Asymmetrical Politics
Posted on November 5th, 2009
by Daniel McCarthy |
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I should clarify something from the last two posts. Running candidates who are a good fit for their district does not require that Republicans ditch their social conservative base, even if Democrats have had to run antiabortion candidates in order to win in red and conservative-blue districts. The reason for this is that abortion, and also gay marriage, are asymmetrical issues: there are significantly more anti-gay-marriage voters than pro-gay-marriage voters even in blue states like Maine and California, and while antiabortion voters may more narrowly outnumber abortion-rights voters, the intensity difference on that issue is important. For antiabortion voters, abortion is a top issue; for supporters of Roe, abortion tends to be of secondary or tertiary importance. As a purely political calculation, there’s usually no advantage for Republicans to run pro-Roe or pro-gay-marriage candidates in districts like NY-23. Doing so won’t buy the party many “moderate” votes, and will seriously aggravate the base.
Choosing the right candidate for a particular district doesn’t just mean selecting a generically liberal candidate for a liberal district. Someone like Hoffman was not too “conservative” to win NY-23. But he was too ill-versed in local issues to do himself any good.
Filed under: Politics
Doug Hoffman was too conservative for the district when it comes to government spending. Parts of Northern New York are like Appalachia. Some counties receive as much as 10 times more in state funding than they pay. As a poor region it also receives large amount of federal aid as well. Both Republicans and Democrats understand thi, and act accordingly. Doug Hoffman did not. Dede Scozzafava was deeply concerned that he would support cuts to Ft. Drum that would hurt the region economically. Her support for Bill Owens was to protect her constituents. Fort Drum is in her Assembly District. As for the social issues, her positions on social issue have never been a problem for her in running for 5 terms in the Assembly. Her positions were only made an issue by “true” conservatives from outside the district and the conservative media. And frankly, what business was it of theirs anyway? Dede Scozzafava was not going to represent them. Outside meddling cost us a Republican seat in NY-23.
It didn’t help that the same discredited national leaders who voters repudiated in 2008 stepped in to support the inarticulate, dopey looking, lifeless ghoul Doug Hoffman. That a man of such repugnance was able to almost win the race speaks volumes about the weaknesses of congressional democrats in 2010. It cannot be said enough that the quality of candidates does matter. Perhaps the republicans should run distinctly local campaigns under the slogan “It’s the Candidate stupid.”
Author, you make good points. As much as the pro-gay-marriage part of me wants to, childishly, respond with “Nuh-uh!” and a raspberry to any claim that there are more anti-same-sex-marriage voters than pro-, I’m focusing more on the concept of asymmetrical social-issue opinion-holding that you describe here.
Fascinating!
This time I think Mr Welch might have the right synthesis in saying Hoffman was too anti-spending to get elected, even if his social views were mainstream.
I think this is really the bigger problem, namely, that the Republicans don’t run many populist candidates. There are plenty of suburban races where there is an economically moderate socially liberal Dem vs. econ. libertarian-ish and socially moderate GOPer. There are few with nationalist Republicans challenging populist Democrats.
The GOP at the Congressional level is just too homogeneous and does not reflect the party at large. The House Democrats, at least, have factions reflecting different backgrounds and different interests (social conservatives, labour-backed, progressive Left, black, hispanic, DLC). Yet, even working class Southern and Midwestern GOP districts get the typical suburban, small-govt rhetoric, free trading, social conservative at election time only-type of Congressman.