Why Moderate Republicans Matter, Revisited
Yesterday’s post was primarily a response to why Ross Douthat’s snarky dismissal of New England or Rockefeller Republicans was off base. Using a column by Ross’ workmate at the New York Times, David Brooks, I offered that moderate Republicans are not opportunists as they are bearers of an old tradition in the GOP, one that makes the case for a civic-minded conservatism.
Today, I want to talk a bit about why moderate Republicans matter electorally using a post by Noah Millman of the blog American Scene. In that post, he opines that if we basically brush off the sterotypical New England Republican, we can basically kiss that region goodbye and kiss the chances of being a national party:
The “New Democrats” and “neoliberals” that Ross refers to were concerned with many things, from questions of policy to questions of marketing, but one of the key things they were concerned with was being competitive nationally, and particularly in the South, the region that was most dramatically trending in a Republican direction. Leading lights included Tennessee Senator Al Gore and Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton. The “Super-Tuesday” primary was designed for the 1988 election to insure that the nominee was acceptable to the Southern electorate (and wound up delivering Michael Dukakis: go figure). Even as they made gains in traditionally Republican-leaning regions (California favored Bush Sr. by a much narrower margin than the nation as a whole in 1988, a far cry from 1976 when the state went for Gerald Ford while the election went to Jimmy Carter), the Democrats (other than John Kerry) understood that ceding an entire section of the country was dangerous folly.
Indeed. John Kerry’s strategy in 2004 to basically ignore the South didn’t work out so well. Obama was careful not to do that this time and ended up winning the two crucial Southern states of Virginia and North Carolina. Other than that goofup in 2004, the Dems have still tried to be competative in the South even though it was becoming Republican. Because of that, they still have a number of Democratic House and Senate members.
But while the Dems see the South as a region to invest in, Millman thinks the GOP is not listening:
Do the Republicans see things that way today? I don’t really think so. The national party would, of course, like to keep as many votes as it can. But other than trying to hang on to the Snowes and Specters, it’s not at all clear to me that the GOP has any strategy for competing in the Northeast. The reformers who have played well to Ross – Pawlenty, most prominently, but also Jindal, and to some extent Huckabee – are all basically solid social conservatives who don’t take an especially hard ideological line on the role of government and who position themselves as pragmatic problem-solvers interested in the problems of a family of four earning $50-75,000 per year, and not just the problems of big corporations and the wealthy. Ross is right that these guys don’t add up to a faction, but I’m making a different point: guys in this mold are not going to be competitive in Maryland, in New Jersey, in Connecticut. Nor are they going to be competitive in California. And once you’ve conceded the Northeast and the West Coast, the road to either 270 electoral votes or 51 Senate seats looks mighty steep.
Nothing to disagree with here. Being that Pawlenty is my governor, I can say that even though Minnesota is a “blue” state, there are enough pockets of social conservatives, that allow for Pawlenty to be a governor in Minnesota. Louisiana is a fairly social conservative state which makes a Bobby Jindal possible. But place these two in a socially liberal area like a Massachusetts or Pennsylvania and you have a harder, if not impossible task.
While some have said otherwise, Democrats know that they need the South to win. All one has to do is look at those electoral votes: Virginia has 13, North Carolina 15, Georgia 15, and Florida 27. While some might see this as a backwater region of the country, to a Democratic strategist, this is electoral college heaven.
But the Dems know that they can’t win in the South by running as if the candidate lived in San Francisco or Manhattan. They have to tailor the Democratic message to that region; supporting gun rights here, and the death penalty there. To win a presidential or congressional election, such attention to detail must be met or else you lose.
Republicans dismiss the Northeast at its peril, missing a ton of electoral votes: Pennsylvania with 21, New York with 31, New Jersey with 15 and Massachusetts with 12.
Douthat is a great thinker and has some wonderful policy ideas for the GOP. And he has some good insight into social conservatism. However, his weakness is to not see how social conservatism has turned off voters in many parts of the country, like the Northeast and the West Coast. If the GOP follows some of his ideas, that might result in a stronger regional party, but it won’t make the Repblicans a national party.
In some case, a little heterodoxy is in order. We need to be able to run candidates that tend to be pro-choice and pro-gay marriage in areas where this issue matters. (I would love to run such candidates everywhere, but I am talking about being strategic at this point, not morality.)
In the end, while principles matter, getting the most votes also matters as well. The Green Party can run on principles, but you don’t see them winning major elections.
If Douthat wants the GOP to be a winning party, he needs the moderates to push the GOP over the top. A little heterodoxy can go a long way.
6 Responses to “Why Moderate Republicans Matter, Revisited”
[...] #8: Sanders again, talking about the Millman [...]
“They have to tailor the Democratic message to that region; supporting gun rights here, and the death penalty there. To win a presidential or congressional election, such attention to detail must be met or else you lose.”
Or in other words, they just need to be able to pander to whoever they are talking to? It's fine for a candidate for office to come to the South and say they support gun rights or the death penalty, but if they go to Manhattan or San Francisco and say they don't, well then they have a consistency problem.
Its no secret the Repubs have serious problems, many of which were brought upon by themselves. But if they throw the SoCons overboard they will be a permanent minority because that's the wing of the party that can usually be counted on at the polls. Call it a marriage of convenience; its just the way it is. The only hope for the Repubs right now is the Dems overreaching or severely screwing up. If that doesn't happen, then either the moderate Republicans are going to have to become more conservative, or the SoCons are going to have to become more moderate. As long as these two wings keep bickering with each other, one of them will just stay home come voting day and the Dems will keep winning without having to do a whole lot of work on their own.
As a social liberal and fiscal conservative…all I can say is that I would rather identify myself with a big spending party than a socially intolerant party.
On a side note…if SoCons would actually follow the teaching of Jesus, I would be more than happy to join them.
Love and tolerance….that is how Reps will find themselves in the desert.
“We need to be able to run candidates that tend to be pro-choice and pro-gay marriage in areas where this issue matters. “
Wait – that would mean that they are a liberal and not a social conservative. In other words, a Democrat! Fail!
“We need to be able to run candidates that tend to be pro-choice and pro-gay marriage in areas where this issue matters.”
Now you're cutting off your nose to spite your face. Who you want to run are candidates that are not anti-choice and not anti-gay……..a distinction that works to keep one side of the tent from collapsing while you expand the other side of it.
As for the New England issue…….2006 and 2008 races up there did not turn on social issues, but Iraq and Bush fatigue…….how quickly the political literati seem to lose their memory cells……..Bass and Sununu in NH were indeed socially moderate, but lost to two Dem hacks who did not distinguish themselves in any way except getting DNC funded anti-George Bush airtime.
What this really means is that there are not enough people open to conservatrive ideas to maintain a conservative party. IN the end, in the U.S. there are not. Demographic changes in the U.S. was going to eliminate the more conservative party. The incompetence of the Bush Administraiton and the Congressional Republicans managed to alienate enough people to speed up the process by about 20 years.
So the next question is does the U.S. need two big spending, big pork, nanny state governments. Of course, looking at states like Califonria or Mass., the answer is no.
So instead of talking about how the Repubicans can recover when they cannot, the better question is what will politics look like with the coming one party state. How does the Voting Rights Act work in a one party state? How could states change the primary system when the real elections occur inside one party's primary.