It was 1958, and the Republican Party was in even more disarray than usual, which made it a great year for the Democrats, who proceeded to sweep that year's midterm elections. That's when Whittaker Chambers, who was always a loyal party man whether his party was the Communist or the Republican one at the time, dashed off a letter to a young friend, William F. Buckley Jr., and in the process coined a metaphor that has proven to have real staying power: an old man in a dark shop.
Chambers offered this diagnosis and prognosis to Editor Buckley, who not long before had founded a new right-wing journal called National Review:
"If the Republican Party cannot get some grip of the actual world we live in, and from it generalize and actively promote a program that means something to masses of people--why, somebody else will. There will be nothing to argue. The voters will simply vote Republicans into singularity. The Republican Party will become like one of those dark little shops which apparently never sell anything. If, for any reason, you go in, you find, at the back, an old man, fingering for his own pleasure some oddments of cloth. Nobody wants to buy them, which is fine because the old man is not really interested in selling. He just likes to hold and to feel."
Whittaker Chambers could be writing today in the dismal aftermath of last week's revolt of the party's true believers, hardliners and assorted nutcases--who have thrown their party into turmoil once again by forcing the withdrawal of one responsible Republican leader after another from their positions in the House leadership. First to go was John Boehner, the speaker who had held the party together time after time and provocation after provocation over the years. Next on the hit list was Kevin McCarthy, his No. 2 man, who withdrew from the speaker's race rather than preside over so divided a party. Who's next? Nobody knows.
This wrecking crew may not scare Democrats, who must be rejoicing in the opposition's raucous divisions, but it certainly ought to scare Republicans--and all those who believe in a strong two-party system, rather than one composed of responsibles able to govern and the other of noisy malcontents. Or as an early Republican named Lincoln observed long ago, a house divided against itself cannot stand. The Democratic Party has gone through its own shaky period when its ideologues took over the party in the McGovern era, and the result was five years of a Nixon presidency. Now it's the Republicans who are deeply divided--and dazzled by the fatal charms of ideology.
Yes, the Democrats have their own increasing divisions as the next presidential election approaches: Hillary Clinton, their nominee (very) presumptive, is faltering as she fends off a challenge from the independent-socialist-Democratic senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, while Vice President Joe Biden waits in the wings to step into the presidential race the moment her campaign collapses. But at least the Democrats have avoided the kind of turmoil uncorked by the Republicans in the House bent on revolting for no better reason than revolting.
The remaining Republican respectables in the House have put forward various names as the next speaker--like Paul Ryan, who is responsibility personified. Others have suggested that John Boehner agree to serve as speaker indefinitely in order to save his party. While the Republicans in revolt propose to hand the leadership over to little-known congressmen like Florida's Daniel Webster or Utah's Jason Chaffetz, not exactly names to conjure with.
Meanwhile, the basic question raised by last week's revolt in the House goes unaddressed: How are these people going to unite the country if they can't even unite their party?
Those who would like to dismiss all this intramural squabbling as just politics as usual may forget what is at stake here: Will the country have a responsible opposition or meekly accept what would be the equivalent of a third Obama administration? Will this country have a stronger defense or just slip further into appeasement? Who wins the next election could mean the difference between lower taxes and more revenue, or higher taxes and more waste. Between giving families a choice of schools or consigning still more kids to failing schools. Between the country's continued drift into neo-isolationism or an America re-awakened to its responsibilities in the world.
Whittaker Chambers had a point in 1958: Unless the Republican Party can get a grip and a leader, as it did under Ronald Reagan, it's not just the GOP's future that is imperiled, but the country's.
Editorial on 10/13/2015