Are Conservatives More Clever than They Appear?
Over at Politico.com’s Arena, the topic of the day today was the RNC’s resolution to rebrand the Democratic Party as the “Democrat-Socialist Party”. Here was my answer to the question of whether this was smart politics, dumb politics, or a joke:
It is interesting to juxtapose the fact that we are even discussing this question with yesterday’s Gallup report documenting that over the past 8 years the Republican party has lost identifiers in practically every single demographic group that Gallup reports data on (with the one exception of frequent church goers). Particularly notable is the support that the Republican party has lost among males (>6%) 18-29 year olds (>8%), Midwesterners (>8%), middle income earners (>8%), and self-described political moderates (>8%). Overall, in 2001, Gallup had a near even split between those who identified with or leaned toward the Democratic party (45%) and the Republican party (44%). Today the gap is 14% points in the Democrats favor (53% to 39%). While it’s possible that this is all just a branding problem and that announcing to the world that the Democratic Party should really be called “Democrat-Socialist Party” will take care of everything, somehow I doubt it…
Of course, the resolution will excite the base and maybe sway a few votes. But it is ultimately a distraction from what the RNC should be doing: formulating and promoting an alternative to President Obama’s agenda that will help expand the party’s appeal. There are plenty of items in Obama’s agenda that will concern independent and moderate voters. But simply labeling the Democratic agenda as one big march to socialism is not likely to persuade many of these voters that the Republicans have something better to offer.
Reading over these posts got me thinking a little bit about politics, political science, and expectations for the behavior of the Republican Party. Anthony Downs’ An Economic Theory of Democracy (and much of the spatial models of voting that followed it) suggests that in a two party system, parties should move towards the median voter. This is similar to the conventional political wisdom that parties in two-party systems need to embrace a “big tent” strategy, especially after losing elections; this is largely the same thing as Nolan’s point about helping to “expand the party’s appeal”. And, by and large, this is what we think the Democratic Party did in the post-Carter years.
Yet ever since Obama’s election, it seems as if for every step the Republican party takes towards a “big tent”, it seems to take three in the opposite direction. Perhaps the most significant action in this regard from a policy stand point was the near unanimous opposition to the stimulus bill among Congressional Republicans. From a symbolic stand point, though, it is hard to top the “come to Rush” moments of apologies by elected lawmakers for offending Mr. Limbaugh. I suspect any forthcoming resolution on “rebranding” the Democratic party in the midst of an economic crisis will come to be seen in a similar light.
So it would seem that the Republican party is ignoring both the conventional political wisdom (build a bigger tent) and spatial models of voting from political science (move towards the median voter). However, perhaps there is a method to this madness. As my colleague Adam Przeworski has pointed out, democracies are countries where ruling parties lose elections. They not lose them any time soon, but, as Gordon Brown will probably learn in the near future, they lose them eventually.
So perhaps what is going on is that conservative Republicans have given up trying to win elections at all right now by conventional means (read: not behaving in a Downsian manner), and are relying instead on the assumption that eventually the Democratic Party will self-destruct. Or, put in somewhat milder language, eventually the voters will want change for change’s sake. In the meantime, therefore, there is no reason to stop trying to remake the Republican Party in an even more conservative image (read: “fire up the base!”), so that when it does return to power, conservatives will be in a prime position to enact their preferred policies. If this is indeed the case, it seems like a high risk/high reward type strategy for conservatives, but I wonder what it means for the rest of the Republican Party.
Comments
Even if the median voter theorem were a perfect predictor, 2009 would be way too early for the GOP to move toward the national-level median voter, since that would not necessarily help to win state and local district midterm elections in 2010, with 460 or so different median voters to worry about.
And does Gallup really only have partisan identification data for two time points over the most recent decade? It seems that discussions about the future of one of the two major political parties in the United States may have a little more depth with, say, three data points.
Posted by: Lawrence | May 19, 2009 11:55 PM
Lawrence: No, Gallup has much more data. Josh is just summarizing.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/15370/Party-Affiliation.aspx
Posted by: John Sides | May 20, 2009 10:03 AM
Isn’t it possible that moving to the center would have the effect of causing some of the voters on the end (the tea party types) to simply stay home such that the result would be the net loss of votes? And couldn’t it also mean the loss of money which could be used to gain more voters than would be gained by a move to the center?
Posted by: Ted | May 20, 2009 11:16 AM
I think there are two basic ways to think about the electoral process if you’re the opposition party.
1) You could imagine simple spatial Downsian voting. By this logic, you were voted out of office because your positions diverged from the median voter. The only way to win power back is to moderate your positions.
2) You could imagine a pure retrospective voting model (described in Downs, but now more associated with Fiorina, Ferejohn, and others). By this logic, you lost power because your policies created bad national conditions. Your current behavior and positions will have little effect on when you come back to power. You will be elected again when, and only when, the party in power produces bad national conditions.
In reality, elections are certainly some combination of models #1 and #2, but the beliefs of the opposition party about the balance between the two models probably shape their behavior. I surmise, based on their behavior, that prominent Republicans believe the world is mostly model #2, with just a little of model #1. Democrats like the DLC behave as if it is mostly model #1 with just a little of model #2.
Based on the empirical evidence, I think the Republicans are closer to the truth, but the DLC’s beliefs are certainly not unreasonable. I think many of the debates over national party strategy boil down to disputes over which of these classic political science models is more correct.
Posted by: Jon Ladd | May 20, 2009 12:40 PM
Isn’t it possible that moving to the center would have the effect of causing some of the voters on the end (the tea party types) to simply stay home such that the result would be the net loss of votes? And couldn’t it also mean the loss of money which could be used to gain more voters than would be gained by a move to the center?
I came to this conclusion, and the one in the opening post, after thinking about it a while ago. There really doesn’t seem to be much benefit to Republicans in becoming more moderate because their coalition is so fragmented that any action or non-action they take would alienate some major constituency. So, why not just try to preserve the most fanatical part of the coalition and wait for the rest of America to get frustrated and join it? They can even play the fool (hi there, Mr. Steele!) in an election cycle or two to give younger Republicans a reason to stage a revolution and take over the party. It’s a good way to manufacture a popular upswing.
Posted by: Eronarn | May 20, 2009 01:27 PM
Downs really has little upside left, at least as a positive theory.
(With apologies to Bernie Grofman, who once noted he was an Upside Downsian, and who has written a must-read review essay on the general topic—in the Annual Review of Political Science around 2005 or 2006.)
Posted by: MSS | May 20, 2009 02:48 PM
I think that our collective exercise in game theoretic strategery for the GOP needs to include another option: the GOP may cease to be a viable national political party. We may be seeing the beginning of the end of the GOP.
Now, I am not saying that is likely, but it should be included as part of the strategic thinking.
And, even more in line with this option, you could argue that this is what the GOP leaders are doing; by playing to their most base elements, they are seeking to prevent the emergence of a viable third party. This would be in line with recent history, where most Republicans think that the lesson of GHW Bush’s lost election in 1992 is that his moderation on fiscal issues led to the emergence of Ross Perot.
Posted by: Jason McDaniel | May 21, 2009 12:43 PM
Since the republicans were active participants in the economic collapse along with the sending of our industial and technological base to China I would say they set things up pretty well for themselves.Things will only get worse under democratic rule not because its the democrats but because there isnt much left to work with.And leaving them with 2 unwinnable wars is just the icing on the cake.
Posted by: truthynesslover | May 21, 2009 12:57 PM