A Very Strange Tsunami
Republicans and Democrats are tied at 46% among registered voters in Gallup’s weekly tracking of congressional voting preferences, marking a shift after five consecutive weeks in which the Republicans held the advantage. ~Gallup
Despite the change in polling, I recommend Jim Antle’s article on the midterms. He presents Republican advantages and disadvantages in a fair and matter-of-fact way, and he manages to go through the entire article without once referring to John Boehner as Speaker, which is more than we can say for some others. Of course, I suppose I would say that Jim is making sense when he writes the following:
The common thread in special elections Democrats have won is that they have succeeded in putting distance between themselves and the national party brand while their Republican opponents have tried to nationalize the election. Brown, by contrast, was successful in combining national and local themes while Coakley often behaved as if she had been dropped into Massachusetts by a UFO from Mars.
But how successful can Democratic incumbents be at denationalizing their races if they have a proven track record of voting in lockstep with the national party on controversial issues? The conditions do seem right for Republicans to retake Congress, with the major caveat of whether Republicans are prepared to take advantage of these conditions.
I wonder if the change in Gallup’s polling is going to temper any of the “tsunami” claims we’ve been hearing. Perhaps the best indication that the tsunami idea was mistaken was that Mark Halperin declared it to be obviously true.
One of the reasons why I continue to be bearish on Republican chances this fall is that I have close to zero confidence in the organizational and political skills of Republican leaders, especially when compared to their counterparts on the other side. This is that critical matter of being prepared to take advantage of favorable conditions. Even if there is the possibility of a “tsunami,” which is questionable, who actually believes that the Republican leadership currently in place can deliver? These are people so clueless that they want to rehash the “surge” debate two months before an election, apparently not realizing that the public is so eager to be out of Iraq that they will happily indulge Obama in his fabrication that “combat operations” have ended there.
Four years ago, the NRCC under Tom Reynolds was simply not up to the job of holding the House. In the next cycle, the likeable, doomed Tom Cole faced off against Chris van Hollen and his organization and lost, and now Pete Sessions is hoping to climb an even steeper hill than Cole faced and somehow outperform van Hollen. To this day, Republican leaders have no idea why they were sent into the minority. Sessions has the task of winning more seats in the House than the Democrats won in either of their successful cycles, and so far during his tenure Republicans haven’t won a single competitive special election except for the flukey result in Hawaii. It wasn’t just that things didn’t break the Republicans’ way in those cases. I would argue that was the intervention of the national party in the New York special elections and their candidates’ mouthing of cookie-cutter partisan platitudes that threw those seats to the Democrats. GOP leaders have made quite a habit of counting their seats before they are won, and it keeps blowing up in their faces. One would think they would learn by now to stop doing it, but these are not leaders who are interested in learning anything.
It will be interesting to see how your predictions stack up against Nate Silver’s. The faults he finds with generic arguments for X number of seats changing hands is that they’re based on faulty assumptions or pundits wanting to see something rather than bothering to view reality, but the simple logic of Republicans not being able to make use of their advantage is perfectly sensible.
That said, he’s made it clear his research shows relatively little effect based on how people campaign relative to the economic condition of the country and an overall concept of what the candidates believe, and has routinely discussed a 40-45 seat switch (though his newest model for the House is not yet live). Tea Party candidates taking the Republican positions in these races may be more useful to the Democrats overall than any failures on the part of Republican campaign organizers.
Hi Daniel,
Your analysis is certainly well though out, but I wonder how Rand Paul fits into your thesis about not nationalizing the races. Is it that folks genuinely believe him when he talks about national issues (compared to most Republicans, who’ve lost almost all credibility on them), or is it that his national policy stances are different from those of most GOP candidates…or both…or neither?
I’m not being facetious at all…just curious.
Peace be with you.
The “Republican tsunami” thesis is based on likely-voter matchups rather than registered-voter matchups.
I have to wonder if Obama isn’t hoping that the Republicans take the House. He’s looking at two years where he’s not going to be able to get any policy approved anyway – even if the Republicans don’t take control of the House they will be close. If the Republicans take control he will have someone else to blame two years from now. And bring on the tea party, please. What could be better than the hapless John Boehner as House Majority Leader and a House full of Michelle Bachmans spending all of their time trying to impeach the President because he is a Kenyon born Muslim Marxist to turn off the independents and the few remaining sane Republicans. The economy is not going to improve over the next two years and in fact may actually get worse. Let the Republicans shut down the government and take part of the blame.
The Republicans will get a bounce this year but it will be a “dead cat bounce” and dead cats only bounce once.
Re: “who actually believes that the Republican leadership currently in place can deliver?
That’s not really the point. Because general elections in the US are 0/1 choices between candidates nominated by the major parties.
The lack of belief in absolute competence of the Republicans has nothing to do with it, as long as the belief in their relative competence over the Democrats is better. In other words, less stinky trumps more stinky. That may be as far as it goes, but that’s all that’s needed to get elected in a dysfunctional system that is almost totally wired to feckless Beltway gamers.
Elections have devolved into just moving the same distasteful food around the plate. Speaker Boehner? Meh… He’ll be a bum (but walk away rich), so who cares?
“The lack of belief in absolute competence of the Republicans has nothing to do with it, as long as the belief in their relative competence over the Democrats is better.”
It’s technically worse than that. A recent poll found people still thought more highly of the Democrats than the Republicans, even though they planned to vote for the GOP this November.
And frankly, given the horrible state of the economy, why shouldn’t that be the case? Obama and the Democrats have been in charge for two years and if things suck, they should take the blame. People can complain about irrational Republican opposition, but you’ve got to hold the people in charge responsible.
Of course, Daniel is right that the GOP has no idea why they lost power in the first place and they’re likely going to be ushering in a bunch of Congressmen and Senators even more caught up in denial and/or ignorance. That’s doesn’t bode well for the country or the Republicans in 2012.
Mike
[...] Larison is skeptical that Republicans will experience major gains in November because he quite sensibly has no [...]
Re: MBunge – “Of course, Daniel is right that the GOP has no idea why they lost power in the first place and they’re likely going to be ushering in a bunch of Congressmen and Senators even more caught up in denial and/or ignorance.
Good points. And it’s even worse, because almost the entire “Movement” conservative apparatus is wallowing in cognitive dissonance, not just the politicians.
The National Review, Weekly Standard and AEI crowds claim to have seen the light of the Bush pathologies. But then continue to sing the praises of his implementation cadre like hacks Karl Rove and Dick Cheney. (You can hob-nob with Karl on the NR cruises!) They laud the gas-bagging of neo-con Dinosaurs like Newt Gingrich and sustain their obsequious swoon over all things military. The more wars the merrier.
No matter how few or how many seats the Republicans win in November, it will be the same corrupted neo-cons calling the “conservative” policy tune.
“Of course, Daniel is right that the GOP has no idea why they lost power in the first place and they’re likely going to be ushering in a bunch of Congressmen and Senators even more caught up in denial and/or ignorance.
Okay, I’ll bite:
(1) Why did the GOP lose power?
(2) Why do you conclude that the new crop of GOP Representatives and Senators to be elected this fall will be “even more caught up in denial and/or ignorance” than the current leadership? (i.e., the leadership (and rank and file) that participated in the acts/omissions that caused the GOP to lose power in the first place.)
“(1) Why did the GOP lose power?”
The Iraq War. The financial crisis (remember how that changed the tenor of the Presidential campaign). Continuing to give slavish devotion to George W. Bush long after the rest of the country began to cool on him. There are others, but I think the point is that the professed reasons the GOP and right wing yakers have offered up (spending too much and not being conservative enough) have virtually no truth to them at all.
“(2) Why do you conclude that the new crop of GOP Representatives and Senators to be elected this fall will be “even more caught up in denial and/or ignorance” than the current leadership?”
To the extent the incoming Republicans resemble Sharon Angle, I’d say the answer is fairly obvious. I’m sure there will be some intelligent and reasonable conservatives elected this November, but they’ll be operating in an environment where no member of the GOP is allowed to be smarter than Sean Hannity or more mature than Rush Limbaugh. That ain’t healthy.
Mike
In addition for (2), the simple fact that they will have picked up seats acting this way will encourage the behavior that has already outlived its practical usefulness in all things except stagnating the country. The new congressional reps and senators will become part of a lockstep march that will not end until it loses all usefulness to the party.
This, incidentally, is why I tell people that electing reps who will kill the filibuster is probably more important than any other issue.
Let’s note a few perhaps ancillary points in order to form a more comprehensive picture of why the D’s are in such sorry shape.
1. It’s ironic for Daniel to cite that Gallup poll as a data point against the tsunami hypothesis. First of all, the Gallup survey measures registered voters as opposed to the more accurate and more GOP-friendly likely voters. Furthermore, the Gallup house effect is to be noisy relative to the other pollsters. And compared to past samples, this poll is an outlier.
2. The GOP has historically outperformed the generic ballot.
3. Money is an important but overrated factor in politics in general, and this election especially. There’s been an important but little noticed change in the division of labor between candidates, campaigns, and citizens over the past five years. Ie, candidates are responsible for putting out the “right” message and being personally vote-worthy. The citizenry are willing to accept much more responsbility for organization and logistics. This is relatively obscure but thenextright.com among others has covered this in more detail.
“There are others, but I think the point is that the professed reasons the GOP and right wing yakers have offered up (spending too much and not being conservative enough) have virtually no truth to them at all.”
Excessive GOP spending was a bigger deal than you’re letting on, but the point being is that it has to be placed in the proper psychological context. Forgive me for citing my own blog in a couple of places:
http://flyingspit.blogspot.com/2007/11/lazy-mans-candidate.html
http://flyingspit.blogspot.com/2006/04/mainstream-conservatives-pt-3.html
In short the GOP was perceived as being stupid and venal by the voters. Stupid + venal = contempt and relationships don’t survive contempt. The voters might have forgiven the GOP for the Iraq war, but the won’t forgive the Iraq War plus homosex with Congressional pages. Excessive spending fueled the venality half of this equation, as though the federal Treasury was some private slush fund the GOP can slop around as they want.
In this years election, the outcome is the same but the ingredients are different. Mediocrity + arrogance + aloofness = contempt. Wrt the GZ mosque, the health care bill, cap and trade, etc., it’s clear that the D’s modus operandi is that the unpopularity of such things is a political obstacle to be maneuvered around instead of a real problem that has to be addressed.
The voters would forgive the D’s for the recession. But they won’t forgive their incompetence combined with lack of engagement with the public. Daniel either can’t won’t see this psychological dynamic. But it’s pretty clear and in this context all the numbers make sense.
“3. Money is an important but overrated factor in politics in general, and this election especially.”
Technically, you can’t know how important money will be in this election because it’s still almost two months from being over.
Mike
Mike:
The Iraq War. The financial crisis… Continuing to give slavish devotion to George W. Bush long after the rest of the country began to cool on him.f
A GOP-controlled Congress will not be launching any wars, not without the president taking the lead. Even if the GOP learned nothing from Iraq, their hands are tied.
The government is responsible for the financial crisis only to the extent that the financial crisis wasn’t a function of the business cycle or the standard boom & bust cycles associated with speculative bubbles. Within government, there’s a lot of finger-pointing over the financial crisis, but it’s hard to lay the blame on any one party. Repeal of Glass-Steagall? Clinton signed it. Incentives to own homes? Bush pushed them, and hard, but both parties like the mortgage interest deduction. The GOP got the blame because Bush was in the Oval Office when the economy hit the skids. My point here is that there aren’t any specific acts by the GOP from 2001-2008 that you can point to as precipitating the financial crisis, at least not ones that the new Congress will be able to repeat.
And, of course, Bush is gone, no there’s no possibility of anyone in Congress being slavishly devoted to him anymore.
So of your three main reasons that the GOP fell from favor, none are immediately repeatable by the new crop of GOP Congresscritters. They won’t be able to double-down on those errors, even if they wanted to. This isn’t to say that the GOP cannot find exciting new ways to screw up, but the fact that the incoming freshmen won’t know why the GOP lost in 2006 and 2008 does not mean that they’re going to repeat those mistakes.
Spiffy McBang wrote:
“the simple fact that [the GOP] will have picked up seats acting this way will encourage the behavior that has already outlived its practical usefulness in all things except stagnating the country…
This, incidentally, is why I tell people that electing reps who will kill the filibuster is probably more important than any other issue.”
One man’s “stagnating the country” is another man’s “retarding the growth of government, and keeping Uncle Sam from harassing me more than he already does.” But you know, potato, potahto.
Re: Self-Diddlin’ Pete “And, of course, Bush is gone, no there’s no possibility of anyone in Congress being slavishly devoted to him anymore.”
The limiting, (and losing) mindset is more nuanced than that. There’s an old saying that you can’t steal second with one foot on first base. The neo-con foot on first base is not a slavish devotion to George W. Bush. It’s the refusal to fully disavow the philosophical mess that was Bush. Not only Bush, but all of his feckless think tank enablers and hack administration Lieutenants.
Neo-Conservatism is dysfunctionally ghettoized and incestuous. (Well, so is the Left.) Why? Because the Beltway recipe to a fat and happy lifestyle is going along to get along. Regardless of one’s political stripes.
All that intellectual fraud money that atrocious Beltway Reptiles Dick Armey and Matt Kibbe are making as Tea Party parasites? The guys at National Review aspire to that…
Koz,
“Excessive spending fueled the venality half of this equation, as though the federal Treasury was some private slush fund the GOP can slop around as they want.”
And yet, just the other day you said:
“the GOP has hard earned credibility in fighting for limited government.”
“The Iraq War. The financial crisis (remember how that changed the tenor of the Presidential campaign). Continuing to give slavish devotion to George W. Bush long after the rest of the country began to cool on him.”
Jack Abramoff, Plame scandal, warrantless wiretaps, Gitmo, pissing on the middle class.
pete: “My point here is that there aren’t any specific acts by the GOP from 2001-2008 that you can point to as precipitating the financial crisis, at least not ones that the new Congress will be able to repeat.”
Completely untrue. The lack of any effective regulating by competent regulators has been the reason sung time and time again by former Wall St insiders. If the GOP gains control, they not only will continue to not confirm administration appointees, they will actively try to deny funding to said regulators.
“And yet, just the other day you said…”
Well, yes, it’s not 2006 any more Toto.
“Jack Abramoff, Plame scandal, warrantless wiretaps, Gitmo, pissing on the middle class.”
This is incoherent as examples of some commonality.
“The limiting, (and losing) mindset is more nuanced than that. There’s an old saying that you can’t steal second with one foot on first base. The neo-con foot on first base is not a slavish devotion to George W. Bush. It’s the refusal to fully disavow the philosophical mess that was Bush.”
This is pretty much incoherent too.
Bush wasn’t much of a philosopher. To the extent that he did have a philosophy, it was the compassionate conservatism business that we can afford to make exceptions to Hayek for the sake of smoothing out capitalism’s rough edges and still keep our prosperity indefinitely. And that is clearly being repudiated by the Tea Party-influenced GOP.
Seeing as the GOP has the exact same governing philosophy as they did in ’06, the witch ain’t exactly dead, now is it, Dorothy?
Couple days late, but for what it’s worth:
“One man’s “stagnating the country” is another man’s “retarding the growth of government, and keeping Uncle Sam from harassing me more than he already does.” But you know, potato, potahto.”
Filibustering dozens of nominees to government posts barely anyone in the electorate has even heard of- and which existed before Obama took office- is about as pure a definition of “stagnating the government” as you can find. That’s disregarding the administration’s push for policies that Republicans a dozen years ago would have found perfectly acceptable as “small government”.