When entering the wilderness after two consecutive election defeats, it is good to have a vigorous and clarifying debate — because something is not working.
Demographics are destiny, and election returns show that the GOP base is shrinking. The party is decisively winning only whites, regular church-goers, voters over age 60, and residents of towns with populations under 50,000. In a country that is increasingly diverse and urban, that is a recipe for long-term disaster.
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What is the source of this growing disconnect with the American electorate? In his article “Scapegoating the Social Right,” Ramesh Ponnuru claims that columnists who have argued for the need for the GOP to modernize and move to the center — including Kathleen Parker, David Frum, Max Boot, and myself — have our analysis all wrong, and that very little change is needed from the Bush-Rove play-to-the-base politics of the past.
As an independent, my interest is in restoring a sense of national unity and generational responsibility to our politics. For the Republican party, a return to its historic principles of individual freedom, fiscal responsibility, and national security — with renewed consistency — would not only help unite our nation, it would lead to the GOP’s political resurgence. As part of that effort, social conservatives should remember that the essence of evangelism is winning converts.
The 2008 election exit polls showed that 44 percent of American voters identified themselves as moderates, 34 percent called themselves conservatives, and 22 percent described themselves as liberals — even after a deeply polarizing period in our national politics. It should be clear that any party that wants to reach a majority needs to reach out and connect with moderates who are alienated by the ideological extremes of both parties.
What’s also clear is that Obama did a much better job of this than McCain-Palin or Bush-Cheney — winning not just 90 percent of liberals and 60 percent of moderates, but 20 percent of conservatives. He won virtually every swing-state battleground, expanding the Democratic map into the south and west. He won with a margin larger than George W. Bush ever achieved — by reaching beyond the liberal base.
Republicans are in retreat across the nation — not just retrenching, but nearing extinction in whole regions. Ten years ago, GOP governors were in place across the northeast. Today there is not a single Republican member of Congress in all of New England, the party’s historic home.
Ramesh does a bit of rewriting history when he says the GOP won the 2002 and 2004 elections because “Republicans ran hard on social issues and the courts.” In fact, both those elections were overwhelmingly referendums on the attacks of September 11 and their aftermath.
The 2006 and 2008 defeats were not defined by an absence of “social issues and the courts” but were backlashes against the Bush administration. Polls showed that the 2006 loss of Congress was not primarily about pre-Surge chaos in Iraq (as many liberals believed) but a widespread rejection of unprecedented pork-barrel spending, ideological excesses, and outright corruption of the Republican Congress under the supposed conservative champion Tom DeLay.
In 2008, as Bush’s approval ratings hit historic lows and nearly 90 percent of Americans believed the country was moving in the wrong direction, polls indicated that social issues were not near the top of most voters’ concerns. (Rudy Giuliani’s problem converting his popularity to early primary votes was not, as Ramesh believes, chiefly because of social issues.) In the general election, McCain ran well ahead of the damaged Republican brand because of his reputation for principled independence, until the financial crisis exploded and Sarah Palin proved to be one of the most polarizing figures in modern American politics.
The cure for these problems would seem to be restoring the Republican party’s credibility on fiscal responsibility (as the inevitable aftermath of the bailout smorgasbord will require) and retaining a philosophy of being on offense when it comes to the wider war against Islamic terrorism. These are issues that not only unite the Republican party, but also unite the GOP with the vast majority of centrists and independents.
Social issues are the most polarizing elements of the GOP agenda (as Ramesh acknowledges, writing “There is no question that social conservatism repels some voters”). They are also among the most deeply held, being based for many in religious belief.
