What Happened In 2006?
Suburbanites, independents, and others who were fed up not just with the war and corruption, but also with the Republican drift toward big-government who stayed home, or even voted Democratic, on election day 2006. ~Michael Tanner
Wouldn’t it have been nice if that were true? There is, in fact, no exit poll data that I know of that corroborates that independents turned against the GOP because of the “Republican drift toward big government.” In any case, wouldn’t it be more likely that big-government measures would have driven down Republican turnout, since you would expect at least some Republicans to be most opposed to such policies?
Yet Republican turnout in 2006 remained fairly steady (36% in CNN’s national exit poll, of whom 91% voted for the GOP). The party ID figures were almost identical to 2004 (37%-D; 37%-R; 26%-I), which also suggests that independents did not stay home in large numbers compared to earlier elections. The difference between 2006 Republicans who voted for the House GOP and Republicans who voted for Bush is a statistically insignificant two points. To be more precise, since party ID in itself is not conclusive, consider how self-described conservatives voted in 2004 and 2006: they backed Bush’s re-election 84-15 and backed the House GOP in 2006 78-20. There is some slight decline, but the more significant decline came among self-described moderates–45% of them supported Bush in ’04, just 38% supported the GOP in ’06, and according to these exit polls they made up a significantly larger part of the electorate (45% in 2004 and 47% in 2006 to 34% and 32% conservative respectively). Does anyone think that the realistic way to capture a larger percentage of this larger group of self-described moderates in the current election cycle is to hew to small-government line?
McCain does need economic and small-government conservatives, but every indication from the actual voting habits of Republicans and most conservatives is that policies that expand the size and scope of government essentially do not change their willingness to support the GOP. If Medicare Part D wasn’t a deal-breaker, choosing Tim Pawlenty as a running mate certainly isn’t going to do it. On the other hand, ruling out someone like Pawlenty guarantees that McCain will have more difficulty making up the lost ground with moderates and independents.
On policy, I am in agreement with Tanner about small-government conservatism, but I fear that if small-government conservatives and libertarians keep telling themselves fairy tales about how excessive spending lost the Republicans control of Congress we will never get very good at presenting our arguments in ways that will win over significant public support.
The other thread seemed more fun. It was mostly me, but that’s how it goes sometimes.
Daniel:
The search for why the Republicans are fading in 2008 provides endless grist for moribund political theorizing on the right. I have my own theory, though, and it does not really involve anything specific Republicans are doing or failing to do. Republicans are fading in 2008 simply because it is their turn to fade. Such fading is cyclical. I am afraid that I do not believe that there is much more to it than that.
It’s not the war. It’s not spending. It’s that the present Republican cycle is old, tired and spent.
I happen to like Tim Pawlenty, but Mr. Pawlenty cannot forestall the Republican fade in 2008. The underlying political dynamic is too powerful for any national Republican to control.
You are right that there is no evidence that swing voters are voting Democratic today because Republicans spend too much. It is an analytical error however to suppose that what works politically for the left also works for the right. Conservatism has objective truth largely on its side, which means that it has straightforward powers of persuasion that liberalism lacks. Conservatism has far more ability to move the electorate toward it than liberalism does—which means that conservatives can sometimes win precisely by moving away from the political center, as Jesse Helms, Ronald Reagan and Ron Paul have proven.
But 2008 is no such year. This is the year of 1960′s liberalism’s swan song. its last day in the sun. No conservative politics are likely to deny Democrats their political victory in 2008.
Our comeback begins in 2010.
Howard
See, someone said “moribund” and now it’s no fun at all. Sad.
And then, there’s that whole 1960s swan song foolishness. Good lord!
I don’t have the data in front of me, but I have seen presentations of presidential electorate cycles that indeed show and ebb-and-flow movement of the majority vote with time between the two parties (or at least between the 2 primary schools of political thought). Again, it’s the flaw of a 2-party system: when popular sentiment rallies against the ruling party, the minority party (2004-06 Dems) rebound substantially. Generational tendencies also most likely force this cyclical shift, which is really bad news for conservatives given the data often presented on this blog about political trends in the 18-29 year-old demographic.
Really what we are experiencing right now is the cresting of the baby-boomer political tide (the 50-50 Red State-Blue State effect), with Bush leaving office. By 2010-12, the majority of political candidates will most likely be post-boomer. Maybe it’s this generational flux that we are just beginning to experience, exacerbated by the Iraq conflict and the horrible performance of the current GOP administration, that has dramatically soured the Republican brand in America.
To your point – maybe 2008 is the proper moment for limited-government conservatives and libertarians to refine their message to simultaneously bash the current brand of “conservatism” and position themselves as the only viable option to full-fledged statism.
Your critique largely parallels my own over people who wanted to blame “compassionate conservatism” for everything. I believe both are examples of Dougherty’s Law. Over issues the GOP had direct control over, I think the war and response to Katrina are the things that probably killed them. On economics and health care, their academics guiding policy are increasingly perceived as not credible. They aren’t helped on that matter with men like Sowell and W.E. Williams mailing it in for over a decade. In fact, the decline of the GOP academy has been the canary in the coal mine.
I enjoy blaming compassionate conservatism for many things, but losing in 2006 really isn’t one of them. Yes, it’s part of the reason why I was opposed to the GOP, but I am not representative of most voters.
It was questions of competence, not ideology, if you like, that killed the GOP, and the war was the most important example of that. The Republicans were supposed to be the party of adults, the responsible, serious ones who knew how to handle the budget and foreign affairs, and they showed that this was all complete nonsense. To some degree, it had been nonsense for a long time before now.
I can’t really agree with this. In the period leading up to the election, there was much talk in conservative circles that Bush had betrayed conservativism in many ways, including betraying the whole Reaganesque “small government” orientation. Yes, the Iraq war was the major betrayal, especially because it went so badly, but it’s going badly could be explained not merely as a matter of incompetence, but as a betrayal of conservative principles that Bush had himself once ran on in 2000, such as an aversion to “nation building”. Likewise with the economy,it wasn’t merely a failure to “handle the budget”, an issue of competently fighting against bloat while still believing bloat is bad, but a clear decision that “deficits don’t matter”, which is a betrayal of what most conservative believe in. And by conservatives, I mean Bill Clinton and Ross Perot, not just the lonely guys on the right. People surely did care that Bush was incompetent, but they also sensed that his failure to perform was due to a failed vision of what the right thing to do was.