7 Responses to “The Party Line”

1. bayesian, on May 29th, 2008 at 5:26 pm Said:

   Thanks, Daniel. To paraphrase John Cole, you read all these things (like TNR, which I stopped reading years ago) so that we (your readers) don’t have to. Seriously, the signal to noise ratio on Eunomia is about as high as a general interest blog can get (I’d put GNXP in the same category; no others come to immediately to mind) - keirei!

   (not being a political junkie, I didn’t recognize Glen Bolger’s name, though a quick Google tells me he’s an R - do you think he sufficiently balanced Greenberg to make it a neutral poll?)

   I find it remarkable that you find the degree of partisan pull on the Republicans remarkable; it’s not just the herd mentality (which is a nearly universal human characteristic) but the ever tightening (since at least 2000 if not 1994) top-down centrally controlled dissemination of the orthodoxy.

   OTOH, as a generally left leaning independent, I am surprised by how little penalty the Democratic partisan label carries for other independents (perhaps my fellow Inds. are more able than I to overlook the sheer fecklessness of so many actually existing Ds; I doff my metaphorical cap to them). But look at the Congressional disapproval ratings in the poll - what would have been interesting is separate approve/disapprove ratings for Rs and Ds in Congress (I know Ds are winning big on the generic congressional ballot, but that’s a different question from approval/disapproval of the existing delegations in toto).

2. Steve Roth, on May 30th, 2008 at 9:07 am Said:

   This is not even a little bit surprising. Two sources:

   1. Psychologist Jonathan Haidt set out a schema with five “spheres” of morality: not harming, fairness, loyalty, respect for authority, and purity.

   In Haidt’s surveys, liberals value avoiding harm and fairness “inordinately,” while conservatives value all five. (Jihadists, like conservatives but moreso, put inordinate value on loyalty, authority, and purity.)

   Cato research fellow Will Wilkinson explains:
   http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2007/09/19/whats-the-frequency-lakoff/

   2. Bob Altmeyer has spent decades studying “authoritarian followers.” People of this personality type are self-described conservatives, by a huge margin.

   See Altmeyer’s page, and Republican turncoat John Dean’s Conservatives Without Conscience

   We’ve seen the loyalty gene in spades this week re: McClellan outrage. A commenter on Red State said, “loyalty *is* everything.”

   Is “yes, comrade, whatever you say, comrade” an admirable or worthy basis for morality?

3. John, on May 30th, 2008 at 10:23 am Said:

   Daniel,

   Do you think you might write something about what these and other such polling numbers reveal about the public support for paleoconservative and traditionalist/crunchy conservative views, especially once partisan and ideological labels (liberal/conservative/populist/progressive/etc.) are taken out of the equation? Obviously the question of health care stands out like a sore thumb, but on other prominent issues like the war, bad free trade agreements, immigration, inflation, federal deficits, and - perhaps - an overdependence on foreign oil, not to mention the deep mistrust of Congress and the federal government more generally, it seems to me that - contra Ross Douthat - there are serious signs for hope here. (If Ron Paul could magically be made to have a [D] after his name whenever Democrats read about him and an [R] for the Republicans, I think he could win.) I thought about trying to pull something together myself, but I don’t have the time. You, on the other hand, seem to have a limitless capacity for things like this. In any case I would be interested to hear what you think.

4. Daniel Larison, on May 30th, 2008 at 10:55 am Said:

   I like that–Larison’s Limitless Capacity. I think the numbers on the war and trade are promising signs for paleo and traditionalist conservatives, and I would be curious to see how people would respond to “non-partisan” positions that propose scaling back our presence overseas and bringing forces deployed in Europe and Asia back home. The support on the Democratic side would already be fairly high, and I suspect it would be much higher on the GOP side in a “non-partisan” or “non-ideological” survey than otherwise. Obviously, a “non-partisan” survey on immigration would also be very revealing, and I think would show a much broader and also deeper level of support for restrictionist positions. Maybe not as much as I might like, but certainly more than there is in the standard polling. I have thought for some time that paleos have a better sense of the public’s frustrations on a number of issues and have been closer to the “American political scene” in that sense than some of our reformist friends, but the trouble remains that the agenda we propose does seem to hit a ceiling of support electorally. However, things may be changing. I’ll have to think more on this.

5. John, on May 30th, 2008 at 11:48 am Said:

   Thanks. Based on my quick look over those NPR data, it seems to me that if a consistent message could be crafted that:

   1. Stresses the need for a real immigration policy (I am actually far less hardline than you paleos on this, but we can compromise);

   2. Rails against the corruption, inefficiency, and essential unaccountability of Washington politicians and bureaucrats;

   3. Emphasizes the rights of states to determine their own fates, especially on such issues as abortion, gay rights, etc., without taking a stand on how they ought to decide them;

   4. Demands a balanced federal budget;

   5. Echoes the populist calls for middle-class tax cuts, child tax credits, and so on;

   6. Calls for an end to the Iraq war and a reduction in defense (as opposed to espionage and counterintelligence) spending;

   7. Takes a stand against bad trade agreements but not free trade itself;

   8. Advocates protectionist measures for trade involving countries where workers are exploited or mistreated;

   9. Takes seriously the oil crisis (not that I have any sense, aside from promoting higher-density living, of what to do about this);

   10. Proposes ways to deal with inflation; and

   11. Demands an end to corporate welfare;

   … then we’d have something close to a majority on our hands. All of these are issues that seem to be very much on people’s minds, and proposing sane, sensible, federalist, and minimally activist solutions to them is the sort of thing that would resonate with an awful lot of voters. And these are, I take it, very much the sort of things that paleoconservatives are out to do. Again, I’m not enough of an expert - either on the principles of paleoconservatism or on the relevant polling stats - to make any hard predictions here, but I do think I know where I’d put my money.

6. Steve Roth, on May 30th, 2008 at 12:27 pm Said:

   I crunched the numbers on this a little bit.

   It’s stunning that attaching the Republican brand adds double digits to Republicans’ (tepid) support for Republican policies.

   For Democrats, it’s *exactly the opposite* (but with single-digit moves). Branding a policy “Democratic” *reduces* Democrat’s support for it.

   Who’s got the branding problem, and who’s got the policy problem?

   Numbers here:

   http://trueconservative.typepad.com/trueconservative/2008/05/pubs-and-dems-brands-and-beliefs.html

7. Daniel Larison, on May 30th, 2008 at 12:33 pm Said:

   Well, yes, I agree, which is why I wrote, “The Republicans have a policy problem. It’s the Democrats who seem to have a brand or image problem.”

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