Our political Quote of the Day comes from political analyst Charlie Cook from a column in The National Journal titled “Cook: Partisan Myopia Can Be Deadly.” He explores many Republican’s fixation on pleasing their Tea Party base at the expense of turning off independent voters who decide elections — a turn off that a parade of polls show is now occuring.
Some key quotes:
One of the many problems associated with Washington growing so venomously partisan over the last two decades is that everything has come to be seen as binary. Something is either “0” or “1,” good or bad. And if one side looks bad, it is presumed that the other party looks better.
The debt-ceiling fight is a good example. While many of the more ideological Republicans in Congress perceive themselves as bravely standing on principle, the broader public sees them as adding to the dysfunction of a city and a process that were already screwed up.
He notes polls and says GOPers might not care about how they are turning off Democrats but they should be alarmed at the exodus of independent support.
Putting aside the asinine public pronouncements by some Republicans, such as “reelection is the furthest thing from my mind,” it’s pretty clear that many GOP members of Congress are more afraid of their base than they are of independent voters. Some fear that conservative and tea party supporters will stay home.
Really? Do they actually believe that, with President Obama at the top of the ticket and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid standing to benefit if they don’t vote, the hard-line conservatives will stay home?
Maybe they should consider that in last year’s election, despite all the GOP’s momentum, only 36 percent of those who voted called themselves Republican. That’s precisely the same percentage as four years earlier, when the party was taking a beating.
Republican turnout didn’t budge. Democratic turnout did drop by 2 points in 2010 compared to 2006, with the independent share of the vote picking up 2 points. Turnout doesn’t vary that much, and it will be up across the board in 2012, because there will be a presidential election.
Do they think that, notwithstanding Obama, Pelosi, and Reid, conservatives and tea party supporters will vote for Democrats as a protest? Oh please….
He then looks at how independents have helped win win electiosn in recent years. His conclusion:
Independent voters are overwhelmingly nonideological and don’t like Washington, politicians, or political parties. They hate the fighting and the sophomoric, partisan towel-snapping that is routine here. Independents are pragmatic. They just want the place to function.
In 25 years of column writing and almost 39 years of watching this town, I’ve seen a lot of one-term and two-term wonders passing through Congress, their names largely remembered only in back issues of The Almanac of American Politics and in political trivia contests. A disproportionate share of those mostly forgotten wonders had short careers because they obsessed about their base and ignored independent and swing voters. Democrats did it in 2009 and 2010, and Republicans are doing it now.
And it’s not just that.
I have been amazed when talking to some folks who were once solid Republicans who are now turned off by their own party and say they are thinking of becoming or are now independents. This includes some who listened to talk radio (at least three the past few weeks) who can’t listen to it anymore since they are upset with what the party they liked because they did not like the Democrats are doing and can’t listen to Rush, Sean et. al. cheerlead for going into default anymore.
But the bigger issue is one of branding, as I noted HERE. The Republican Party is in the process of rebranding itself on the debt limit crisis — to the extent that Democrats can point to proof that Ronald Reagan was dead set against not raising the debt limit when he was President. Many forget that Reagen was not totally beloved by conservatives when he was President. Why? Because he compromised. But he stood up for the part of America’s political culture that for generations legislated for the good of the country and compromised for the country to get things done.
The lack of GOPer leaders and Congress members today courageous enough to truly go to the mat against members of their own party for the common good is what is shocking to many, particularly independent voters.
And if the country defaults, the stock market goes down, and the job scene looks worse many voters — even if they are unimpressed with Barack Obama — will remember…with their votes or with their staying home to not vote for their party on election day.
When faced with a seemingly ineffective Obama who looks like he’s trying to find a solution and an inflexible group of people who say it’s no big deal if there is a default, if it proves to be anything but a tiny deal, they, their party — and the entire country — will be in big trouble.
And voters will wonder: can we trust them to give them the keys to drive again?
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.