Coalition Or Club? The GOP is at risk of becoming a regional, monochromatic party.

[babylonsister]

Coalition Or Club?
The GOP is at risk of becoming a regional, monochromatic party.

by Ronald Brownstein

Saturday, May 2, 2009


When Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania switched to the Democratic Party this week, the response from Republican leaders was unequivocal: Don't let the door hit you on your way out.

Of course, they said that while standing, metaphorically speaking, in a building with no roof, broken windows, and collapsing walls.

In one sense, Specter's defection merely continues a generation-long trend. Since the 1960s, each party's electoral coalition has grown more ideologically homogenous as conservatives have migrated away from the Democratic Party, and liberals and moderates have moved away from the GOP. That ideological resorting has thinned the ranks of Republican House and Senate members from left-leaning areas such as the Northeast and the West Coast and has culled Democrats from conservative regions, principally the South.

The backlash against a rigidly conservative president produced a shrunken Pennsylvania GOP so doctrinaire that the eclectic Specter had little chance of winning its support.

This ideological and geographic sorting-out has narrowed each party's reach. But Democrats in recent years have maintained a broader coalition, both in Congress and among voters, by demonstrating more receptivity to diverse views. In the Senate, for instance, Democrats hold 22 of the 58 seats representing the 29 states that twice voted for George W. Bush. And just 40 percent of self-identified Democrats consider themselves liberals, according to Gallup polling; the rest identify as moderate or conservative.

By contrast, the GOP is becoming an increasingly monochromatic party, dominated by the most conservative voters and regions. This process enormously accelerated under Bush and Karl Rove, who built their governing strategy on energizing the Republican base rather than on expanding it by courting swing voters. Today, Democrats hold their largest advantage in party identification over Republicans since President Reagan's first term, and 70 percent of the shrunken GOP core identifies as conservative. After Specter's leap, Republicans hold just two of the 36 Senate seats in the 18 mostly affluent and secular "blue-wall" states that twice voted against Bush -- and that have now voted Democratic in each of the past five presidential elections.

Specter's defection shows how this contraction feeds on itself. The Pennsylvanian changed parties largely because he calculated that he could not survive a 2010 Republican primary challenge from conservative former Rep. Pat Toomey. This was a reasonable conclusion: Specter's base of moderates abandoned the GOP in huge numbers during Bush's second term. Their departure has left behind mostly conservatives receptive to Toomey's hard-core small-government message. In other words, the backlash against a rigidly conservative president produced a shrunken Pennsylvania GOP so doctrinaire that the eclectic Specter had little chance of winning its support. Now he's a good bet to win re-election next year as a Democrat.

Specter's switch shows that Republicans haven't yet paid the final bills for Bush and Rove's insular strategy. That price has been especially steep in the Northeast. In 1988, George H.W. Bush won eight of the 11 states from Maryland to Maine. Even as recently as 2000, Republicans won 40 percent of the House seats and held eight of the 22 Senate seats from those states. But amid the younger Bush's polarizing, Southern-inflected conservatism, Northeastern Republicans fell through the floorboards: They now hold only 18 percent of the region's House seats and, since Specter's switch, just three of its 22 Senate seats. In 2008, Barack Obama won all 11 Northeastern states and a combined 60 percent of their votes. Some weakened individual Democrats may provide isolated electoral opportunities for the GOP in 2009 and 2010, but across much of the Northeast, Republicans are now about as relevant as Whigs.

more...

http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/nj_20090502_6655.php

[BlooInBloo]

1. "at risk"??? hahahhahaha!!! Once again, journalists are the last to the party...

How can we EVER survive without them? :rofl:

[AlinPA]

2. This map should help to support Brownstein's point about regional

characteristics of the R party.
http://countenance.wordpress.com/2008/11/09/the-red-delta-map/

[county worker]

3. This is interesting: "just 40 percent of self-identified Democrats consider themselves liberals,

according to Gallup polling; the rest identify as moderate or conservative."


That is the reason we cannot become only a left leaning party. If we try to get as ideologically pure with liberal ideals, we will suffer the same fate as the repubs.

[starroute]

5. But it isn't really about ideology for the Democrats

The Republicans demand total adherence to free market capitalism and whatever else happens to be part of the party line this week. But the Democrats don't have anything equivalent in the way of a belief system -- it's far more about pragmatic solutions and passing legislation.

It's also a lot harder to compromise on legislation than it would be on ideology -- or at least it is under present circumstances. Do you compromise on health care or clean energy by giving control to the same old corporations? Do you compromise on the essentials needed to bring the economy into the 21st century (education, infrastructure, broadband, etc.) by passing bills that sound good but don't spend enough to really make it work?

The stuff the Democrats have to do now doesn't allow for a lot of half-measures. It's pretty much all or nothing. If there was a viable conservative position to compromise with, the Republicans would already being espousing it instead of just being the party of No. If there was a viable moderate position, the moderates would have something more compelling to offer than half-measures and sell-outs.

Americans like to describe themselves as conservatives or moderates, but I think a lot of it is just a fancy way of saying, "I'm a sensible, hard-working individual who doesn't make a lot of rash decisions in my personal life and I want my government to be the same." And that doesn't exactly translate into either "conservative" or "moderate" policy proposals by any recognizable standard.

Really, what it comes down to right now is agreeing as a nation that we have to make some big moves to get through the myriad crises that face us -- and anything less amounts to self-deception and denial of reality. The details of those moves allow some wiggle room, but accepting the reality that demands them does not. And that may be a kind of a litmus test, but it's certainly not an ideologically-based one.

[Puzzler]

4. At risk? ... it pretty much is already.

.