NPR has a debate show called Intelligence Squared. The latest episode debated the resolution The GOP must seize the center or die. Arguing for were David Brooks and Mickey Edwards, with Ralph Reed and Laura Ingraham arguing against. A lot was said about the GOP’s core principles vs. what they need to do to win elections, the role of political compromise and a fair bit about demographics.
They take two audience votes, one before the debate and one after. The winner is the side who raises who their percentage the most. The initial vote was 65% for / 14% against. The final vote was 65% for / 28% against, so the against side won. It is the implications of this result I’d like to debate.
I’ll say I was not surprised. In fact, I’ve suspected this type of result would come up at some point on the show, and I had a feeling toward the end it might happen here. But it certainly seems a Pyrrhic victory. The Ingraham / Reed team doubled their numbers by changing some minds, but overall their point of view does not have a high percentage of adherents. Two questions:
Do these results scale up? Given a good forum to make their points in a thoughtful manner, as I think they were here, would we expect similar numbers nationally? Would they succeed in persuading a few people to their side but still end up with relatively few in absolute terms?
If you feel the results do apply on a larger scale, did Ingraham and Reed essentially prove the point they were arguing against?
The audience was for the most part welcoming and polite to all four, but there were a few groans over things Reed said. I think Reed is fighting an increasingly uphill battle on social issues like gay marriage, and it’s easy to imagine people of his ilk being the final holdouts on that as the rest of the country gradually becomes OK with it. Not sure if that will be the case with other aspects of GOP-brand conservatism, though.
I’ll be interested to hear what others think of this, especially if they have time to listen to the show.
The trouble is getting a large faction of the Republican Party to recognize the existence of a “center” at all, what with calling anything and everything that isn’t in line with the official platform “far left”.
The Republican party is aging out. The closer they hew to their extreme right-wing views (especially on social issues), the less influence they’ll continue to have. They’re also whiting out (again, largely due to their social conservatism)…as Hispanics come to make up a larger percentage of the electorate, the gap between Democratic and Republican vote-totals is going to get larger and larger.
They’re in a major demographic trap and their leadership is sailing down the River Denial.
The GOP has lost a fair number of moderates in recent years. It stands to reason that a larger proportion of the people who remain are further to right, and therefore they don’t want the party to move to the center.
Actually, arguing in front of that audience, I would call this a rather smashing victory for the conservatives. If they can double their percentages with NPR listeners, imagine the response from independents or conservatives.
Same problem the Democrats had…and, to a certain degree STILL have. It’s difficult because moving towards the center means your radical wing will be pissed off, with cries of Republican/Democrat Lite™, and squeals of indignation and disgruntlement about being sold out or betrayed. The Republicans used to be better at playing this game, but I’d say for over a decade they have been falling into the same mistakes the the Dems were facing, of how to appeal to the middle while still maintaining your base. It’s harder for the Republicans right now because what the base really wants is a lot more unpalatable to the center, and it’s harder for them to convince folks that they are really just pandering to their base but once elected they will of course move to the center. The Dems are having an easier time, I think, because it’s clear they (as a whole, not individually) are just paying lip service to their own crazy element, and that in reality they are going to govern more from the center once elected.
Cite for any Democratic politician actually paying lip service to the Democratic “crazy element”. The left-wing equivalent to the Talibangelicals and Tea Partiers that make up the Republican base would have to be actual Marxists and Maoists, and I don’t think any of those actually EXIST in the Democratic base.
Moving to the center would be very difficult for them. The Democrats have moved right along with them, so if they move only moderately to the center they become hard to distinguish from Democrats and likely fall victim to “well, why shouldn’t I just vote for an actual Democrat?”. Leapfrogging over the Democrats and becoming the new “party of the left”* is one of those “it’s possible in theory but it’ll never happen” things. So in practical terms they’re pinned to the Right by the Democrats until if and when the Democrats move left and give them room to shift positions.
*Technically they’d be centrist and the Democrats would be right wing, but they’d be called left wing
Then there’s the problem that moving left would mean abandoning their base, and they don’t have much beyond their base any more. They’d have to rebuild from the remnants, regain voters from all the groups they’ve alienated. That would take years, years during which Republicans would be nearly unelectable. While that could theoretically be done it would take a major political impetus, and their future demographic problems aren’t enough of one to make them sacrifice elections now for a theoretical gain years in the future.
And then there’s the problem of how many Republicans in the leadership are True Believers, and not cynical manipulators. Someone who actually believes isn’t going to change their political position just because of its waning popularity.
I think things like Card Check was pretty much lip service to labor interests. I’m not saying the labor movement is hard-left, or even equivalent to the Tea Party, but that’s pretty clearly something that was never going to be significantly pushed for (and something that I easily ignore when voting Democratic even though I have issues with Card Check as legislation).
Some of the more confiscatory gun control proposals are also safely disregarded by centrists when voting because we know that the Democratic party will never actually push them through.
At the national level I tend to agree with you though - GOP candidates in the current environment have to take far more “extreme” positions (relative to some sort of idealized mean) during their primaries than Democratic candidates have to, and this is hurting them.
Definitely…and that’s why they are doing so poorly lately on the national level. It hurts them that their extreme wing is pushing for things that are so, well, extreme, and out of step with the center…and that the center is unsure if the Republicans are just going to pay lip service, or actually attempt to follow through with some of the more radical stuff being spewed out of the right.
Yeah, fair enough. Radical feminist groups, radical labor groups, radical pacifist groups: they do exist. But, my God, in such small numbers, and with such small influence. Can you imagine them splitting from the Democrats, running on their own (“The LSD Party”) and winning a handful of seats in the House of Representatives?
When The Green Party is anywhere near as influential as the Tea Party was, you might have a point. Until then? Nah.
And this is why the GOP don’t need to seize any “center” as defined by non-GOP. The ideological composition of the “center” is arbitrary. What counts is votes. By educating their children to embrace GOP values as the necessary patriotic virtues, they deny any legitimacy to the center. As for demographics, they can win on birthrate, and they know it.
We’re statistically insignificant, yes. (OK, I’m not really a Maoist. I’m a social democrat, though, so I’m still ignored.)
But to the GOP, the LBTGQ movements are the “crazy element” that makes the Democrats unacceptable.
edit: And apparently environmentalists, now. Yipes! That’s an interesting point, though. Environmentalism is not part of the Democrat base. Democrats aren’t Greens. The GOP are (since 1990?) anti-Green, so of course Democrats are unacceptably Green because a) Democrats/Commies are the fount of all evil, so of course environmentalism is a Dem/Commie plot; and b) any environmental consciousness at all is too much.
