Yuri Zhivago
Mayor
An Op-Ed piece in the Washington Post by Andrew Kohut, founding director and former president of the Pew Research Center, pretty much confirms it: today’s Republican Party is indeed out of step with America — a seeming prison of its conservative base which help it cling to power in gerrymandered House districts, but suggests it has a long way to go to win over more Americans in future national elections. Unless it changes. A big,fat, unless — since “rebranding” isn’t going well at all.
And the talkradio/Fox/conservative website echo chamber feeds a perception of political reality not reflected in polls:
At a time when American is becoming more diverse.
And a time when groups symbolizing diversity are becoming more political potent.
Not a great recipe for future electoral wins, don’t you think?
In my decades of polling, I recall only one moment when a party had been driven as far from the center as the Republican Party has been today.
The outsize influence of hard-line elements in the party base is doing to the GOP what supporters of Gene McCarthy and George McGovern did to the Democratic Party in the late 1960s and early 1970s — radicalizing its image and standing in the way of its revitalization.
And the base — egged on by talk show hosts who need to excite and upset audiences to have them return again and again, and cable echo chamber with echos that resonate on some conservative websites, continues to feel that the reason GOPers lost is that they weren’t tough enough, conservative enough, no-compromising enough.The outsize influence of hard-line elements in the party base is doing to the GOP what supporters of Gene McCarthy and George McGovern did to the Democratic Party in the late 1960s and early 1970s — radicalizing its image and standing in the way of its revitalization.
In those years, the national Democratic Party became labeled, to its detriment, as the party of “acid, abortion and amnesty.” With the Democrats’ values far to the left of the silent majority, McGovern lost in a landslide to Richard Nixon in 1972.
While there are no catchy phrases for the Republicans of 2013, their image problems are readily apparent in national polls. The GOP has come to be seen as the more extreme party, the side unwilling to compromise or negotiate seriously to tackle the economic turmoil that challenges the nation.
And what are they doing now? Suggestions by House Speaker John Boehner (who seems giddy about Obama not having the predicted honeymoon and on the defensive) suggesting another manufactured Republican crisis over the debt ceiling renewal — going along with House members who are itching to shake down Obama for entitlement cuts and repealing Obamacare. The same image. Turning off the same voters.While there are no catchy phrases for the Republicans of 2013, their image problems are readily apparent in national polls. The GOP has come to be seen as the more extreme party, the side unwilling to compromise or negotiate seriously to tackle the economic turmoil that challenges the nation.
And the talkradio/Fox/conservative website echo chamber feeds a perception of political reality not reflected in polls:
It is no surprise that even elements of the Republican leadership that had been so confident of a Mitt Romney victory — including when it was clear that he was going to lose the election — are now looking at ways to find more electable candidates and cope with the disproportionate influence of hard-liners in the GOP. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus only scratched the surface this past week when he dissected the party’s November defeat: “There’s no one reason we lost. Our message was weak; our ground game was insufficient; we weren’t inclusive; we were behind in both data and digital; and our primary and debate process needed improvement. So there’s no one solution. There’s a long list of them.”
A long list, but one that doesn’t address the emergence of a staunch conservative bloc that has undermined the GOP’s national image.
GOP poll numbers would be upsetting — to all who don’t suggest because they don’t like them that they must be fake or part of a liberal plot:A long list, but one that doesn’t address the emergence of a staunch conservative bloc that has undermined the GOP’s national image.
The Republican Party’s ratings now stand at a 20-year low, with just 33 percent of the public holding a favorable view of the party and 58 percent judging it unfavorably, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey. Although the Democrats are better regarded (47 percent favorable and 46 percent unfavorable), the GOP’s problems are its own, not a mirror image of renewed Democratic strength.
Americans’ values and beliefs are more divided along partisan lines than at any time in the past 25 years. The values gap between Republicans and Democrats is now greater than the one between men and women, young and old, or any racial or class divides.
But while members of the Republican and Democratic parties have become more conservative and liberal, respectively, a bloc of doctrinaire, across-the-board conservatives has become a dominant force on the right. Indeed, it is their resolve and ultra-conservatism that have protected Republican lawmakers from the broader voter backlash that is so apparent in opinion polls.
For decades, my colleagues and I have examined the competing forces and coalitions within the two parties. In our most recent national assessments, we found not only that the percentage of people self-identifying as Republicans had hit historic lows but that within that smaller base, the traditional divides between pro-business economic conservatives and social conservatives had narrowed. There was less diversity of values within the GOP than at any time in the past quarter-century.
Less diversity within a party for a party that doesn’t seem to truly want to become more diverse.Americans’ values and beliefs are more divided along partisan lines than at any time in the past 25 years. The values gap between Republicans and Democrats is now greater than the one between men and women, young and old, or any racial or class divides.
But while members of the Republican and Democratic parties have become more conservative and liberal, respectively, a bloc of doctrinaire, across-the-board conservatives has become a dominant force on the right. Indeed, it is their resolve and ultra-conservatism that have protected Republican lawmakers from the broader voter backlash that is so apparent in opinion polls.
For decades, my colleagues and I have examined the competing forces and coalitions within the two parties. In our most recent national assessments, we found not only that the percentage of people self-identifying as Republicans had hit historic lows but that within that smaller base, the traditional divides between pro-business economic conservatives and social conservatives had narrowed. There was less diversity of values within the GOP than at any time in the past quarter-century.
At a time when American is becoming more diverse.
And a time when groups symbolizing diversity are becoming more political potent.
Not a great recipe for future electoral wins, don’t you think?
