identification is up. And in this occurance, causation would seem to speak to correlation: more and more thoughtful, traditional conservatives are simply too embarrassed to even call themselves Republicans, and they're taking flight.

Comments

[Janicket]

Their flight is a modestly hopeful sign of the fever perhaps breaking; but will it happen soon enough, and with enough electoral vigor, to avert further damage from the necrotic infection currently ravaging the body politic? Or will a dazed and enfeebled patient awaken to find several limbs irrevocably amputated?

[japa21]

There is a difference between saying you no longer consider yourself a Republican and not voting for Republicans. The former gives you a look of respectability in today's political climate. It gives your public personna a bit of class, so to speak. However, actually not voting for a Republican, or even more voting for a Democrat actually has real meaning. Saying one does not automatically guarantee the action that should, logically follow.

[Tien Le]

They may still be voting Republican, but if they are removing themselves from the Party structure and denying the Party their support financially and intellectually, then maybe that's the first step toward being a true Independent who votes for the best person for the job, regardless of Party ID.

[Robert Lipscomb]

The Democratic Party is largely to blame the failure to close. Changing one's political affiliation is a paradigm of the order-of-magnitude of say, marital status or religious belief. While it is possible to abandon the old paradigm on its own merits, it is easier if there is a new paradigm to embrace.

PM's calls for explicitly making the claim of "conservative" is the broad brush, but there needs to be specifics.

Why not present the democratic Party as a champion of voluntary and/or market-based strategies for environmental protection? Clinton did this very successfully through the EPA brownfield program. Policy initiatives such as carbon-trading or supporting the existing and voluntary sustainability movement via research and forums are examples of my point.

Why not market and sell Obamacare as the private-sector based program that it is?

Add to that the issues of protecting the popular safety-net programs and balancing the budget.

Weaving a pragmatic, middle-ground sensibility into the fact of the new diversity of America can be sold straight-forwardly as
a new patriotism. And this one even has room for conservative evangelical Christians.
And by the way, that is who we really are now.

[Peter G]

The temptation to sup with the devil is always strong. Especially when one imagines one can harness his energy to your own purposes. The moment of clarity always comes; for some sooner than others. But it always comes. This can go two ways if Romney wins. Romney wins and immediately renounces all that campaign foolishness on economics and becomes conservative anathema. A traitor he becomes and gridlock endures leading to failure. Or he wins and acquiesces to the same idiocy and damages the economy so badly that no one can fail to see the consequences of their ideology. Failure it is. If Obama wins then there is one outcome for the Republican party. Civil war.