Out West
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I’m not likely to take Ryan “Social Conservatives Have a Death-Grip on Republican Politics” Sager’s analysis seriously in any case, but as someone who hails from the “interior West” I am going to cry foul on any attempt to explain the political changes of the Southwest that does not so much as mention two obvious long-term demographic reasons for shifts in voting patterns: mass immigration from the south and, perhaps more immediately significant, considerable migration from California and other parts of the country to the interior West. Our states are the places where the Californians frequently go when their cost of living became too expensive, and they then proceed to turn around and start trying to Californianise their new homes by reproducing the politics that had created the mess in California. This may be exacerbated by new arrivals from the Northeast, but mitigated to some extent by people coming from the Rust Belt. But that would require actual work, rather than recycling (yet again) the story about how the big, bad social conservatives lost the West. To repeat this story of the GOP losing the “libertarian” West, you would have to ignore the rather large evangelical population in Colorado. One might want to check changes in Colorado evangelical voting patterns against changes on the national level to see if the GOP is losing as many of these voters there as they are elsewhere. As the cost of living goes up in the “interior West,” voting patterns probably have begun to follow the parts of the country where it is most expensive to live, and this means voting for Democrats who begin winning elections based on arguments for making this or that “more affordable.” Tackling the question of how the population has changed over the last ten or twenty years in specific states would be a lot more useful and much more interesting than listening to a New Yorker raise vague alarms. These are some of the structural changes that are driving the West towards the Democrats.
More broadly, the “interior West” has experienced significant urban and suburban growth (mainly suburban), and to the extent that the GOP is losing the suburbs everywhere they are probably also losing some of them in the vicinities of some of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas, such as Phoenix and Las Vegas. Albuquerque has been growing quickly, attracting a new wave of transplants who are reshaping the First District and making it increasingly likely that my home district will elect a Democrat for the first time. Profound incompetence, corruption and bad policy at the national level, including but not limited to the war, have been contributing factors in driving suburbanites away from the GOP. The GOP needs a policy agenda and a message that shows them to be the party of suburban America in what was already being called the “suburban century” 16 years ago. As Schneider wrote back in 1992:
The prevailing imperative of suburban life is security–both economic and physical.
For obvious reasons, it is this question of economic security that is especially important in this cycle. As much as I like a message of limited government, I know, just as anyone who knows the first thing about the level of involvement of state and federal governments in the “interior West” understands, that this message is increasingly ineffective in winning electoral campaigns. But it is also worth considering what kind of Democrats are winning in these states. They tend to be centrist, tax-cutting and pro-business. Even in New Mexico, Richardson has won both his elections by running and governing more or less as a centrist. So it is not necessarily the case that the GOP needs to engage in a bidding war to preserve itself in the West.
Keeping the Californians out, while desirable, is not really practicable, but immigration enforcement and control of the borders are possible–they are also exactly one of the things Sager thinks Republicans should give up. Also, despite what Sager is saying, most of the “red” states of the interior West are not going to vote for a Democrat for President this year. Sager misleadingly includes New Mexico in this group, as if the land of Tom Udall and Marty Chavez is a natural bastion for his brand of “libertarian” Republicanism, when it was something of a fluke of broader national trends that New Mexico had a Republican governor in 2000. We have since reverted to the norm of electing Democratic governors, and we have not had a Republican majority in the Roundhouse since Hoover was in the White House. So of course New Mexico is leaning towards the Democratic side right now–on every level except the federal, New Mexico is essentially a Democratic state. However, in presidential elections New Mexico frequently aligns with national popular trends, which is why I would still insist that the presidential race is going to be much more difficult for the Democrats than most realise, since they are not polling all that well in a state where they ought to have every advantage.
Update: McCain is already running general election ads in New Mexico (via Ambinder). Like everything else McCain, it is awesomely devoid of policy content and focuses entirely on the use of patrotic sentiment and McCain’s military service. In a state with a large military population, this sort of ad will probably work pretty well. It also seems to be an indirect way of saying that Obama doesn’t believe all of the things about American goodness and honour that McCain does, and we can expect more of this for the next seven months.
P.S. It’s also slightly worrisome that the actor (Powers Boothe) doing the voiceover played the crazy Vice President from season 6 of 24. Does this mean that McCain is going to pick a Noah Daniels-like figure for his veep?
Filed under: politics
Excellent analysis as always. We will have to see if he takes Heather Wilson as his VP. I’m sure you would have commentary about that.
I will be interested in seeing how the electoral map changes. I think there is a very good chance the Dems lose Florida and Ohio and make it up along the Mississippi River. Admitedly the polling in Missouri doesn’t support that presently. To the larger point, a libertarian message is very unappealing when people don’t feel they have control. If a got a mortgage 5 years ago and I can’t find financing after an adjustment due to a Wall Street caused liquidity crisis – a gross oversimplification on so many levels – the first thought running through my head is not going to be the need to suffer through a temporary phenomena. For the lower white collar class, when they see their job cut and shipped to India, their first thought isn’t going to be how they are making up their loss of income with price savings at Walmart; they are thinking the next job they take may just as easily be exported. As with many things, the easy answers have been tried and left wanting in the wake of larger phenomena, something too many libertarians in their cush academic jobs don’t ever consider.
Interesting — not knowing a great deal about the politics of Colorado, I’m not going to take sides on the broader question, but as a Californian, I do bridle at your casual display of prejudice.
Imagine how it would look if instead of the word “Californian,” you were to substitute the word Okie or redneck or libertarian, resulting in a sentence such as “Keeping the rednecks out, while desirable, is not really practical…”
I suppose I wouldn’t like it if it were applied to me, either. I was actually trying to be a bit light-hearted there, so I apologise for making it seem as if I have some real grudge against Californians.
This brings to mind some of the Republican triumphalism that we heard a couple years ago. They pointed to the fact that the fastest growing parts of the country tended to be Red States (and counties) as evidence of an emerging permanent Republican majority. Some people pointed out at the time that a large part of this growth was people moving from “blue” states and counties, and suggested that the fast growing “red” states and counties would become less red.
The latter prediction does seem to be being borne out to a great degree, with the caveat that it is difficult to seperate long term trends from short term trends (e.g., a general shift towards the Dems that may well be a short term result of dissatisfaction with the Bush administration).
Re Colorado, I’m a relatively new resident myself (a transplant from blue America), but one important factor in Colorado right now seems to be a disparity in the relative qualities of the two party organizations right now.
As a liberal Democrat, I have perceived the dire warnings from the Left about “The Coming of American Theocracy” as extremely exaggerated. In our mass democracy, demographics and environmental factors that have no direct connection to ideological positions (e.g. price of oil, good economy) determines political power. Consequently, the idea that a secret cabal of Christian theocrats plans on remaking America falls flat.
Our country is a consumerist culture predicated on the values of globalization. This ethos is toxic to the goals of traditional conservatives. Repeatedly whenever there is a policy question concerning the interests of corporations and consumers on the one hand and the interests of traditional conservatives on the other, the social conservatives are thrown under the bus (Of course, as a secular liberal I’d happily drive that bus).
However, that being said, there is a reason fusionism was a successful electoral strategy. The more partisan the US becomes the more important rhetoric becomes, even though rhetoric (as opposed to demographics and identity) has only a marginal impact on elections. That margin makes the differences.
Consequently, post-WWII the corporate wing of the Republican Party needed a rhetoric that appealed to the masses (hint: it wasn’t corporatism). I believe that one of the core components of Republican’s electoral success (at least since the 80s) was their religious appeal. It was by no means the only component–there were many other crucial elements-but the Republicans could not have won the elections that they did without it.
This is in many ways why the Republican Party has imploded. The war was the over riding factor, but on a basic structural level they lost their religious ethos. Conservative Christians no longer believe that voting Republican means voting for their religious interests (e.g. Rod Dreher, Crunchy Cons).. Now, of course, that does not mean they will suddenly start voting for the Democrats. However, if conservative Christians either start shifting to a third party or sitting out elections, where will the Republicans be? What base of support will they draw on? If the answer is small government conservatives and libertarians, then they are doomed to loose elections.