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Tuesday, December 11,2018
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of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Where
Republicans,
Democrats
stand heading
into 2019
BY STUART ROTHENBERG
Roll Call
As we enter a two-year presidential cycle,
the parties stand at very different places.
Republicans appear unified behind President
Donald Trump, while Democrats are about to
begin a contest for a 2020 nominee that will
inevitably degenerate into Democrats attacking
Democrats.
But while the GOP is unified, the party just
suffered a stunning rebuke and has painted
itself into an unenviable demographic corner.
Its leader ends 2018 with a trainload of politi
cal baggage and is seemingly uninterested in
expanding a political coalition that lost 40 House
seats and half a dozen governorships.
The one thing that both parties have in com
mon is voters’ skepticism.
According to November’s exit poll, 48 percent
of respondents had a favorable view of the Dem
ocratic Party, while an almost equal 47 percent
had an unfavorable view. On the other hand,
only 44 percent of respondents had a favorable
view of the GOP, while 52 percent had an unfa
vorable view.
In other words, both parties have plenty of
work to do next year, but Republicans start with
a bigger job.
In addition to the party’s poor image, Repub
licans begin with an unpopular president. About
45 percent of voters approved of Trump’s job
performance according to the 2018 exit poll, not
much different from the 44.9 percent of mid
term voters who voted Republican for the House
last month.
And those two numbers aren’t dramatically
different from the 46.1 percent of the popular
vote that Trump drew in the 2016 presidential
election.
The good news for Republicans is that
Trump’s presidential style, rhetoric and issue
positions have energized rural voters, evangeli
cals and many conservatives, all of whom make
up the core of the GOP.
The bad news is that same style and agenda
also have turned off minorities, liberals,
younger voters and women, including crucial
suburban swing voters.
This polarization is a problem for Republi
cans because in any dispute between the parties,
or between the White House and the Demo
cratic House, Democrats will begin with at least
a slight advantage.
The 45 percent of Trump voters will almost
automatically line up behind the president’s
position (or the GOP’s), while most of the rest of
the nation will line up against Trump.
Of course, Trump will continue to have the
White House megaphone for the next two years,
which should give him an advantage in dictating
the political narrative over the next few months
and into the summer of 2020.
And while likely Speaker Nancy Pelosi may
be popular in her caucus, her national poll
numbers are poor, making her an ineffective
national spokesperson for her party.
Moreover, the Democratic presidential race
should give Trump an opportunity to paint his
opposition in the least favorable light, some
thing he has done effectively in the past.
The issue mix for next year seems to favor
Democrats, according to a Nov. 7-13 Pew
Research Center survey. That poll found respon
dents preferring congressional Democrats to
Trump by a wide margin in their approaches to
the environment, ethics in government, Medi
care, health care and Social Security — and by a
smaller but still clear margin on foreign policy,
immigration and gun policy.
Trump’s only clear advantage in the national
survey was on jobs and economic growth — an
advantage that would quickly disappear if the
economy slows noticeably, as some economists
expect.
November’s exit poll found that health care
was the top issue by far for voters, and House
Democrats ought to be able to use that issue
throughout 2019 to put Republicans on the
defensive.
The same goes for infrastructure spending,
gun control and criminal justice reform, which
House Democrats can champion to demonstrate
that they want to improve people’s lives, not
merely obstruct Republican initiatives.
Given the president’s mediocre job approval
numbers, his party’s image and his tendency for
the controversial and inaccurate, Democrats
start 2019 better positioned than the GOP. And
that doesn’t include any possible fallout from
the Mueller investigation or from an economic
slowdown.
Perhaps the biggest danger for Republicans
is that another 24 months of Donald Trump in
the White House will produce more chaos and
controversy, making a majority of Americans
so tired of the turmoil and tumult that they will
turn to any reasonable alternative who promises
calm.
Heading into 2019, Trump remains a bigger
than life figure, an entertainer as much as a
political leader. The early signs suggest that
his fans remain loyal, but the rest of the audi
ence has grown tired of his routine. And that is
a problem for the Republican Party both as the
next Congress begins and as the presidential
race heats up.
Doing the right thing about
Saudi Arabia’s Prince bin Salman
Count me among those
who take a skeptical view
of Mohammed bin Salman,
Crown Prince of Saudi
Arabia.
This photogenic future
king first attracted notice as a
potential reformer with incli
nations toward openness and
modernity. Movie theaters
re-opened in Saudi Arabia;
some women were allowed
to drive.
But other women were jailed and
reportedly tortured for agitating for their
rights. Wealthy Saudis were detained
and extorted without due process. Saudi
Arabia is a land where citizens can be
publicly decapitated or flogged. And
Prince M.B.S. gives no indication of
concern about the stunning humanitar
ian crisis in Yemen brought on by Saudi
involvement in that country’s civil war.
And let’s face it: we can be pretty sure
that the prince ordered or approved the
murder and dismemberment of his most
prominent critic, Jamal Khashoggi.
But when a crown prince and his coun
try behave like this, what is the proper
response from a country like ours, which
has a deep commitment to the rule of
law and to morality above self-interest?
Or do we? President Trump’s
approach to the Khashoggi murder has
been transactional. I don’t remember
using the word “transactional” much
before 2016, but during the Trump era,
this useful word’s meaning is clear
enough:
Our American sense of morality and
decency is all well and good at home,
but in the practical, danger
ous external world, where
arms sales and valuable
resources such as petroleum
are at stake, sometimes we
just have to look away from
human rights violations,
rather than put our interests
at risk just because one Arab
has murdered another one.
This would not be the first
time that we’ve compromised
abroad the moral principles
that we cherish at home, nor is Trump
the first president to adopt a see-no-evil
attitude toward an unprincipled leader
like M.B.S.
In fact, a black-and-white, all-or-
nothing moral position has always been
extremely difficult to maintain in the
practical world. We abhor torture, for
example, and most Americans — though
not all, by any means — condemn it in
the strongest terms.
But it doesn’t take much brutality or
desperation or threat or fear — in war
or after 9 /11, for example — to over
come our principled rejection of torture,
and, in no time, we’re subjecting enemy
combatants and suspected terrorists to
various forms of torture, the same as
everyone else.
In fact, the neuroscientist and public
intellectual Sam Harris has searched
in vain for a philosophical distinction
between the most severe torture that
we might imagine and the American
firebombing of Germany and Japan
during World War II, which resulted in
the deaths of hundreds of thousands of
innocent civilians, including many, many
children.
If we, a putative “Christian nation,”
can find ways to rationalize — and we do
— the excruciating deaths of thousands
of children, why would we be reluctant
to torture a suspect in order to obtain
information that could prevent a terror
ist attack?
I don’t have a good answer for this
conundrum. Complete moral consistency
may be just an elusive aspiration, beyond
the reach of any of us except, perhaps,
monks and devoted ascetics.
But the fact that we can’t always sort
out the complicated moral cases doesn’t
relieve us of the obligation to act morally
in straightforward cases that abound
with clarity.
Mohammed bin Salman’s murder
of Jamal Khashoggi is such a case. Our
response calls for more rigor than a
dismissive “Maybe he did, maybe he
didn’t.” Some politicians and officials
have claimed a more demanding moral
high ground, but one has the feeling that
our outrage won’t last long, and soon
we’ll be back to business as usual with
M.B.S.
This is unfortunate. Doing the right
thing — or even knowing what the right
thing is — isn’t always easy. But the fail
ure to act when the moral case is clear
makes it more difficult to act when the
case is complicated. Once we drift too
far toward a self-serving, “transactional”
amorality, it will be difficult to ever find
our way back.
John M. Crisp, an op-ed columnist
for Tribune News Service, lives in
Georgetown, Texas.
JOHN M. CRISP
jcrispcolumns@
gmail.com
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