Is the Republican Party Insane?

Writing in the New York Review of Books recently, Charles Simic noted "the hint of being unhinged that now seems the first requirement of any Republican running for elective office." Compared to Republican candidates in the past, Simic argued, the men currently barnstorming the country lack the balance and moderation that used to be expected of people running for national office. In my view, not since McCarthy have we seen anyone harnessing a complete disregard for empirical reality to such an extent, and now we have four or five people doing it simultaneously -- and they're less out-there than the ones who have dropped out.

That's a clever line, and one that I tend to endorse in my snarkier moments, when I wonder why people like David Brooks and Chris Christie are not leading the party. But assuming that people one does not understand are just crazy is exactly the kind of disengagement that does so much harm. So how do we explain what is happening with Santorum and Gingrich and Romney.

In the latest edition of the NYRB, Sam Tanenhaus offers a clearer explanation than I have seen elsewhere. Here's the crux of it: "there is no question," Tanenhaus writes,  "that the GOP’s positions have shifted far to the right." Not only the candidates themselves, but the way they talk to each other proves that.

This, in turn, points to the larger problem for the GOP. Its leading figures, in office and in the media, continue to espouse an antigovernment ideology that in reality attracts very few voters, even on the right. More accurately, today’s self-identified conservatives embrace movement rhetoric but not movement ideology—at least not when it is cast as policy.

In other words, not even members of the party itself believe that what they are saying is true in the real world. They believe in the sound of the words, and the way the words makes them feel, but not in the actual consequences of their public positions. Tanenhaus points to evidence that not even "strong" members of the Tea Party want to do away with or even scale back Medicare and Social Security, despite their constant references to Obama as a welfare president.

This is a form of collective insanity. The Republican Party is acting against its own interests, and in its more lucid moments even recognizes this fact, but can't stop itself. That's not good for anyone -- not even the President, who may win an election because of it.