No right turn: if Americans haven't gotten more conservative, why is the GOP in charge?

Washington Monthly, Oct-Nov, 2005 by Christopher Hayes

Off Center: The Republican Revolution & the Erosion of American Democracy

By Jacob S. Hacker & Paul Pierson Yale University Press; $25.00

John Kerry had just barely conceded, and Democrats were still wiping away their tears, when on Nov. 4 of last year The New York Times ran an analysis that argued it was "impossible to read President Bush's re-election with larger Republican majorities in both houses of Congress as anything other than the clearest confirmation yet that this is a centerright country." The pronouncement seemed uncontroversial, and it reflected the view held by many that Bush's victory was the culmination of a thirty-year swing to the right among the American electorate. Over the last three decades, the base of the Republican Party has veered sharply to the right, with incoming congressmen and senators increasingly far more conservative than the incumbents they replace. Even the Democratic base has moved to the right: An analysis of survey data reveals its own activists are now closer to the views of independent voters than they were 10 years ago. It would seem reasonable to assume that the center of American public opinion has moved in tandem with the government.

Yet, as political scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson argue convincingly in Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy, there are scant public opinion data to suggest that is so. They cite political scientist James Stimson, who's been recording the "national mood" through a survey of over 200 questions for over two decades and finds Americans no more conservative today than they were in 1972. National Election Survey data reveals that Americans are less likely than they were in the '70s to say that the government is "too powerful," and the percentages of the electorate that identify as liberal and conservative respectively have remained unchanged for nearly three decades. "It is striking," they write, "that across all of the major left-right issues, one is hard pressed to find any evidence that Americans are markedly more conservative today than they were in the recent (and even relatively distant) past."

So what gives? That, of course, is the big question occupying progressive writers, academics, and public intellectuals of all stripes, and if Off Center's answers aren't entirely novel, the book's detail, specificity, and comprehensiveness make it a vital contribution. Two key trends are at work according to Hacker and Pierson: the growing numerical and financial strength of the Republican base and the GOP's refinement of a variety of tactical gambits--unified mostly by their reliance on subterfuge--to subvert the normal mechanisms that prevent majority coalitions from pushing through a radical agenda. All of this combines to produce "a systematic weakening of the institutional bonds that connect ordinary voters with elected politicians to ensure that American politics remains on center."

One standard view of the American constitutional system is that its checks, balances, diffuse power, and obstacles at every turn invest the most power in those closest to the center of the political spectrum: the independent voters and centrist legislators who can tip the scales in favor of a candidate or piece of legislation. According to this view, when the "the public and the base conflict," Hacker and Pierson write, "the public wins." But in the last several decades, the economic base of the GOP--the top fifth of income earners (which vote for and contribute overwhelmingly to the GOP)--has become far wealthier and far more politically involved than it once was. At the same time, the migration of the South into the Republican column has removed what was once a kind of centrist anchor. Southern politicians were generally extreme, even viciously conservative on social issues, but often downright liberal on economics; when Barry Goldwater floated the idea of privatizing the Tennessee Valley Authority, Southern supporters rushed to denounce the idea. The conversion of Southern conservative Democrats into free-market crusaders and Republican partisans has created such a large conservative base that Karl Rove and Tom DeLay need to poach only a relatively small number of independents and moderates in order to win elections or pass legislation.

If there's a wicked genius in the GOP strategy, it's in understanding that they can get enough of these moderate votes without actually moderating the content of their policies. Take the first set of tax cuts pushed through by the GOP in 2001--even before, the authors note, the president gained the political capital of a wartime leader. At the time, dozens of polls showed that tax cuts were simply not a priority of the American public. As Bush was sworn in, just 5 percent of voters polled said that taxes were the nation's "most important problem," and when given a choice between spending on programs like Social Security and Medicare or tax cuts, tax cuts garnered support from barely a quarter of those polled. The administration knew all this full well. Treasury official Michele Davis wrote in a memo to then-secretary Paul O'Neill (reprinted in the book): "The public prefers spending on things like health care and education over cutting taxes"