SALON

Monday, Aug 29, 2011 12:30 PM UTC

When Republicans suddenly need government

Faced with a natural disaster, Chris Christie brags of a strong response. But does the rest of his party get it?

By

Topics: Republican Party, War Room,

When Republicans suddenly need governmentChris Christie on Sunday's "Meet the Press"

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is a conservative Republican who likes to decry high taxes and Big Government. But he’s also a smart politician, so as Hurricane Irene made its way through his state this weekend, he threw on an official-looking gubernatorial fleece, camped out at his state’s emergency command center, and essentially provided a one-man argument for the importance of government.

In a series of television appearances, Christie estimated that there might be “tens of billions” of dollars in damage, but assured viewers that a competent team of state and federal officials would be leading the cleanup effort. He said he was “proud” of the state/federal coordination, noted that “we have FEMA people right here on site … working incredibly hard at providing things to us that we need,” and explained why President Obama’s willingness to declare an emergency in the state had been so vital. He also offered this deal to New Jersey residents: “You need to stay in your home, and if you do, we can keep you safe and then we can ride through this.”

In a way, there really wasn’t anything remarkable about the sight of Christie, a favorite of the Tea Party crowd, pleading with citizens to put their faith and trust in government.

Natural disasters invariably serve as political tests for state and municipal leaders, who are punished by the press and the public if they are seen as insufficiently concerned about the danger or not effectively engaged in providing relief. You could, for instance, make a case that Michael Bloomberg’s mayoralty in New York City hasn’t quite been the same since his widely panned response to a blizzard last December.

Christie was also caught off-guard by that blizzard, which struck while he and his family were vacationing in Florida, and the heat he took for that might be part of the reason he was so visible this weekend. And there is a long tradition of governors and mayors from both parties enhancing their images by saying and doing the exact same things he said and did this weekend.

The politics of Christie’s performance, though, become more interesting when you consider how another prominent national Republican greeted Irene. “We should be like 1900,” Ron Paul said on Friday, arguing that the federal government — and FEMA in particular — should not be involved in disaster relief efforts. On “Fox News Sunday,” he expanded his thoughts, blasting FEMA as “a system of bureaucratic central economic planning.”

“So this idea that a bleeding heart will say, ‘Oh, we have to take care of [the victims of Irene].’ I mean, the whole idea of FEMA is a gross distortion of insurance,” Paul said. In his ideal world, he added, federal disaster relief would be slowly phased out, since FEMA hinders the efforts of volunteers and the rights of local citizens by “telling you what you can and can’t do.”

Now, it’s easy to place too much significance in Paul’s various obsessions. As I’ve written, his views on foreign policy and some civil liberties issues are so far from his party’s mainstream that it’s basically inconceivable that he’ll even come close to winning the GOP’s presidential nomination next year. But on economic issues, the post-meltdown base of the Republican Party has swung dramatically in his direction these past few years.

In other words, the true believers who make up today’s GOP base probably are more sympathetic to Paul’s claim that “we just don’t have the money” for federal disaster relief than they are to Christie’s statement that “your No. 1 goal as governor in a situation like this is the saving of human life — and everything else is secondary.”

This underscores a serious political problem for the Obama-era Republican Party. It used to be that GOP elected officials had some wiggle room when it came to balancing the demands of their base with the imperatives of keeping the broader public happy. This was important because the general public has some very mixed feelings when it comes to the role of government. While conservative rhetoric about government being bloated, wasteful, inefficient and unnecessary is quite popular, so are most big ticket government programs and services. Republicans have learned this in the past when they’ve bent too far toward pleasing their base — think of Newt Gingrich’s attack on Medicare in 1995 or George W. Bush’s planned Social Security overhaul in 2005.

But the wiggle room is basically gone, and today’s GOP base demands absolute ideological purity from its leaders. It’s no longer enough for them to campaign on generic anti-government rhetoric. The expectation now is that they will deliver a full-scale assault on the size and cost of government once they’re elected — and if not, they can expect serious trouble in their next primary. It was this dynamic that led Republican House leaders to take a truly extraordinary step earlier this year by lining up behind a plan to turn Medicare into a voucher program even though they knew it would be politically poisonous with general election swing voters. But they felt they had no choice: It was the only way to keep the base happy.

The problem for the GOP isn’t really Paul himself. It’s the Paul-ist absolutism that has infected the party base, helping to elevate fringe ideologues to newfound prominence and forcing previously pragmatic leaders to embrace absolute and unyielding postures that soothe the base but agitate swing voters. This helps explain why the Republican Party’s image has plunged to its lowest level in modern polling.

Which is why Christie and Paul were so interesting to watch this weekend. In ditching the government-bashing for a few days, Christie skillfully played to his state’s swing voters and provided a potentially helpful model for his national party. But because of where today’s GOP base is, it may not be a model the national party is in any position to follow.

Steve Kornacki

Steve Kornacki writes about politics for Salon. Reach him by email at SKornacki@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @SteveKornacki More Steve Kornacki.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 111 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Paul Krugman’s right: Austerity kills. "In an economy where we’re all in the same boat, one person’s spending is another person’s income. So when the government cuts spending, it reduces people’s income, leading to less business, more unemployment, and a vicious spiral of slowing down the economy."
374 points375 points | 394 comments
vote
Paul Krugman’s right: Austerity kills -- radical cuts destroy economies and lives, and the honest numbers and economics keep proving it
163 points164 points | 26 comments
vote
Virginia state Sen. Mark Obenshain wants to send women to jail who don't report their miscarriages to the police
65 points66 points | 15 comments
vote
Corporate greed is poisoning America — literally
45 points46 points | 11 comments
vote
Facebook “like” on trial in Virginia
26 points27 points | 6 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations