Gets at what we were discussing yesterday,
@Diefreien
White House memo: Obstruction will cost GOP
"There seems to be a growing conventional wisdom that it is either politically smart — or, at worst, cost-free — for the GOP to adopt an obstructionist, partisan, base-politics posture," Donilon writes in the two-page memo, obtained by Axios. "However, there is lots of evidence that the opposite is true: ... this approach has been quite damaging to them."
Between the lines: The memo cites a Morning Consult poll showing a Biden approval rating of 62% with registered voters. Just 23% of registered voters think the Republican Party is going in the right direction, while 63% say the party is on the wrong track.
- Other data points: Tens of thousands of Republicans across the country have switched party affiliation since the Capitol riot, the N.Y. Times reports. The Economist/YouGov polling finds a decline in voters calling themselves Republicans since November (from 42% to 37%).
- "[Y]ou see a party shrinking its appeal in this country — not growing it," Donilon writes. "Opposing President Biden’s American Rescue Plan only exacerbates Republicans' predicament. ... [T]he GOP is putting itself at odds with a rescue package supported overwhelmingly by the American people."
Polls put support for Biden's American Rescue Plan at 68% (Quinnipiac) or more.
- Donilon called opposition to the plan "politically isolating": "The country is looking for action. For progress. For solutions. On COVID. On the economy. You see it and hear it all over the country. Voters are hurting."
While I love seeing the GOP tearing itself apart, I'm worried that the DNC chiefs are gonna use this opportunity to shift to the right in order to "attract" disavowed Republicans. I can very much see the DNC the Lincoln Project card to reject any progressive demands, particularly with climate change and whatnot, in order to meet a "middle-ground". At the same time, Biden's overtures to the left did surprise me as I've mentioned. But I can see someone like Harris or Buttigieg going full corporate centrist to become "national unifiers" and trying to kill their former progressive images they had prior to 2020.
I'm hoping a substantial anti-Trump base remains or forms a quasi-independent caucus within the GOP in order to keep the former possibility from happening., while keeping in-fighting going. In a perfect world we'd heave several major parties as a result of this, but that doesn't look like it's happening. If the two-party system was kept - and grew stronger - with the Great Depression and its aftermath, idk what would be needed to destroy it now.