Cross-posted at Terry Flew’s blog.
Most attention in the U.S. Presidential elections has been given to the Democratic Party, and the wide schism revealed in its support base between supporters of Hillary Clinton (majority of women, Latinos, older voters, lower income, lower average levels of education) and Barack Obama (majority of African-Americans, younger voters, higher income, tertiary educated). It has been cast as “a standoff between the Dukes of Hazzard and the Huxtables”, but its fault lines are pretty clear. This cannot be said for the Republican Party going into the 2008 elections.
John McCain does not bring a strong hand to the election, although the ongoing saga of the Democrat nominee has helped somewhat. There is usually a change in the governing party after eight years of one President holding office. While this was not true in 1988, George Bush gained the presidency with Ronald Reagan having a personal approval rating of about 60%. George W. Bush has a personal approval rating below 30%, and sinking. Even if his approval figures were better, this would be no guarantee against change. Bill Clinton left office with personal approval ratings over 60%, but his Vice-President Al Gore could not defeat the Republicans in 2000.
The position of the Republicans as a party is far worse than that of John McCain as its presumptive Presidential nominee. Having lost control of both the Senate and the House in the 2006 mid-term primaries, they have recently experienced three major losses in special Congressional elections. The most recent loss was in a presumed safe seat in Mississippi, where there was a 20% swing to the Democrats. Several Republican analysts have warned that the Republican ‘brand’ is ‘dog food’, and if it were a product it would be taken off the shelf.
Reasons for this are many and varied, and go well beyond commitment to the War in Iraq. Basically, the Republicans in Congress have been sinking with the Bush presidency, and the sense of malaise and policy failure that surrounds it. The question is where John McCain goes in relation to it.
McCain has some distance from Bush, and has accentuated it in recent times with a speech in New Orleans condemning how Hurricane Katrina was handled in 2005, and a recent speech (sort of) acknowledging the threat of global warming. The question, however, is not simply one of personal style and belief, but goes to the heart of where America’s conservative party wants to be over the next decade.
The question revolves around two axes. One is economic. Conservatives view the fiscal profligacy of the Bush years with horror, as it has combined large and regressive tax cuts (which they would otherwise support) with a big increase in government spending, not just on the war in Iraq, but also on a wide range of social programs. They see that as reversing the ‘Reagan doctrine’ and recreating a culture that all social problems are addressed through more government spending, throwing fiscal conservatism out the window, ad denying them any real point of differentiation from the Democrats. Moreover, the groaning fiscal and trade deficits adversely impact on foreign policy. The recent tax cuts to avert economic recession were described as “Borrowing more money from the Chinese to pay for oil bought from the Saudis.”
The other axis is cultural, or what are also termed ‘faith and values’ issues. McCain has recognized the problems that arise from the Republicans being tied to the evangelical Christian right, particularly with younger voters – he has made thirteen appearances on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, which conservative pundits such as Bill O’Reilly would dismiss as a show for “stoned slackers”.
A move to the cultural centre would be to follow what might be termed the ‘Arnie strategy’. As Governor of California, the largest state in the U.S. in both population and economic terms, Arnold Schwarzenegger is one of the nation’s most politically successful Republicans. Schwarzenegger governs what is otherwise now a Democratic state – even though it is the home state of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan – by recognizing that the social liberalism of the state and aligning this with economic conservatism and pro-business policies.
The centrist ‘Arnie strategy’ appeals to McCain, and makes a lot of sense in an election where the Republicans now have a real opportunity in capturing the vote of Hillary Clinton supporters if Barack Obama is the Democrat nominee and they can position Obama as ‘too liberal’. The catch is that the support base of the Republicans – from Christian lobby groups to influential donors to the bevy of conservative columnists, radio talk show hosts and TV pundits – have run so long and hard on a conservative ‘culture wars’ position that they will feel let down by a Republican nominee who des not align to these values and positions on their favoured ‘hot button’ issues.
The silence of all sides (McCain, Obama, Clinton) on the California Supreme Court decision to overturn the ban on same-sex marriages indicates how tricky these issues are becoming. They are much more complex for the Republicans than the Democrats, since making a big issue of such decisions in order to mobilise the conservative base has been the sine qua non of Republican politics for decades.
McCain’s dilemma, and how he addresses it, will influence the shape of conservative politics worldwide for some time to come, just as the ‘Reagan revolution’ has been a defining influence globally for the last 30 years.
PS: To get a sense of how hard it may be to retrain Republican supporters from well-established habits, see conservative talk-show host Kevin James’s responses to MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on whether talking to political enemies is the same as appeasement, which apparently ‘energized’ Hitler in 1939.
One thing that the Arnie strategy relies on is the Republicans in the state legislature being a bunch of unreconstructed kooks. He runs against them as much as he runs against Democrats and does the whole “post-ideological” thing with the prominence of his wife Maria Shriver (Kennedy’s niece) in politics and several Democrats in key staff positions.
This strategy might work for McCain as the House Republicans in particular (and a number of Senators) are about as popular as … well… what’s a really unpopular thing? But the problem you don’t address, Terry, is that McCain’s campaign is broke and he has to tack right to raise money from “the base”.
I’m also thinking the position from which he’s attacked Obama so far puts him too close to Bush’s. It’s one thing to be a “maverick” Republican, but what happens when he’s running against a Democrat like Obama? Does he revert to traditional GOPspeak? In which case, does he forget the “reaching out” to Democrats and Independents?
It’s going to be a much more interesting general election campaign than primary season in many ways.
I’ve just finished re-reading Hunter Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972″ in which he concludes that McGovern failed so badly because he threw off the “new kind of politician” image and reverted to the standard Democratic candidate model, largely in an effort to win back the mainstream Democratic power-brokers who’d been trounced at the Miami convention. Could be that McCain’s heading in the same direction. Unfortunately HST is no longer around to give us the benefit of his wisdom.
Long time since I read that book! I don’t think that McCain comes across as a ‘new kind of politician’ at all. The person who faces the biggest challenge in that respect is Barack Obama, who definitely has to deal with the contradictory pulls of ‘new politics’ and traditional Democrat strategy.
I wonder if the discussion about the Republicans has relevance in Australia, where the Liberals are torn between ‘conservative’ and ‘centrist’ strands and strategies.
McCain is a mile ahead of Brendan Nelson as a politician, but the congressional Republican are a pretty mixed-up lot, who now feel that they over-invested in GW Bush Jr., now to their electoral cost. Some feel the same about the Liberals and Howard.
You can catch the new McCain ad at Crooked Timber. Crazy it is.
Don’t mistake incumbency hostility for party unpopularity. The new democratic congress is as unpopular as Bush. It’s not so much as one party vs another as it is the whole institution of congress. It’s hard to argue with the view that it stinks, as both chambers have devolved into grand-standing, point-scoring, feather-bedded, wagon-circling, pork-barreling wombats.
The Republicans seem to think more of the same will fix their standing when what is really needed is a major behavioral purge much like they promised, but only partially delivered during the Clinton years. Allowing line-item vetoes, eliminating riders on budget bills or other legislation, and generally getting rid of bogus earmarks would be a winner for either party. Sadly both parties are as bad as each other. Purging some of the more egregious legal offenders would also lift opinions, however they’ll gladly block FBI investigations today so that they themselves are protected tomorrow.
Another thing: the two parties are broad churches with little party discipline. The new southern democrats are viewed with utter hostility by their brethren on the party’s left, much like Joe Lieberman was until they cut off their senator to spite their party. Just because the brand changes doesn’t mean votes in the chamber will.
Incumbency counts against the Republicans at this congressional election. I expect we’ll see a McCain presidency with a Democrat congress. Neither side will be happy with their choices but the Republicans will be more prepared to hold their nose and vote.
“Long time since I read that book!”
Now is a good time to read it again then! Your right, Obama does kind of look like a McGovern and Clinton looks like a Muskie/Humphrey chump. But the big difference is that there’s no Nixon siting in the GOP camp salivating at the prospect of ripping the Democratic candiate into strips if meat.
Instead we have a pretty tired old man who’s going to do a pretty poor job trying to act like a new man while pleading with the ChristoFacists not to desert him. The boot is on the other foot this time, Obama can play it cool, not get crunched by the party machine (i.e the Clintons) and the deal-making at the convention and then he can afford to put his feet up and let McCain explain the unholy mess the USA, courtesy of the GOP, finds itself in.
“I expect we’ll see a McCain presidency”
I’ll take a piece of that. What odds you offering?
Some current odds are:
Barack Obama 1.75 @ [Centrebet]
John McCain 2.75 @ [Bet-at-home] [Centrebet]
Hilary Clinton 9.50 @ [Intertops]
Al Gore 41.00 @ [Intertops]
$2.75? I better get some of that.
I’d agree with Craig that they are not great odds for Obama. It is one thing for voters not to want the Republicans back, and another to help elect the first African-American president in American history. The Republicans also have a well-oiled election machinery - my point is that its ‘attack mode’ doesn’t seem to fit McCain’s aspirations all that well (witness Kevin James in attached video).
There is the interesting question of whether it would be easier for a black Republican to get elected than a black Democrat. A lot hinges on where Hillary Clinton’s voters go in the states that matter (Ohio, Nevada, California and Pennsylvania, not West Virginia and Kentucky).
The Democrats will definitely get the majority in Congress. It is right that they are as much a bunch of rorters as the Republican Congress, but voter blame the President, not the Congress, for the economic mess. Given that GW Bush had a Republican majority in both houses for six years, which Bill Clinton didn’t have, you’d have to say that they have a point.
The only Presidential candidates who would take on Congress in the name of fiscal conservatism are Bob Barr for the Libertarian Party (ex-Republican) and Ron Paul, whose campaign for the Republican nomination continues to plug on and get some votes in the Republican primaries. The fact that these candidates are around indicates real disgruntlement among conservatives with the Bush years.
Something that McCain also shares with Arnie was the lack of a need to pander greatly to the base during the primaries. Arnie didn’t face primaries because of the recall election, and McCain faced a field which (perhaps in retrospect) was so comically weak that he progressed in a canter. He still pandered, but not to the extent he would have had to if he was to have won in 2000.
Terry: “It is one thing for voters not to want the Republicans back, and another to help elect the first African-American president in American history.”
This is overly simplistic, and in a way which approaches a back-door smear. It is not a question of “electing the first African-American president in history.” It is a question of what sort of person that president might turn out to be. Plenty of whites would have voted for Colin Powell back in the 90s — y’know, those typical white people, with the guns and the Bibles and the bitterness and the bad dancing and the clapping on 1 and 3.
Barack Obama rose to prominence by creating the vivid early impression that he was not another old-fashioned “race man,” yet that is one of the things he increasingly appears to be, and it is not an attractive look in a candidate, for very good and well-founded reasons. He is also peddling some pretty strong-smelling snake oil, I mean medicine, that is not racially fixated. So the idea that white Americans’ increasing discomfort with this person is somehow an index of their racism is… well, I suppose you could even ride that horse to the tenure-track, at any number of ridiculous faculty departments.
“There is the interesting question of whether it would be easier for a black Republican to get elected than a black Democrat.”
There is also the still more interesting question of whether it would be easier for a black sane person to get elected, than a black crackpot. Well, given that our choices seem to be between a black crackpot, a white crackpot (McCain), and a recovering crackpot (Hillary), it oughta be an interesting race indeed. –Oops, I said that word, I better not do that. I mean, an interesting *contest*.
j_p_z, as my original post was on McCain and the Republicans, I am surprised that you are taking me to task for a view on Barack Obama. I didn’t declare a view one way or another on Obama and his policies. If I have one, it would be a contribution to a different thread to this one. Also, if you are posting from Australia, I wouldn’t think that these are our choices at all. Its the U.S. election, which I am observing as a visitor to the country.
I certainly don’t think, and haven’t said, that American pople not voting for Barack Obama if they are not African-American is somehow a marker of their racism, nor would I assume that people who are African-American would automatically vote for Obama on racial grounds regardless of policies. In an earlier post on Noel Pearson’s views, I made the point that The Monthly was at fault in assuming that someone would be a expert on Obama’s campaign because they are an Aboriginal Australian. I also noted in that post that there is a significant black Republican/black conservative tradition in the U.S., of which Colin Powell and Condaleeza Rice would be two of its most prominent members.
That said, if we have the first black candidate for U.S. President ever in 2008, they dynamics of that are unpredictable. It is unchartered territory, in a country where race questions suffuse its history and a stack of everyday issues, such as who lives where, job prospects, and exposure to the law. If Hillary Clinton were to be the Democrat nominee, gender would be a factor in voting patterns in ways that would also be hard to predict.
“I suppose you could even ride that horse to the tenure-track, at any number of ridiculous faculty departments.” Not sure what is meant here.
“white Americans’ increasing discomfort with this person is somehow an index of their racism”. I think you may be the one over-generalising or projecting here. Hillary Clinton will win Kentucky, and Barack Obama will win Oregon (he had 75,000 people at a campaign rally in Portland on Sunday). Both outcomes will largely reflect the views of “white Americans”. If Obama’s support base was confined to African-Americans, we wouldn’t be having this posting chat, as Hillary Clinton would long ago have been the Democrat nominee.
j_p_z is an American, Terry…
Interesting take on McCain in the New York Review of Books:
[link]
j_p_z, erm, sorry … mate.
Still think most of what I said was right, tho’.
And for what’s its worth, I don’t need to worry about tenure-track. I’m in the US because that part of my life is sorted.
Hey, sorry Terry, it looks like earlier, I was reading into your comment a meaning which you apparently didn’t intend. Apologies. (In fairness, I think the sentence I quoted can plausibly be read as containing a loaded insinuation, but it needn’t be read that way, and by your lights it shouldn’t be, so, my bad.) If you’re here in the States and following this whole thing, doubtless you’ve noted that all sorts of distracting coded irritants have been flying about with numbing regularity. So perhaps you can appreciate the allergic nature of my response.
Pay no mind to the “tenure track” bit, it was a failed joke that missed its target and dropped harmlessly into the ocean, hundreds of miles off course. (Then striking a hidden undersea coral reef, naturally, and unwittingly poisoning the habitat for millions of tiny starfish. Baby Gaia cries!)
Cheers, enjoy your stay.
I think McCain’s biggest advantage over his primary opponents was the organisational experience gained during the 2000 campaign. It really showed against an opponent like Thompson whose positions were classically conservative and you’d think more appealing to the base. However Thompson’s “machine” was amateurish by comparison. Before they started, pundits would have told you McCain was comically weak.
Now I’m in Canada so I can say anything I like about the US of A! Ha!!!
Anyway, the New Yorker has a very good piece, which I read on the flight here, about the problems the Republicans, and McCain, are facing as the ‘long revolution’ of American conservatism is coming to a close.
Linked text
The gist of it is that it had its origins with Barry Goldwater’s loss in 1964, was refined by Richard Nixon around what they called ‘positive polarization’, had its peak with Ronald Reagan, got even more hard line with Newt Gingrich and the Republican-led congress in 1994, and has gone into decay and decadence under George W. Bush.
Leave it to The New Yorker to completely miss all the actually important and relevant stuff. As Bokonon used to say, “Pay no attention to Caesar. Caesar has no idea what’s *really* going on.”
“Now I’m in Canada so I can say anything I like about the US of A! Ha!!!”
No, in Canada, by law, you are only allowed to say bad things about America. If you say good things, the Canadian “Human Rights Commissions” will put you on trial in a kangaroo court for hurting someone’s feelings.