There are two basic strategic problems I see with the current Republican party. First, the party establishment seems completely uninterested in winning the war over ideas. This mistake is indeed the more devastating of the two, as I believe in the end ideas determine reality.
Not in some squishy metaphysical sense but in the cold practical sense that someone must actually write policy and someone must educate the next generation of bureaucrats. If those people all have left wing ideas then you can pretty much bet dollars to donuts that you are going to have left wing government. It may come with enough right wing coating for the public to swallow it but ultimately the public neither authors nor administers the law.
The second mistake is more obvious. The GOP seems uninterested in appealing to the fastest growing demographic groups. Its problems with urban voters are well established and probably deeply rooted. However, its current trouble with Hispanics are of its own making.
Here are some charts I ganked from the Chicago Fed and they focus on the Midwest. However, I know of no particular reason the rest of the country should be any different.
New Urbanism is proceeding full throttle. Michael Steele says he wants to bring the GOP to a “hip-hop urban-suburban” audience. However, suburban doesn’t look like its going to cut it. The country is urbanizing. Whether its “re” urbanizing or continuing a long run trend towards density is a matter of debate. I tend to think this is a new phenomena but that’s an argument for another day.
Urbanites clearly see government in more favorable lights than suburban and rural dwellers for the simple reason that proximity breeds externality. Spillovers of all sorts, positive and negative are more likely in the city and demands for a government capable of handling negative spillovers will increase.
So yes, this is perhaps a fundamental problem for the GOP. This, however, is not.
I hate to go all Comte but these demographics do look a whole lot like destiny. I mean good god man. There are basically no Hispanic senior citizens and a ton of — apparently fertile given the fraction of the population under age 4 — twenty-somethings.
The GOP seems to be doing its best to antagonize this tidal wave but as far as I can tell there is nothing inherently “Democrat” about Hispanics. They tend to be religious, family oriented, entrepreneurial and generally culturally conservative.
Hispanics look to me like the natural future of the GOP yet, the party seems hell bent on making permanent enemies.
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Thursday ~ June 24th, 2010 at 11:17 am
Wonks Anonymous
“there is nothing inherently “Democrat” about Hispanics. They tend to be religious, family oriented, entrepreneurial and generally culturally conservative. ”
People have said the same things about blacks (well, except maybe the entrepreneurial part). Hispanics have low incomes and low susceptibility to “real heartland America” baloney. It’s perfectly predictable that they will vote Dem. Immigrants have ALWAYS voted Dem, as far back as the party existed. And they vote on bread’n'butter issues. GOP share of the vote doesn’t change much no matter how they position themselves on immigration (those that can vote are already here and legalized). Really, the only hope for the GOP was to prevent such demographic change from occurring in the first place, but it seems they’ve already missed that chance.
Thursday ~ June 24th, 2010 at 8:27 pm
Rebecca Burlingame
It seems that in the present, rural and urban folk are taking some very different approaches to survival that both parties are missing. The short term advantage may rest with rural folk who are focusing more on self-sufficiency. But the problem here is self-sufficiency with government help (think health care) which may eventually dwindle. When that happens, the advantage may go to urban areas where people are more able to come together to find solutions, when government assistance is not as easy to come by.
Friday ~ June 25th, 2010 at 9:46 am
teageegeepea
I think Robert Ellickson & Elinor Ostrom’s work has found more tight-knit communities characterized by reciprocal altruism in rural areas than urban ones. The more diversity, strangers and flux there are, the more difficult it is for people to come together informally. This is likely a big reason why people in those different regions have different attitudes toward government.
Friday ~ June 25th, 2010 at 1:42 am
BT
The problem with relying too heavily on demographics for voting projections is that it assumes no change within demographic groups over time. So, for instance, why should we assume that as individuals of Hispanic ethnicity become more assimilated into American culture, they will continue to believe in the liberal notion that we should not maintain control of our borders ?
And why should we assume that at some point the social liberalism of educated, urban people will be unaffected by the increasing economic burden (in the form of taxation) and restrictions on freedoms (political correctness laws) that results from that such liberalism ?
Friday ~ June 25th, 2010 at 2:34 am
Greg
Congrats–you got linked by Andrew Sullivan, which should lead to a substantial uptick in traffic. I’m on the other side of the aisle, but i agree with you about the GOP’s problems. I’d add that there’s a third, paradoxical problem–the GOP’s always been very, very good at feeding its base. As a Democrat, I envy this, and wish my party were *better* at base feeding. The biggest Republican successes–Reagan, the first year of Newt Gingrich’s speakership, Bush the second’s first term–have come from Republicans who mastered the art of feeding the base without alienating independents. Unfortunately, the party has changed–it’s gotten smaller and weirder and angrier–so while the Republican leadership now feeds the base with the same intensity, the base-feeding leads to things like Joe Barton apologizing to BP, Rush Limbaugh lying about Michael J. Fox’s Parkinsons (“he deliberately went off his meds!” No, he didn’t), and Tea Party protestors holding up signs with Obama in witch doctor garb and then wondering why people call them racist. All of this stuff feels really, really good. It also *turns independents off.* Republicans will gain seats in the 2010 elections–my guess, 20 in the House and 5 in the Senate; this could lead to even more extreme behavior that could cause *serious* problems in 2012. And 2016.
BT–some of us view taxation as the price we pay for civilized society–in exchange for my taxes, I get paved roads, meat without e coli, clean water, clean air, prosecution of corporate crime, NASA, Social Security for my grandparents, Social Security disability payment for a friend younger than me (mid-20s) who suffers from debilitating arthritis, National Parks, CDC protection from infectious diseases, NIH research that’s led to past nationwide vaccinations of measles & mumps and could very well lead to future ones, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. If you want to make the case that any of these items is bad, and should be cut, go ahead–but your blanket claim that taxes are a “burden” as opposed to something we pay for the stuff we get (like a utility bill, or a cell phone bill), is a neat little frame, but it doesn’t fly with me…or most of my generation. And, yes, my taxes took a big jump last year (went from salaried job to independent contractor).
I’m not sure what “political correctness” laws you’re referring to, but if you want to talk about the dangers of freedoms being restricted, you’d probably get a lot more leverage with me if you talked about this:
http://harpers.org/archive/2010/01/hbc-90006368
By the way, in case you were wondering, that’s the U.S. military confirming that Yasser Al-Zahrani was scheduled to be sent home–a basic admission that he was innocent. He’s dead now.
Friday ~ June 25th, 2010 at 8:00 am
Karl Smith
Greg,
Thanks for the congrats.
Our position in the Blog world is strange. We have gotten regular links from Sullivan, The Economist, Time Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Reuters, The New Republic, The Atlantic Mainsite, Marginal Revolution, Matt Yglesias, Brad Delong, Mark Thoma, etc.
However, our readership is relatively low. I sometimes like to say that we are a Boutique Blog. Or as Felix Salmon said about a friend of ours “Read by everyone who matters if by no one else”
Friday ~ June 25th, 2010 at 12:04 pm
Urban/rural political differences « The Center Way
[...] externalities, political spectrum, Politics, urban/rural split — Travis @ 12:04 pm Karl Smith: Urbanites clearly see government in more favorable lights than suburban and rural dwellers for the [...]