The Fracking of the GOP

This week, many Americans are absorbed by the first season of Netflix' new political drama, House of Cards, while others - especially younger viewers who missed it the first time around - have been falling in love with The West Wing.

It's a wholesome sign. 

After years in which our political discourse has been dominated by the 30-second attack ad and the AM radio rant, Americans are getting interested in a subtler take on the political process.

Even the film industry is taking notice.  Spielberg's Lincoln - an historical film which matched inspiring oratory with back-room politicking - did well with both critics and the public.   So did Argo and Zero Dark Thirty, two films dealing substantively with America's troubles in the Middle East.

Even in the world of Shakespearean theatre, there's a trend toward doing more of the Bard's more pointedly political plays, such as Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, Measure for Measure, and the English history plays.

There couldn't have been a more appropriate time for the experts to find and identify the remains of Richard III.

All this renewed interest in politics is, as noted, a wholesome sign.  But it raises the fascinating question of whether the existing two-party system will prove capable of accommodating and containing such a huge release of civic energy - especially in a radically decentralized media environment which empowers every citizen to reach a mass audience and organize for action. 

Given the diversity of America's population, the answer might well be "No".   But developing alternatives - whether "third parties" or other alternative forms of organization - will not flourish without hard work.

And you can count on this:  If such a movement should appear, at least one of the two major parties will do its best to absorb that movement before it can threaten the existing duopoly.

The history of the Tea Party movement may be instructive here.

When it first appeared, the Tea Party came in the guise of a true grassroots movement with concerns some of which, at least, were legitimate - at least in the abstract.  While the Tea Party movement would eventually trip over its members' preference for extreme and simplistic language - and their general indifference to the accumulated wisdom of science, economics, history, etc. - its first two years were impressive, to say the least.

Within that time, however, the movement was successfully captured by the Republican Party.  Instead of nominating its own candidates, the Tea Party opted to support the nomination and election of its approved Republican candidates for Congress, the Senate, and various statehouses.

By 2010, this looked to be a familiar political coup for the political establishment.  The GOP had picked up a great deal of new energy - and a lot of new seats - at the price of shifting even further to the right.

The problem?  This rightward shift came at a time when the American people were, on the whole, moving in other directions - not necessarily leftward, but certainly not in the direction toward which the Tea Party was marching.

Hispanic voters, a fast-growing demographic, demonstrated an increasing willingness to stand up to the Tea Party's nativist demands for a motte and bailey along the nation's southern border.

A younger generation of voters - and many of their parents and grandparents - began demolishing barriers to same-sex marriage which had seemed vastly popular only a few 

years before.

And suddenly, a solid majority of Americans seem to have been persuaded - by experience if not by science - that global climate change was real, and far more than inconvenient.

As a result, in 2012, the Republican Party - having swallowed, but not digested, the Tea Party - found itself in a quandary.  After an endless season of presidential primaries and candidate debates - each of which forced the debate further to the right - the GOP nominated Mitt Romney.  But Romney, an attractive and temperamentally moderate fellow, driven so far to the right that his oratory had become almost indistinguishable from that of the AM radio ranters who despised him.

Meanwhile, for Congress and the Senate, Tea Party primary voters nominated any number of walking, talking embarrassments - more than a few of whom proved unelectable.    

As a result, in November, Barack Obama won a second term, while Democrats held the Senate and picked up seats in the House.

Having suffered so substantial a defeat, Republican insiders called for a course correction.  Hard-core conservatives, predictably, demanded that the party move even further to the right.

The internal debates within the Republican Party promised to be interesting enough, but President Obama and his party seized the opportunity to drive a wedge between the Republican factions. 

He began this process in December, with a bold stand against assault weapons.  He continued it with his Inaugural elevation of issues such as immigration reform, marriage equality, and global climate change.  Even his nomination of retired Republican Senator Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense has served mainly to divide Republicans against each other, while demonstrating Democratic solidarity.

Each presidential initiative was another hammer-blow aimed at the fissure between Wall Street and K Street Republicans, on the one hand, and the populist radicals of the Tea Party, on the other.

As of this writing, the GOP is on the horns of a dilemma.  It can either damage its long-term prospects by taking the unpopular side on a long list of issues - or produce howls of betrayal from its Tea Party faction by trying to stay within the political mainstream.

It's too soon to say, but if the President stays on offense, he might well split the GOP irreparably - with the Tea Party marching off under the banner of partisan secession.

Which leaves us with this question:  Is there an equal opening for a new party or movement in the political center - or on the progressive left?