The late Jack Kemp and the G.O.P.

While he helped to bring the disastrous supply side economic ideas to the Republican party, the late Jack Kemp also sought a "big tent" G.O.P. that would look more like America.

Specter's switch and what it tells us

Senator Arlen Specter’s switch to the Democratic Party (actually his RETURN to the party of his younger days) reveals much about the U.S. political party system. First, As Aldrich reminds us, politicians tend to align with political parties that afford the best chance of getting and staying elected; in that respect Specter’s jettisoning of the Republican Party makes perfect self-interested sense. He was sure to lose the Republican primary in 2010, and changing parties afforded his best chance of political survival.

The Senator’s switch also indicates that the process of sorting, described by Fiorina, continues. The Republicans once had a large stock of liberals, such as Nelson Rockefeller and John Lindsay of New York; Senators William Scranton and Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania; Congressman Bill Steiger of Wisconsin. The Democrats once had numerous conservatives, mainly Southern, but also such northerners as Henry “Scoop” Jackson of Washington. As sorting proceeds, it is becoming increasingly difficult for the G.O.P. to abide liberals and the Democrats conservatives.

The extent to which such sorting or elite polarization continues depends in large part on the success of the Obama administration. Should the President’s policies prove effective, and if he maintains his commanding popularity in the polls, it would not be surprising to see the remaining Republican moderate/liberals Snowe and Collins make the party switch as well. If the Obama administration turns out to be a one-term disaster, either because of failed economic or national security policy, it is not difficult to imagine an emboldened G.O.P. that convinces “Blue Dog Democrats” to “jump ship.”

Republicans debate how to save their party

Here is an excellent analysis of the current state of the Republican party, and the divergent views within the G.O.P. about how to improve their situation.

Specter to join the Democrats

While this is obviously good news for Democrats in the short term, the question is whether the Keystone State Democrats can unite behind Specter and keep him in the Senate.

What's the Matter with Larry Bartels?

Thomas Frank and Larry Bartels offer different interpretations of working class voting in the 2000 and 2004 elections. Thomas Frank, in What’s The Matter With Kansas and other articles argues that the nation’s working class neglected its economic self interest in supporting Republican candidates such as George W. Bush. With special emphasis on the 2004 election, Frank illustrates how the Republicans, under the leadership of Karl Rove, became adept at convincing working class voters that the Republicans could best protect their interests on the “social” or “wedge” issues such as abortion, prayer in the schools and gay marriage. Bartels, in an effort to discredit the work of Frank, offers a highly restricted definition of lower-income voters that all but excludes a large portion of workers in the middle class. Bartels also ignores a long history of Republican efforts to woo the middle classes going back to Richard Nixon’s 1968 campaign. Overall, Frank offers the more convincing and compelling analysis.

Even a cursory glance at the political history of the United States since the 1960s confirms the long, successful efforts to portray the Democrats as unreliable and dangerous outsiders of one sort or another and the Republicans as the real friends of working class people. This began with Richard Nixon’s appeal to the “Great Silent Majority” and his successful campaign to paint the Democrats as soft on crime, pro-welfare radicals. By 1972 Nixon’s C.R.E.E.P. successfully derided George McGovern as the candidate of “Acid, Amnesty and Abortion.” George H.W. Bush and his campaign manager Lee Atwater took this sort of campaign to a whole new level in 1988 in portraying Michael Dukakis as an unreliable liberal who would endanger school prayer, promote abortion and let dangerous criminals out of jail. This campaign strategy did not arise, de novo, in 2000; it had been around for decades; it worked; to deny that working class people were coming over to the Republican Party in droves defies both common sense and an examination of any political history of those decades.

Also troubling in Bartels’ analysis is his very narrow, restrictive definition of “working class” as those making under $35,000 per year. Certainly there are many in the working class making far more than that. Beyond that, it is too restrictive to attempt a quantitative definition of working class, which is really more of a state of mind or cultural inclination than something to be measured with numbers.

While Frank presented a dire portrait of the state of the Democratic Party in 2005, the November 2008 election, and the breadth and depth of Barack Obama’s victory, give Democrats abundant reasons for optimism. Certainly most of the reliably Republican red states remained red, including Kansas. But Obama was able to win back both Ohio and Florida, which had gone to the Republican column both times for Bush. Beyond that, Obama made inroads into areas previously deemed red or at least purple, such as Indiana, Colorado, New Mexico, Virginia, North Carolina and Nevada. Theories abound explaining the Obama victory, but surely a large part of his success lay in the fact that, as exit polls indicate, economics trumped the social issues for many voters in 2008, and the Democrats likely won back voters wooed away by the Republicans over several decades. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1108/15270.html

The Eternal Minnesota Senate Race

While it looks as though Al Franken WILL be the junior Senator from Minnesota, there is ongoing litigation.

The New Conservative Party

For those wondering whether today’s Republicans will wither away, a look at the demise of the Whigs is instructive. As John H. Aldrich argues in Why Parties?, the Whigs failed to survive as an effective national party as they were increasingly split by the slavery question. The Republicans arose as a regional, northern-based alternative to the Whigs aware that they could dominate national politics due to the sheer size and political clout of the North. Eventually, as Earl and Merle Black observe, the Republicans became a dominant national party by the 1980s, most triumphantly with Ronald Reagan’s landslide 1984 victory. If the Obama presidency is successful, and he holds onto and expands his diverse 2008 victory coalition, the Republican Party is doomed to an increasingly smaller national role. Ironically, today’s G.O.P. is becoming more and more a reverse image of its original self as a southern-based party. While the Republicans could survive for decades as a northern party, the reverse is not true. Unless the Republicans can once again become a national force, they will meet the fate of the Whigs, and a new moderate conservative party will arise to replace them, perhaps called the New Conservative Party.

The New Conservative Party, as befits a conservative party, would look to the past for inspiration, and it would find much of that in the ideas and policies of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower and to some extent Richard M. Nixon. This is a party that would, like the first Republicans, have a deep commitment to equality of opportunity. Also, in the old Whig/Republican tradition, it would not be afraid to spend public funds and do bold things in the name of “internal improvements.” Like Theodore Roosevelt, this party would support a strong role for the federal government in preserving the natural environment and regulating the excesses of large corporations. While the New Conservatives would be as mindful as Dwight D. Eisenhower of the need to balance the budget and spend responsibly, it would not be afraid, like “Ike” to spend lavishly on needed programs, as he was with N.A.S.A., the National Defense Education Act, the National Highway Act and the St. Lawrence Seaway. This new party would endorse creations of Richard Nixon, such as O.S.H.A. and the E.P.A. In terms of foreign policy, the New Conservatives would certainly “Walk softly and carry a big stick” but they would do so with Eisenhower’s concern for avoiding unnecessary expenditures of money and lives in the process. In terms of civil rights, this is a party that would embrace the African American community and welcome its participation, and demonstrate its commitment as Eisenhower did in 1957 at Little Rock and by signing the 1957 Civil Rights Act. This would not be the party of Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich!

Potential support would come from several areas. Like the earlier incarnations of the Republican Party, the New Conservatives would likely find their strongest support in the current “purple” states, as well as the more conservative “blue” states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania. They could likely win support in the South, except for those areas with strong concentrations of “religious right” voters, such as South Carolina. It is unlikely that they would do well consistently in New York or California, but a popular candidate from either of those states could change that.

In terms of candidates and leaders, several names come to mind. Arnold Schwarzenegger, while of course ineligible to become President, would clearly be happy in such a party. Senators Arlen Spector, Olympia Snowe and Susan M. Collins also would be likely members. Moderate, “budget hawk” Democrats from purple states, such as Evan Bayh and Jon Tester might also find a home among the New Conservatives. Governor Bobby Jindal would not only find this an agreeable place, but would also be in the position of being an immediate contender for the presidential nomination. Overall, this would be a place for Democrats unhappy with the expansion of government and the increase of taxes of the Obama administration, combined with Republicans who could no longer cope with having their party hijacked by the likes of Sarah Palin.

How soon and how successfully such a party could compete depends in large part on the events of the next few years. If the Obama recovery plan is slow to take effect, this would certainly accelerate the demands for such a new party. Should the radical religious right succeed in taking over the Republican Party in 2012, this would likely cause moderate Republicans to seek an alternative party. While the New Conservatives could possibly win local and state offices in 2012, they would probably not be a serious contender for the White House until 2016.

Finally, every major political party in the U.S. must, it seems, have an animal symbol. The Whigs, trying to affect a frontier sensibility, had their raccoon. Today’s major parties have the donkey and elephant. A good choice for the New Conservatives would be the squirrel—hard-working and honest yet friendly, sociable and welcoming of all.