The GOP's Political Problem

Josh Barro has a great piece discussing some recent efforts by conservative writers to chart a way forward for the GOP. As Barro notes, these efforts are a step in the right direction, but:

I don't think that math can add up. If you're going to expand the child credit or use some other approach to fulfill Ponnuru's goal of providing payroll-tax relief to the middle class; and you're going to avoid gutting the entitlement programs that working- and middle-class Americans depend on to support their standards of living; and you're going to run only a sustainable budget deficit; then you're going to need tax rates on high incomes or capital gains that many conservatives will probably see as "unreasonable" -- for example, in the ballpark of a 40 percent top rate on ordinary income, where we are today.

This seems correct to me, but I think the same critique could be made of Democrats. President Obama is committed to not raising taxes on those making under 250,000, which is likely not enough revenue to pay for many of the social programs he endorses. That being said, many liberals endorse more revenue than Obama asked for in the fiscal cliff negotiations, so I don't want to draw a false equivalency here.

I think the problem for the GOP and conservatives runs deeper. Conservatives and the GOP establishment instinctively oppose any domestic initiative endorsed by Barack Obama and the Democrats. As the Democratic party has moved to the right, this has crowded out the GOP's policy space. Policy proposals that were once endorsed by Republicans--cap-and-trade and Romney's healthcare plan-- have become anathema. This process has left them with very little room to create policies that address the problems facing middle-class Americans.

You can see this in Matt Yglesias' discussion of Holtz-Eakin and Roy's piece on healthcare. The basic premise is that if the Republicans had been willing to compromise, they could have gotten a version of Obamacare that was more to their liking. Even now, many Republican Governors are unwilling to set up the new ACA health care exchanges, and use the leeway they are given to relax regulations. This symbolic opposition means the federal government will be setting up the exchanges for them.

It is the same factor behind Marco Rubio's public rebuke of Obama's immigration plan. Rubio is trying to thread a very tiny needle here: pass immigration reform, while simultaneously claiming Obama is the enemy.

Basically, the willingness of Democrats to move to the center on initiatives, combined with the Republicans anti-Obama posture, has left very little space for a GOP policy that appeals to a wide array of voters.