The Party of ‘Not That’

T here was a time — not so long ago — that Republicans were flattering themselves as the party of ideas . . . while also, for years, constantly fretting that they were losing that reputation. I don’t know why there was all this drama. Are tax cuts an idea? Or do they only become one when you speculate that they fund themselves with growth? Is Medicare Part D an inspiring idea? Or more of an electoral hedge?

Then along came Trump. Electing a person who never seemed to read books actually did turn the Right into a salon. Trump didn’t have ideas — he had dramatic gripes, slogans, and policies he favored. The absence of theory in Trump meant that conservative intellectuals suddenly had all sorts of work to do justifying his rise, or repudiating it. Was globalization a process of elite economic and moral secession from national loyalties that had to be amended and reversed? Or was populist nationalism an attack on a fundamentally worthwhile liberal world order?

Now Trump lives at a golf course. And Republicans are bereft again. The Joe Biden era has the party stuck as the party of “Not that,” which is fine enough for opposition. That’s the opposition’s job, in a way.

Would Republicans pass a several-trillion-dollar reconciliation bill? No, not that. Would they pass parts of it, like the establishment of universal pre-K for three- and four-year olds? No, not that. Would Republicans increase Pell grants for college students? No, not that, either. Would Republicans have revoked all the Trump-era policies that got some semblance of order at our southern border? They point to the pictures coming out of Del Rio and say, “Not that.”

Well, it’s natural in opposition to feel a bit more like a libertarian and a budget hawk — after all, the proposed spending is on progressive priorities, for progressive clients, and on progressive terms. Being for “not that” might be enough while Democrats seem to be flailing.

And currently, they are flailing. Joe Biden and Democrats have done things that poll as popular — like sending people checks for not working or for having children, or ending the American military presence in Afghanistan. And each time they do something like this, Joe Biden and the Democrats become less popular. Mencken said that democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it, good and hard.

But still, Republicans might want not just to win, but to govern, even — egad — to achieve something with the power of government. Republicans infamously failed to make any updates to their platform in 2020, a supposed demonstration of their abandonment of normal politics and conversion into a personality cult. In reality, it was a belated admission that platforms no longer bind parties, if they ever did.

Republican candidates need to think about how to integrate the various impulses and constituencies in their party — the rural voters who turned out for the party in record numbers when Trump was at the top of the ticket, people from declining regions of the country, the suburban voters who have traditionally been Republican but who want “the vision thing” articulated by someone more elevated than an American Bolsonaro, and the millions of people who have felt in some way slighted or degraded by the ineffective measures the government imposed to contain COVID-19.

In the last two years, our social divide has become more acute, our class divides have become more obvious, and the political class that is aligned with our incumbent elites has become more high-handed and decadent. Just look at the Met Gala, with its masked servants, or the politicians who refuse to follow their own pandemic restrictions. Republicans need to name that feeling of disgust these images conjure in people, identify the danger this feeling poses to the republic — and propose not just a set of policies, but a new governing ethos around which we can rally.

What ails America is a kind of decadence that one is tempted to identify as imperial and aristocratic in its character. If Republicans want to find something “not that” — they could do worse than reaching for the ethos, the institution-building, and the political creativity in republicanism with a small ‘r.’ What does republicanism offer? A hatred of nepotism and cronyism. The promotion of statesmen who do right without the need to “do well” for themselves. Republicanism as a political project offers the one thing we need — an ethic of transparency, disinterested service, and punctilious rule-following that rebuilds the trust that we’ve lost.