Quickies: Coalition Politics

     At this point, the Democrats’ practice of coalition politics is well known and well understood. This morning, Ace has some comments on Republican coalition politics:

     A political coalition is in fact a coalition. That means we agree, mutually, to advance each other's interests, and not actively thwart each other's interests.

     That means that the Establishment does not get to run the entire show, and get everything it wants, and block the Tea Party/grassroots from having anything they want, and attempt (successfully) to squelch and block every single Tea Party candidate.

     That means that the Establishment does not get to run on Tea Party rhetoric for three months every two years and then pursue nothing but Establishment agenda items for the next twenty one months, while frequently demeaning the Tea Party as "crazy" and "wacko birds."

     So far, the above might strike my Gentle Readers as reasonable – and it is. However, there’s an assumption embedded in it: the interests of the various components to the coalition must not be mutually antagonistic.

     Democrat coalitions satisfy that condition: they’re based on the enveloping promise that “if you agree to support Democrat candidates, we’ll take money and rights from those who support Republicans and redirect them to you.” Though that promise has often been broken afterward, the components of the Democrat coalition have routinely accepted it. Contemporary politics is rife with examples.

     We continue with Ace’s comments:

     I would not mind being in a coalition with the Establishment again: But it must be a coalition. The GOP cannot exist for very long as a vehicle for such a small cohort of the country's population, while throwing out meaningless rhetorical chum for the Dummies they think will keep voting them power.

     Isn’t the recurrence of that pattern a clear indication that the “Establishment component” to the Republican coalition regards the interests of the conservative “base” as antagonistic to its own?

     Time should be spent on why the Republican “Establishment” would think so. However, whether it’s correct in so thinking is essentially irrelevant to the political dynamic involved. In the practice of governance, the conviction is what matters.