Primary Questions Revisited

Vernon Lee has some good thoughts on the relationship between primary elections and intra-party ideological disputes. He points out something I didn't observe in my own post on the subject:

Just because party factions don't engage in open, pitched battle for nominations - in which ideological differents are on full display - doesn't mean that individual candidates don't have ideas that deviate from mainstream voters (of Party or general electorate). We just don't hear about them unless there is some benefit to the candidate.

Much of the presidential primary process, of course, is based around trying to draw these "hidden beliefs" out of the candidates, and obliterate them if necessary. It's also useful to keep an eye on who is advising whom on policy - this is something I'll try to do here over the next few months.

Vernon sees the next major internal GOP question shaping up around the role of authoritarians in the party:

The Giuliani example appears to be a sui generis candidacy - a "one-time exception" - but perhaps is an unusually vivid example of the Right-Wing Authoritarian dominance of today's Republican party. In this model, RWAs will support any candidate pre-approved by their leadership regardless of ideological differences.

In the first few years of the Bush presidency, when the Southern wing of the Republican party overwhelmed both the party and two and a half branches of government, many liberals were heard to wonder, "What happened to the Rockefeller Republicans?" Now, such questions seem maddeningly quaint: the ideological battle is not one between Rockefeller and Southern populist Republicans, but between authoritarians and non-authoritarians. We have John Dean's Conservatives Without Conscience, Bob Altemeyer's The Authoritarians, Joe Conason's It Can Happen Here, and journalists such as Glenn Greenwald, Dave Neiwert, and Digby to thank for midwifing and popularizing these essential explanations of our political moment.

The next ideological rift within the Republican party will not be over elements of the party's platform - small-bore ideology - but Ideology write large: the extent to which the Republican party will remain captive to its RWA base. The question for Republicans is, What to do with the authoritarians among us?

I think there's a certain dovetailing between lockstep tendencies among the rank-and-file and the new conservative embrace of expansive executive power, but the phenomena are not precisely the same thing. Would Republican activists and donors and intellectuals be inclined to purge either tendency from their party? On the whole, I don't see it, at least for now. Certainly a President Hillary Clinton could inspire them to re-think (or at least hypocritically ignore) their Bush-era approach to executive privilege, I suppose. Meanwhile, it seems to me that the fundamental dilemmas facing the next generation of Republican leaders involve how to re-think 1) the party's relationship to the conservative movement, and 2) the conservative philosophy of government.

Labels: conservatives, electoral politics, Republicans, Vernon Lee

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 1:37 PM 0 comments

  Right-Wing Think Tank Review - 2/6/07

Cato Institute (Sourcewatch profile here)

"Libertarian Voters in 2004 and 2006" (Cato Policy Report: Jan/Feb 2007)

Article by David Boaz, executive vice president of the Cato Institute, and David Kirby, executive director of America's Future Foundation.

Boaz and Kirby use poll data to show that the 2004 and 2006 elections have found "libertarian-leaning voters" moving increasingly into the Democratic column. While it's generally understood that Republicans lost heavily among independents in 2006, the authors seek to show that libertarians "may be the largest bloc of such independent-minded swing voters." If this is the case, if "libertarians are a bigger share of the electorate than the much-discussed 'soccer moms' or 'NASCAR dads,'" and if their votes are up for grabs, then parties should seek to address specifically libertarian concerns in order to win elections.

However, the article, in my analysis, is not entirely convincing on two important - and related - levels:

1. Defining "libertarian voters," and


2. Determining what motivated these voters in '04 and '06.

The authors report that they have selected questions from a number of polls about American political attitudes, arriving at results that suggest that about 14% of American voters can be "classified as libertarians." However, they do not disclose specifically what those questions are. They also rely on data from a poll they themselves commissioned from Zogby International, which identifies 15% of voters as "libertarian," but they don't provide or link to the full results of this poll (For more on questions regarding Zogby's special-interest polls, and specifically those commissioned by Cato, see this Chris Mooney article from the American Prospect).

Boaz and Kirby report that, in 2004, "the libertarian vote for Bush dropped from 72 to 59 percent, while the libertarian vote for the Democratic nominee almost doubled." They continue:

It’s not hard to imagine why. Bush’s record on federal spending, centralization of education, expansion of entitlements, the war in Iraq, executive authority, the federal marriage amendment, and civil liberties was certainly sufficient to dissuade many libertarian voters.

This, however, fails to distinguish among these potential motives, providing no indication of whether "libertarian" voters were more displeased by the war in Iraq or by "centralization of education."

The trend continued in 2006:

After two more years of war, wiretapping, and welfare-state social spending, we found similar patterns in 2006. In the Zogby survey, 59 percent of libertarians voted for Republican candidates for Congress, and 36 percent voted for Democrats. Comparing those results to the last off-year election in 2002, we find a 24 percentage point swing to the Democrats.

An interesting note: as measured by Boaz and Kirby, "The libertarian vote is about the same size as the religious right vote measured in exit polls, and it is subject to swings more than three times as large."

The authors' Zogby poll apparently does provide a breakdown of these voters' motivations in 2006:

Libertarians who said the war in Iraq was the most important issue voted 64-31 for Democratic congressional candidates. Libertarians who stuck with Republican candidates were most likely to describe terrorism or security as the most important issue. Libertarians for whom federal spending was the most important issue were most likely to vote for third-party candidates: 39 percent Democratic, 38 percent Republican, 22 percent other.

Once again, however, the authors do not provide the raw numbers. How many of those libertarians said the war in Iraq was the most important issue? How many cited federal spending? Of course, those numbers, representing the opinions of 15% of respondents to a poll of 1,012 voters, would be subject to a margin of error of roughly 10%. Based on the information Boaz and Kirby provide, it's difficult to extrapolate that there is a significant swing vote motivated directly by opposition to "welfare-state social spending." To be fair, the authors mostly avoid making any claims that would privilege economic motives over others. But we should be cautious about rushing to assume that, if libertarian voters are swinging elections, politicians should therefore make it a priority to focus their attacks on entitlements. Indeed, for instance, one of the surveys cited by the authors, the 2004 Pew Values poll, indicated a sharp drop in anti-government sentiment since 1994, and a corresponding rise in public support for the idea of a social safety net.

And who are those libertarian voters, anyway? Again, the authors are appropriately cautious:

Certainly we are not claiming that 15 percent of American voters have the deep and well-informed commitment to liberty and limited constitutional government of Cato Sponsors or Reason magazine readers. Rather, we include both individuals who would self-identify as libertarian and individuals who hold generally libertarian views but may be unfamiliar with the word.

The authors recognize the limits of ideological self-identification polls, which are in my view the least useful measure of public political attitudes. Of course, it behooves them to recognize this, as "only 9 percent of voters with libertarian views identify themselves that way."

Thus, they ask an additional question:

We asked half the sample, “Would you describe yourself as fiscally conservative and socially liberal?” We asked the other half of the respondents, “Would you describe yourself as fiscally conservative and socially liberal, also known as libertarian?”

The problem is that this question also relies on self-identification, only at another level. It's still left to the respondent to interpret the meaning of "liberal" and "conservative." And this allows for a tremendously broad interpretation: no wonder that 59% of respondents answered "yes" to the first question. "Fiscally conservative and socially liberal" is a phrase that has frequently been used to describe Howard Dean - and many of the "Deaniacs" who were lampooned as wacky leftists; it could also apply to many, if not most, of the posters at Daily Kos - including Markos himself.

The authors themselves admit that this number is "overinclusive," though they find it "encouraging." I am still unclear as to how they then arrived at the 15% figure - I couldn't find where they had reported any further screening questions. Boaz and Kirby provide some interesting indications that the libertarian constituency, such as it is, may increasingly operate as a swing vote. But the who, why, and how much of this story remains far from clear.


Heritage Foundation (Sourcewatch profile here)

"Bush Budget Reins in Entitlement Costs" (WebMemo no. 1341, 2/5/07)

Article by Brian M. Riedl, "Grover M. Hermann Fellow in Federal Budgetary Affairs in the Thomas A. Roe Insitute for Economic Policy Studes at the Heritage Foundation."

Riedl praises the president's budget for its "focus on entitlements."

The impending retirement of 77 million baby boomers will trigger a $39 trillion tsunami of unfunded entitlement costs over the next 75 years.[1] The good news for the younger Americans who will pick up this tab for retiring baby boomers is that President Bush's budget begins to seriously address this challenge by proposing real reforms that could slice $8 trillion from Medicare's total unfunded liability.

Specifically, Riedl is pleased with the proposal to require wealthy retirees to pay higher premiums, as well as to modify the "market basket" of Medicare payment plans, so as to pay less money to doctors and hospitals over time. However, he indicates that Medicare is still fundamentally flawed from a conservative perspective, arguing, as many conservatives do, in favor of a "defined contribution" scheme that would de-collectivize it.

Riedl also defends Bush's request to extend his notorious tax cuts:

By increasing incentives to work, save, and invest, reduced tax rates played a key role in the expanding business investment, job growth, and the stock market gains that have powered recent years' economic growth.

(By contrast, this article suggests that the tax cuts have not resulted in increased business investment or in higher wages for American workers.)

The article also further indicates how the right will frame the battle over extension of the tax cuts: as a fight over a tax increase:

Letting the tax cuts expire--or worse, repealing them--would be a major tax increase for millions of Americans. [...]

The federal budget's problems do not stem from Americans being undertaxed, but rather from Washington spending too much. In order to prevent one of the largest tax increases in American history, Congress should follow the President's lead by extending the current tax policies.

Of course, when they were proposed, the cuts were only supposed to be temporary - so one could argue that it was Bush himself who "planned" this massive tax "increase."

As for who this "increase" will primarily affect, see this study.

Labels: Brian Riedl, Budget, Cato Institute, David Boaz, David Kirby, electoral politics, Heritage Foundation, libertarians, Right Wing Think Tank Review

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 11:03 AM 2 comments

  Don't Hate the Game

The Poor Man points approvingly to this great comment by Phoenix Woman, who laments the traditional distaste among so many on the American left for serious engagement in electoral politics.

I think the eagerness to eat our own stems from a fundamental difference in how the right and left operate in this country. The farther left one goes, the more likely one is to have a very cynical and morale-destroying view of politics, one that serves to keep one from engaging. [...] This distaste for deep involvement in democracy is part and parcel of American progressivism and has been since its inception. (I used to be part of an e-mail list called "Socialist Liberty", filled with the sort of people who equated Paul Wellstone with Jesse Helms; whenever any prominent Socialist or Communist such as David McReynolds dared run for political office, even as a Socialist or Communist, he or she would get TONS of flak from other Soc/Coms for selling out and buying into a corrupt system that needed to be left alone to die of its own foul weight.) And this distaste has only got stronger: Many lefty/progressive groups over the years have got out of electoral politics altogether, even as righty/religious groups have got MORE political...

The bitter irony of the American left's long distaste for/retreat from electoral politics -- a stance that only in the last couple of election cycles is starting to turn around -- is not just that this is happening even as the right-wing churches and other conservative groups are getting more involved in Republican politics; it is that money and time spent in politics pays better dividends in terms of getting what you want than in almost any other field of endeavor. Here's an example, paraphrased from memory from a writer whose name escapes me (otherwise I'd be linking directly to him):

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett want to spend thirty-odd billion on charitable causes around the world, when just one billion given to, say, DFA would ensure that truly progressive Democrats not only took over the party, but had the resources to go fully mano-a-mano with the Republicans in every single district -- and that would ensure the election of politicians who would back policies that would do much more lasting good than even a thirty-odd-billion-dollar charity could accomplish.

Based on my own experience, the self-defeating leftist rejection of serious politics is an obvious and corrosive phenomenon, but what I also like about Phoenix Woman's post is the way she ties it to the same problem from a different angle: the problem with "non-political" philanthropy. The massive amounts of money given in charitable endeavors could in very many cases be more efficiently and more effectively focused on achieving change in government.

The whole point of being a liberal or socialist is the belief that truly universalist, collective action is the surest way to guarantee human well-being and happiness, and that government is the only feasible organizing point for that action. But to use government to protect and improve people's lives, you have to control government. Leftist rejection of political engagement is a form of self-rejection, and an abandonment of the very message we should be trying to send to folks like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.

The commenters at the Poor Man's site pretty much savage Phoenix Woman (consensus: "she's full of shit") - largely, it seems, on the basis of a couple of questionable historical points she makes about Saul Alinsky, and about the German Socialists. The only substantive argument against her point, though, seems to be that the left doesn't reject politics, either because Hey: who are all those people "putting their bodies on the line" during the anti-Globalization movement?? - or, because, Hey: campaigning for the Greens is doing electoral politics, numbnuts!

Well, I put my body on the line (literally) for all kinds of causes in my college and post college days. I realize now that my time would have been far better spent learning to organize a precinct and practicing voter contact and campaign strategy.

And sorry, but working for the Green Party does not constitute serious engagement in electoral politics. In fact, it demonstrates a pigheaded refusal to understand electoral politics. There's a (very minor) place in the American political ecology for third parties, but except for a brief period in the mid-nineteenth century that's been a side issue at best - and the Greens are, for all intents and purposes, completely useless to the American body politic.

The way it works in American politics is: there are two major parties. A social movement that wants to make policy picks one of the parties, works to gain influence within that party while still maintaining a broad enough coalition to win elections, and . . . wins elections. That's it. That's all it takes. But it's hard work and by its nature involves a constant give and take between principle and compromise.

If you want to improve the world, that's the game you have to play, no matter how ugly, disappointing, or impure it can seem. As progressives, we have the opportunity to use the Democratic party to achieve our policy goals. So there are two kinds of progressives in this country: those who take that opportunity seriously, and those who don't. I have no use for the latter.

(Paul)

Labels: Democrats, electoral politics, government, Greens

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 10:36 AM 0 comments