Tag Archives: Asymmetric Politics

Democrats, Republicans

Political scientists explain why Republicans overlook the truth and the facts

Political scientists Matt Grossmann and David A. Hopkins have written a book, Asymmetric Politics, that offers a framework for understanding American politics – and in particular to explain consistent differences in the behavior of Democrats and Republicans. Beginning with a key insight – party asymmetry – that has been noted in the past (prominently by Jo Freeman, “The Political Culture of the Democratic and Republican Parties,” 1986), but often ignored in subsequent inquiry and analysis, their book provides a window into contemporary politics in the United States.

Party asymmetry is at the root of much that is distinctive about American politics and government. We synthesize a wide variety of research in order to document the most consequential differences between Democrats and Republicans and emphasize their widespread implications…. Recognizing the distinct styles of each party can produce better explanations for political events and trends, including contemporary polarization and dysfunction.

Their analysis is spot on and, if I’m right, it reaches beyond the differentiating patterns they discuss in their book.

One difference between Republicans and Democrats – and this is my observation (though hardly original) and not Grossmann and Hopkins’ – is found in the relationship each side has to truth, facts, and evidence. Here’s one way to put it (my first take): Republicans rely on lies, half-truths, and a variety of tactics – such as throwing up chaff, muddying the waters, attacking the messenger, and spreading false narratives – to obscure, hide, and distract from inconvenient facts and credible standards of evidence. This behavior represents a consistent difference between Republicans and Democrats (whose political success requires, for instance, a more rigorous embrace of facts, both general and specific).

In reading the book, I realized early on that Asymmetric Politics offered a persuasive explanation for this difference in the behavior of the two parties – a difference that is clearly observable and (even with the he-said-she-said, both-sides-are-squabbling journalistic style of the mainstream media) increasingly hard to ignore. (The impeachment spectacle – with Republican defenses of Trump that point in every direction except the President’s, will not acknowledge any facts not embraced by Fox News Channel or @realDonaldTrump, and finally rely on “flat-out falsehoods,” as Jonathan Bernstein observed – is a case in point.) While Asymmetric Politics never addresses this specific difference, the framework that Grossmann and Hopkins establish explains why we find this divergence vis-à-vis truth, facts, and evidence in the behavior of the two parties.

In this post, I will set out the first step of an explanation that follows from the framework developed in Asymmetric Politics. It is only the first step, so it doesn’t take us as far as I believe the complete explanation does. But the first step is significant.

To simplify and advance my argument, I will set aside the description in the italicized sentence above and adopt the language of a former Republican Member of Congress. Republicans are (in the words of David Jolly) “willing to engage in overlooking the truth, overlooking facts.” Democrats, not so much.

Let’s begin with Jolly’s characterization of Republican behavior. Note that the discussion in Part I does not draw on the account in Asymmetric Politics. Note also: how Republican messaging has come to rely on outright falsehoods (rather than simply overlooking truth and facts) appears at a subsequent step in the explanation. For this post, and step one, we will stick with Jolly’s way of putting things.

I. Republicans engage in overlooking the truth and overlooking facts

David Jolly, commenting on the Republican response to the testimony of Fiona Hill before the House Intelligence Committee (on MSNBC during a break in Fiona Hill and David Holmes’ testimony), had this to say:

What Fiona Hill said to us and the nation is, ‘We’re in trouble.’ It reflected very much what we heard from Bob Mueller’s closing statement. It reflected what he heard from an impassioned Elijah Cummings: That we are a nation whose divisions have been exploited by a foreign state. And the reason that context is important is, first, what are we going to do about it? And, secondly, it paints the Republican line of questioning as not just maddening but sickening in many ways. Heartbreaking. That, in fact, perhaps Russia has achieved what it was striking out to achieve. That we have one of the two major parties who’s willing to engage in overlooking the truth, overlooking facts.

These comments (which are hardly controversial among informed observers not sheltered within the conservative media bubble) highlight the phenomenon I wish to discuss. Jolly doesn’t use the word, ‘lie’ (or ‘falsehood’ or another synonym). His words are less harsh, more compatible with traditional norms of civil discourse, and nearer to the traditional language of the mainstream media, than my italicized statement.

Jolly frames the phenomenon as overlooking the truth and facts. And his way of putting it – “willing to engage in overlooking” – suggests that this phenomenon is not characterized by carelessness, or inattention, or neglect; it is, instead, an active accomplishment performed freely. It is, in my view (taking Jolly off the hook regarding my argument), something that Republicans have set out to do – purposely, with malice aforethought. Overlooking the truth and facts is an act of artifice or evasion.

(Since I’ve invoked Jolly, I’ll acknowledge in passing a December 6 Vox interview regarding Republicans’ efforts to defend Trump. When Sean Illing asks, “You know these people. I assume you still talk to them. What are they thinking?” Jolly responds:

I can’t tell you how many Republican members of Congress have told me, “I’m just trying to keep my head down and not get noticed.” They see all the excitement stirred up by people like Jim Jordan and Devin Nunes but at least half the caucus wants to stay the hell out of the media. They’re not looking to make a name through this, they’re looking to survive this.

I struggle with whether some of their behaviors are an intentional decision on their part to engage in either misdirection, or to overlook the facts because they have a fealty to the president or because they want to put a stake in the ground in right-wing media or because it just works in their districts. Or are some of them just duped into it by following the leader?)

For the purposes of this post, we need not wrestle with motivation or states of mind. Instead, I will confine myself to an observation for which there is ample evidence: Republicans engage in overlooking the truth and the facts, in contrast to Democrats.

To see how Asymmetric Politics explains this difference, let’s turn to the authors’ analysis:

II. Why do Democrats and Republicans act so differently?

The answer offered by Professors Grossman and Hopkins begins with a look at the foundational differences between the two parties. The Democratic Party is a coalition of diverse social groups. The Republican Party is the vehicle of an ideological movement.

Asymmetric Politics describes and documents this fundamental asymmetry. Many groups, with diverse interests, mobilize under the big tent of the Democratic Party: women (especially single and professional women and millennials), African Americans, urbanites, union households, environmentalists, ethnic and religious minorities, immigrants, the LGBTQ community, …. These groups (and others) may embrace different agendas (and may spurn liberalism), but they each look to the Democrats for policies that advance their interests.  The Republican Party, in contrast, is more homogenous, attracting true believers to an ideological crusade marked by devotion to a revered ideology. Adherents self-identify as conservative and, by the beginning of the 21st century, liberal and moderate Republicans had largely been purged from the GOP. (Even most of the prominent never-Trumpers in the party are conservative.)

Thus, the parties are not mirror images of one another or two sides of the same coin. They are different in kind. The disparate foundations of each party result in a cascade of consequences that play out in the political arena.

The Democratic Party’s character as a social group coalition fosters a relatively pragmatic, results-oriented style of politics in which officeholders are rewarded for delivering concrete benefits to targeted groups in order to address specific social problems. Republicans, in contrast, are more likely to forge partisan ties based on common ideological beliefs, encouraging party officials to pursue broad rightward shifts in public policy. As a result, Republican voters and activists are more likely than their Democratic counterparts to prize symbolic demonstrations of ideological purity and to pressure their party leaders to reject moderation and compromise.

The foundational asymmetry of the two parties produces distinct differences in the approaches of Democrats and Republicans, respectively, to public policy debates, campaigning, voting, and governing. Republicans – leaders and followers – behave differently than Democratic leaders and followers.

From a simple, elegant beginning – the asymmetric roots of each party – Grossmann and Hopkins develop an explanation of the partisan skirmishes we witness in national politics. Another step in their analysis hinges on the distinctive ways the parties campaign in response to “a collective inconsistency” among American voters.

III. Americans are symbolic conservatives and operational liberals

Democrats and Republicans characteristically regard political choices differently.

In surveys dating back to 1981, when Americans respond to surveys regarding specific issues, a majority – often even a majority of Republicans – favor liberal social policies (which represent the Democratic agenda). Social Security and Medicare, environmental and consumer protections, funding for education, transportation, and even welfare have ample popular support. A majority of Americans are, in the language of political scientists, “operational liberals.”

But don’t tell that to American voters. They may (whether they’ve reflected on it or not) like liberal programs, but when asked to describe their political views, more Americans identify as conservatives, than as liberals. (Gallup, in January 2019, put the number of liberals at 26%, while 35% of Americans regarded themselves as conservative.) Further, when waxing philosophical, Americans lean right, expressing a preference for a smaller, less powerful government that provides less “free stuff” (in Mitt Romney’s words, reflecting the Republican point of view). In the idiom of social science, this conservative predisposition makes Americans “symbolic conservatives.”

Recognizing this disparity, the parties play to their strengths in political campaigns and policy debates.

Candidates battling for the nomination of either party face an obvious strategic incentive to adopt the most effective means of stimulating popular appeal among their fellow partisans, which might be expected to carry over into elevated enthusiasm within the loyal party base once a successful nominee turns to face the opposition in the fall campaign. But the tendency of Democrats to emphasize policy specifics and group benefits and the corresponding Republican penchant for stressing more abstract ideological themes are both further reinforced by the broader American public’s simultaneous preference for operational liberalism and symbolic conservatism.  Democratic and Republican candidates compete for the support of persuadable voters in general elections by battling to establish their preferred frame of partisan conflict: Democrats gain an advantage by portraying the differences between the candidates as primarily defined by distinct policy positions, while Republicans benefit when voters instead view their electoral options as representing a choice between contrasting philosophical commitments.

IV. Overlooking the truth and the facts is deeply embedded in the Republican Party

The foundational differences between the parties (as described in Part II) and the differences in the way the two parties communicate their messages (as described in Part III) provides an explanation for why Republicans engage in overlooking the truth and overlooking facts, in contrast to the approach of Democrats. To see why this is so, let’s explore the implications of these contrasts – beginning with the Democrats.

Democrats in office, responsive to members of their coalition, “are rewarded for delivering concrete benefits to targeted groups in order to address specific social problems.” Democrats are intent on doing something tangible – crafting, enacting, and implementing public policies – to benefit their constituents. Practical results matter.

A moment’s reflection shows why this pragmatic imperative precludes Democratic indifference to, or dodging of, facts and evidence. Crafting legislation and rulemaking, for instance, are unlikely to turn out well unless Democrats have their facts straight. Without a solid understanding of the social problem, disadvantage, or injustice they seek to remedy or mitigate, Democrats would be hard pressed to know how to proceed. Research, policy expertise, and real-world feedback are essential to creating programs that benefit constituents.

Results-oriented Democrats have a stake in making things work – even if they must compromise or proceed incrementally to move nearer to the goal. Half a loaf is better than none. Democrats aim to offer help through public policy initiatives. This enterprise is thoroughly fact-based because that maximizes the prospects of success. And failure is unlikely to yield votes.

Republicans, on the other hand, risk defeat if they are perceived as straying from what counts as conservative doctrine. “Republican voters and activists are more likely than their Democratic counterparts to prize symbolic demonstrations of ideological purity and to pressure their party leaders to reject moderation and compromise.”

Standing up for conservative values is paramount. Moreover, conservative ideology affirms both a belief in limited government and skepticism, even hostility, toward fixing social problems through government initiatives. Add to this an aversion to helping the “takers” (Mitt Romney, again Paul Ryan) in the Democratic coalition.

When ideology is front and center, facts are beside the point. Republicans aren’t interested in facts about disadvantaged groups, or communities experiencing injustice, or public policy options to address social problems. Doing nothing – without taking facts into account – is the default position of conservative ideology.

Loyalty to conservatism demands resistance to government intervention. Any compromise – tacking this way or that way to get something done – is a failure to uphold principle. Half a loaf is half a loaf too much. Obstruction counts as success. The adage, ‘Don’t confuse me with the facts,’ is completely apropos here.

V. Democratic ACA and Republican Repeal and Replace

Consider, by way of illustrating the parties’ distinct stances regarding truth and facts, a major piece of Democratic legislation, the Affordable Care Act, and the Republican pledge to repeal and replace it.

When Barack Obama directed Congress to reform health care, after pledging to do so during his campaign, he knew there were Democrats in the House and the Senate who had spent decades studying the issue and who therefore: understood the real-world problems that accompany the way health care is delivered in the U.S.; were familiar with a range of proposed solutions, the costs and trade-offs, and the industry interests that would have to be accommodated; and had learned from Bill Clinton’s failed effort at reform early in his administration.

Health care policy is complicated, expensive, and affects everyone. Democrats were well-prepared to take up the challenge, beginning with a clear sense of the policy goals: to increase the number of Americans with health insurance, to make health care more affordable, and to enact consumer protections.

A Democratic Congress drew on academic research; the experience of doctors, hospitals, drug makers, insurers, and consumers, among others; policy expertise inside and outside of government; and lobbyists representing every sector with a stake in the issue. Congress held scores of hearings as it crafted the Affordable Healthcare Act and revised the law both to satisfy the policy goals and to secure majorities in both the House and the Senate for a bill that the President could sign.

ACA was signed into law in March 2010. It has for the most part worked as intended (even as both the Trump administration and many Republican-led states have done their best to sabotage it – efforts that are ongoing). The great majority of people with insurance from the exchanges are pleased with the law, as are others who have received tangible benefits as a result of the changes.

Passing and implementing the ACA would have been utterly impossible without an exacting command of the facts – and an unwillingness to permit wishful thinking, or ideological fervor, or irresistible campaign talking points to trump the empirically grounded details that guided the effort.

Compare that success to the Republican failure to undo the ACA, aka, Obamacare. Republicans campaigned in 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016 on the promise to repeal and replace Obamacare (with something better and cheaper), but after winning the White House and both houses of Congress in 2016, they proved incapable of doing so.

Why? Republicans don’t have a very deep public policy bench in Congress. GOP Congressional leaders have shown little interest in health care apart from opposition to Obamacare. The GOP didn’t conduct scores of hearings to clarify their understanding of the problems with the delivery of health care, or to assess and refine proposed solutions. Furthermore, previous GOP ideas – such as Heritage Foundation plans as early as 1989 – are no longer viable because the Republican Party has moved so far to right in the intervening years. That Heritage plan, like Mitt Romney’s reform in Massachusetts, is far too socialistic for the party now (though perhaps it was then, as well; it may have been a stalking horse).

The ideal health care policy of conservative true believers is probably the 1950s-era status quo in the United States (before the passage of Medicare). Although moderates and liberals have been purged from the party, that anachronistic vision is too draconian for many Republicans (or at least for their constituents). Tens of millions of people are insured because of Obamacare – in red states and blue. Subsidies are available. Pre-existing conditions are covered. Parents can insure their children up to age 26.

Campaigning against the individual mandate might have won votes, but coverage for preexisting conditions wouldn’t be possible without requiring everyone to have insurance. Republican voters get riled up over “socialism,” but most don’t want to see their representatives disrupt the post-Obamacare state of affairs. That might be a contradiction, but, as we know, many Republicans are operational liberals (and have benefited from the law).

So, here’s the box the GOP found itself in after November 2016: repealing unpopular provisions and regulations of ACA would eliminate the popular features. Millions of Americans appreciate the coverage the law provides; no one wants to lose benefits or to see deductibles and premiums rise. Republicans found themselves in a familiar place: opposed to government ‘overreach,’ but unable to eliminate a major social welfare program.

In the GOP, as described in Asymmetric Politics, general themes expressing traditional values (and attacks on liberalism and socialism) trump specific, concrete facts. We saw that in the case of repeatedly invoked pledges to repeal and replace. There was never, over seven years’ time, a viable plan to replace Obamacare with. There was no way to keep the popular provisions of the law, while throwing out what conservatives detested. There was hardly a plausible political route to repeal and replace. Yet Republicans repeatedly campaigned on that promise. What can we say about them? At the least: Republicans engaged in overlooking the truth and the facts when repeatedly invoking that pledge.

This is a well-worn pattern baked into the foundational fabric of the Republican Party. Facts don’t matter much when officeholders are guided by ideology (and raw partisan calculation).

V. Subsequent steps in the explanation

The next steps in the explanation of the distinctive Republican aversion to truth, facts, and trustworthy evidentiary standards begin with a look at the conservative media universe, which Grossmann and Hopkins analyze and document in Chapter 4 (“The Not-So-Great Debate”) of their book. As we approach 2020, as many observers have noted, Fox News has become a dominating force in the Republican Party; FNC not only informs (and misinforms), it motivates activists, increases Republican turnout, and punishes officeholders in the GOP; and, as Fox has gained strength, distortion and distraction have morphed into conspiracy theories and falsehoods in Republican messaging.

All topics to explore in future posts.

(Image: screen grab of video by Meg Kelly, “President Trump has made 15,413 false or misleading claims over 1,055 days,” December 16, 2019, Washington Post.)

2020 General Election, Democrats, Republicans

Just how many liberals are there in this center-right nation?

“In 2018, for the first time, a majority of Democrats said they considered themselves to be “liberal,” according to Gallup. At 51 percent, the 2018 share is only 1 point greater than the share of Democrats who identified as liberal in 2017, but it’s very different from how Democrats’ political ideologies broke down in the 1990s and early 2000s.” — Janie Velencia, FiveThirtyEight

The same poll revealed that among all Americans, not just Democrats, 26% identified as liberal. (That’s the chart on the left in the image above.) The same poll revealed that 35% of Americans identified as conservative and 35% embraced the moderate label, which is why the U.S. is often referred to as ‘center-right.’

Meanwhile, James Stimson, a political scientist who has been measuring the public policy preferences of Americans since 1952, has found that Americans are more liberal than at any time in the 68 years since he has been doing the survey.  (That’s the chart on the right.) The 2018 result: support among Americans for government action — that is, for liberal public policies — stands at 69%.

That’s quite a difference. Why? Because the first survey asks Americans to self-identify; in other words, to choose the label that best describes their political ideology.

The second survey, on the other hand, doesn’t ask Americans to label themselves; instead it asks their opinions on a range of issues (background checks for gun purchases [which weighs in with 89% support], Medicare for all who want it [70%], government regulation of prescription drug prices [67%], a pathway to citizenship for immigrants in the U.S. illegally [64%], and so on). The Public Policy Mood survey crunches the numbers to get a result based on actual policy preferences of Americans.

That 69% is just a shade above the previous high, recorded in 1962, in an era when faith in government to right wrongs and to offer protection to Americans (with the passage of Medicare, Medicaid, civil rights and voting rights legislation, and so on).

In other words, as the authors of Asymmetric Politics noted, Americans are ideologically conservative (they think of themselves as conservative) and operationally liberal (they endorse the liberal policies that benefit them and their neighbors). So, Democrats campaign on specific issues: healthcare coverage for preexisting conditions, lowering prescription drug prices, offering a public option …; while Republicans campaign on ideology: linking Democrats with the Democratic Socialists of America and labeling them as “far to the left” and of course as “socialists.”

Yesterday, Gregory Koger highlighted the Public Policy Mood results to explain several strategic choices that Democrats and Republicans have made as we head into the 2020 elections, including the decision by Republicans to hit hard on socialism (“an extreme ideological label”), even though that didn’t work for them in 2018.

(Image composed of two charts: left, from FiveThirtyEight, and right, from Mischiefs of Faction.)

Democracy, Democrats, Republicans

A primer on the asymmetric political parties in the United States

(Or: ‘How the Republican Party became an insurgent outlier – Part 1’)

“The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.” — Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein

In It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the Politics of Extremism, Mann and Ornstein credit political scientist Stephen Skowronek with attaching the term ‘insurgent outlier’ to the GOP, while absolving him of the details of their analysis. By now, the increasing extremism of the Republican Party—long before Donald Trump’s ride down the escalator—has been widely (if not universally) acknowledged. As has a second element of Mann and Ornstein’s critique: that this GOP transformation is the first place to look to explain the highly dysfunctional state of the American political system.

While it’s easy to identify villains in this story—I’ve written multiple posts featuring Newt Gingrich, Mitch McConnell, Lindsay Graham, and William Barr, for instance—I’d like to sketch a structural explanation of how we got here. So, in today’s installment, I’ll begin with a look at the asymmetrical nature of the two political parties, inspired by Matt Grossmann and David A. Hopkins’ book, Asymmetric Politics: Ideological Republicans and Group Interest Democrats, and their account contrasting the Democratic Party, a coalition of social groups, and the GOP, the vehicle of an ideological movement.

The Democratic Party

‘President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s smashing victory in the 1936 presidential election revealed that the American political landscape had shifted. With FDR at its head, the Democratic Party put together a formidable coalition whose main components were lower-income groups in the great cities—African Americans, union members, and ethnic and religious minorities, many from recent immigrant groups—and the traditional source of Democratic strength, “the Solid South.”‘ — William E. Leuchtenburg  

The New Deal coalition, which dominated American politics from 1936 until the election of Richard Nixon in 1968, fractured with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. But while the composition of Democratic constituencies changed (most prominently with the loss of the Solid South), the fundamental structure of the Democratic Party did not.

The Democratic Party is a coalition of social groups. Because the groups, and their public policy agendas, are separate and distinct, what they bring to the table may generate conflict within the coalition. Indeed, Democrats have a reputation—going back to the 1930s—for dissension and discord. Unifying many groups with their own interests and ideas is challenge. The process of coming to agreement may be chaotic—and, over many decades, the picture hasn’t always been pretty.

  • “I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat,” Will Rogers remarked in an era when the New Deal Coalition prevailed.
  • The 1968 Democratic Convention, when the New Deal Coalition was near its end, stands as the prime exemplar of Democratic disunity in my lifetime. (Both 1948 and 1972 were fractious years for Democrats, but neither are remembered for violent street clashes, while the first one, in any case, was before my birth.)
  • A half century after 1968, “Democrats in Disarray,” remains a hoary meme (and click-bait), because disagreements are inevitable when many different interests are crowding under a single tent (and journalists need a hook). The Washington Monthly explored this topic in March, while Crooked / Pod Save America offered fifteen links on the topic last week. A simple Google search will virtually always find current examples of this genre.)

The perennial challenge for Democrats is crafting a coherent policy from the disparate views and interests of the various groups coalescing under the party banner.

Democrats pledge to represent ‘everyday Americans’ (‘the forgotten middle class,’ ‘the people,’ ‘the common man’) with a contrast (often explicit, sometimes implicit) to Republican commitments. The Democratic electoral base is comprised of groups that regard themselves as disadvantaged, and look to specific government policies and programs to provide a measure of social equity.

These constituencies have this in common: they believe that government can help people like themselves.  They believe that public policy is capable of solving problems, of offering benefits, of providing redress for injustices. That notion had little traction in Washington in the decades before FDR came into office. President Roosevelt, and the Democratic Party that he led, empowered government, expanding its role and responsibilities, to ensure that the economy benefited a majority of Americans.

Government can help make people’s lives better, Democrats agree. But because they’re a diverse bunch, their experiences of disadvantage—and specific public policy preferences—are different. How do we unify these groups and their program and policy preferences?

The Democratic Party’s solution is to wrap its arms around these groups, to acknowledge the disadvantages (problems, injustices) of each—and to embrace specific public policies to change things for the better.

The Democratic agenda—as represented in the party platform, political campaigning, legislative priorities, policymaking, and regulatory enforcement—is formed from the collective demands and appeals of the disparate social groups that comprise the coalition. 

Grossmann and Hopkins, who cite Dean Acheson (1955) and a trio of studies from political scientists (1966, 1976, and 1983) making similar observations, put it this way:

The coalitional composition of the Democratic Party has long encouraged party leaders to assemble a policy agenda from the aggregated preferences of the party’s numerous constituencies, courting the mass electorate with a large assortment of concrete benefits favoring targeted groups. Although the particular groups inside the Democratic “big tent”—as well as their specific programmatic demands—have evolved over time, the party’s foundational partisan character has remained constant for decades of electoral history.

This model has the great virtue of matching our familiar experience. A list of Democratic constituencies circa 2019 would include: women, African Americans, organized labor, voters under age 35, … and so on. Consider women, who are far and away the largest social group in the Democratic coalition. Clear majorities of women consistently vote Democratic and have done so for decades. (Discussion of the political gender gap began in the Reagan era. The gap has grown considerably since then, especially in our most recent electoral cycles.)

The Democratic Party is responsive to this voting constituency, as reflected in Democrats’ advocacy of specific policies and priorities to benefit women. Health care—salvaging the Affordable Care Act in response to efforts by Congressional Republicans, egged on by Donald Trump, to repeal it—was at the heart of Democratic campaigns in 2018. Women voters played the starring role in the Democratic victory to take back the House.

Accessibility to health care is high on the list of concerns of most women who vote (or may be tempted to vote) Democratic. Access to reproductive health coverage—and the right to choose to end a pregnancy—is a crucial element of health care. While abortion is fraught politically (particularly late-term abortions) in some quarters, the great majority of women—and especially those who identify as or lean Democratic—do not want to be denied the right to make this choice on their own. Ensuring this right is a Democratic priority.

Democrats embrace many other issues that resonate with women: the Equal Rights Amendment, equal pay for equal work, gender discrimination in employment, family budget concerns more generally, and  sexual harassment and violence toward women are all issues that appeal to the largest group in the Democratic coalition.

The contrast with Donald Trump’s Republican Party couldn’t be clearer. Trump has boasted of sexual assault of women, repeatedly assessed women’s worth based on appearance and sexual attractiveness, and insulted women in misogynistic terms. This hostility has increased Democratic support among women, but that’s only part of the story with the contemporary GOP.

In swing districts and, in many instances, in previously stable Red districts that flipped in 2018, Democratic candidates often presented a clear contrast with Trump and Congressional Republicans vis-a-vis respectful discourse; regard for the rule of law, for democratic institutions, and for coming together—to compromise with the other side, as needed—to enact meaningful legislation to benefit the people that Congress and the President were elected to serve; and concern with the welfare of the nation as a whole, not only of the GOP base. These are hardly ‘women’s issues,’ but they resonated with the largest social group in the Democratic coalition. Women who feel threatened by Trump and the GOP have every reason to regard these issues as critical to their interests and well-being.

Wage Gap

Elizabeth Warren’s pledge last week to women of color at the Essence Festival illustrates how an injustice toward a social group prompts a policy response among Democrats. Begin with these facts: white women earn 77 cents for every dollar that white men earn, while black women earn 61 cents and Latinas, 53 cents. That, for Democrats, counts as a prima facie injustice.

In Warren’s words:

Black women are more likely to be breadwinners for their families and work more than almost any other set of women workers in America, including white women. Yet, Black women are paid less and they are less likely to be able to afford basic human rights like healthcare, childcare and housing.

And her response:

On day one of the Warren Administration I will take a set of executive actions to boost wages for women of color and open up new pathways to the leadership positions they deserve. I’ll start by putting tough new rules on companies that contract with the government — who collectively employ a quarter of the American workforce. Companies with a bad track record on equal pay and diversity in management won’t get new contracts — which gives them a big financial incentive to shape up. I will prohibit companies that want to get government contracts from forcing employees to sign away their rights with forced arbitration clauses and non-compete agreements — restrictions that are particularly hurtful to women of color. I will also take executive action to make the senior ranks of the federal government look like America and strengthen enforcement against systemic discrimination. We need to demand that companies and the government properly value the work of Black women — and hold them accountable if they don’t.

These executive actions are just a first step. . . .

We could inventory every social group/voting bloc that coalesces within the big tent of the Democratic Party and match emblematic concerns and priorities among group members, on the one hand, with commitments and programs that Democrats embrace, on the other, to show piece by piece how the Democratic agenda emerges.

Inevitably, there will be disagreements among the groups. Negotiation, forming alliances, and generating consensus—a give and take, the stuff of politics and practical compromise—will come into play. In this way, the party advances the interests of the groups in its coalition in a process that mostly plays out in the open.

Getting it right can be tricky. In addition to balancing the interests and preferences of multiple groups, the party must look ahead to competitive elections against the Republicans. In such an environment, not every group will be a winner (at least in equal measure with others in the coalition). Similarly, once in office, Democrats are unlikely to enact every item on their agenda; some programs and policies will win out, while others will not. (Barack Obama, the most recent Democratic president, put the expansion of health care at the top of his agenda, while choosing not to elevate criminal indictments of the financial sector executives who crashed the economy.)

While some preferences must be deferred, however, generally everyone with standing in the party is heard. Inclusion is a Democratic priority. There is an expectation that every group’s preferences will be reflected in some measure in the party’s agenda. As Jo Freeman put it (in an article surveying the cultural differences between the Democratic and Republican parties), “The word that would most aptly characterize what Democrats want is ‘fairness.’”

This picture of the Democratic Party (going back roughly eight decades) is more or less the traditional view of how politics works in the United States. It is not, however, the way things work in the contemporary Republican Party.

The Republican Party

The Republican Party is an altogether different beast than the Democratic Party. Ideology reigns supreme in the GOP, which serves as the vanguard of movement conservatism.  Republicans, and organizations within the party, self-identify as conservative. Fidelity to conservative ideology is the organizing principle of the Republican Party. This ideology motivates activists, generates campaign themes and pledges, sustains the demands of the base, and provides a rationale for the party’s governing agenda.

In contrast to Democrats—who, as we have seen, look to government for practical remedies on behalf of social groups experiencing disadvantage—Republicans view proposals in relation to abstract ideological doctrine. The question is not whether a proposal would be efficacious or cost-effective or fair, but instead: Would implementing the proposal be consistent with conservative ideology? As the Republican Party has moved further right in recent decades (and ideological hostility toward government has grown), the possibilities of getting to ‘Yes’ have diminished considerably, especially regarding any proposal offered by Democrats.

In governing, Democrats accept that group interests will conflict, that negotiation and compromise will take place, and that trade-offs and even half measures may result. And that’s okay much of the time: half a loaf is better than none.  Democrats reward leaders who get things done, often even when victories are only partial. Not so with Republicans. Their preference is often all or nothing. They are looking to leaders who will not stray from a rigid party line. The touchstone is conformity to the party’s ruling ideology.

The primacy of conservative doctrine has become increasingly more entrenched in recent years, as illustrated by an observation by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson (in Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy):

As conservative activism has shifted toward national politics, it has also focused increasingly on the recruitment and certification of aspirants to elected office and the monitoring and punishment of politicians once they are elected. Ideological “box scores” are a revealing indicator of the trend. A few decades ago, only a handful of prominent conservative groups (notably, the American Conservative Union, or ACU) assembled ideological issue scores based on members of Congress’s recorded votes on hot-button topics. Today, the ACU’s scores compete with those of such conservative watchdogs as the National Tax Limitation Committee, Americans for Tax Reform, the National Taxpayers Union, Citizens Against Government Waste, the Republican Liberty Caucus, the Christian Coalition, the Eagle Forum, the Campaign for Working Families, the Family Research Council, and the subtly named Center for Reclaiming America. These groups range in size and clout. But even the smallest can often exert considerable power when it can credibly claim to be the arbiter of whether a candidate or elected official is a true believer in a central conservative cause.

Being “a true believer in a central conservative cause” often precludes getting anything done. Republican voters reward elected officials who uphold doctrinal purity, shunning compromise altogether. These voters carry out “punishment of politicians” who fail in this regard. Increasingly, these collaborators get primaried because Republican voters won’t stand for any ideological deviation or accommodation with Democrats. Moreover, often a symbolic ideological embrace, the conspicuous expression of fidelity to conservatism, matters more than the actual substantive outcome of their stance.

House Speaker John Boehner’s tenure was an extended case study of this dysfunctional dance as members of the Freedom Caucus repeatedly chose to one-up their conservative colleagues with expressive displays of ideological purity, even as they sabotaged Republican policy preferences. This self-defeating gamesmanship continued with the elevation of Paul Ryan to the Speakership, as Jonathan Bernstein related during one of the skirmishes:

Democrats only have leverage to negotiate a fairly good deal because Ryan’s Republican conference was split, with Ryan knowing he would never have the radicals’ votes on anything that could even get a simple majority in the Senate. That meant Ryan would eventually need Democratic votes, which meant everyone knew from the start that some Democratic priorities would wind up being fulfilled despite the large Republican majority in the House.

What the Freedom Caucus gets out of it is the chance to win in the Real Conservative game … at the cost of actual conservative policy preferences.

It wasn’t always this way in the GOP.

The Republican Party of the 1950s and 1960s was ideologically diverse in this sense: there were moderate Republicans and even liberal Republicans in the party. They were, like their conservative brethren, Republicans in good standing. No longer. The conservative movement, which seized the nominating apparatus of the Republican Party in 1964, by the Reagan era not only dominated debate and decision making within the party, it had begun to make the party inhospitable to moderate and liberal Republicans. In more recent decades, ritualistic purges through primary elections came to dominate Republican Party politics, but the seed was planted long before.

When William Buckley declared that his foe was “the Liberal Establishment,” Republicans were as much in his sights as Democrats. This included Republican President Dwight David Eisenhower, whose views on both domestic and foreign policies have no place in today’s Republican Party. In 2019, self-identification as conservative is required of all Republicans in good standing — elected officials, candidates, and nominees (at least on the national level).

Conservative Revolution

In the 1950s, Buckley and other intellectuals fused three strands of ideology into a central, overarching conception of conservatism (the ‘three-legged stool’). These beliefs included commitment to (i) free markets, (ii) traditional morality, and (iii) a combative foreign policy. The conservative movement embraced the fusion of this trinity, which came to represent Republicans’ reigning ideology.

I didn’t mention the word ‘liberal’ in my description of the Democratic Party. While liberal intellectuals are among the party’s constituencies, and many party activists and voters identify as liberal, most Democrats self-identify as moderate or conservative (though the number of self-identified liberals in the Democratic Party has grown in recent years). People regard themselves as Democrats because of social identity, group empathy, and specific issues embraced by the party. Regarding oneself as liberal is not a defining characteristic of Democrats.  

Republicans, in contrast, view politics through an ideological lens: political conflicts reveal a fundamental divide between conservatism and liberalism. And a visceral opposition to liberalism is embedded within conservative ideology.

While it’s possible to describe contemporary conservatism (and the three-legged stool) without appeal to liberalism, doing so would leave something out. Grossmann and Hopkins quote George Nash’s observation (in The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945), regarding the fusion of three strands of ideology into one, that the free-market, foreign policy, and traditional morality conservatives were united by their opposition to liberalism:

To the libertarians, modern liberalism was the ideology of the ever-aggrandizing bureaucratic, welfare state. If unchecked, it would become a totalitarian state, destroying individual liberty and private property—the wellsprings of a prosperous society. To the traditionalists, liberalism was a disintegrative philosophy which, like an acid, was eating away at the ethical and institutional foundations of Western civilization, creating a vast spiritual void into which totalitarian false gods would enter. To the Cold War anti-Communists, modern liberalism—rationalistic, relativistic, secular, anti-traditional, quasi-socialist—was by its very nature incapable of vigorously resisting an enemy on its left.

The authors also quote Nicol Rae (The Decline and Fall of Liberal Republicans), who crisply characterizes conservative ideology in these words:

In a crude form, their ideology can be stated as follows: Something is rotten in the American body politic; that rottenness is due to liberalism; and only by returning to the economic, moral, and foreign policy precepts of America’s past can the promise of America be redeemed.

Conservative ideology at its heart begins with an unequivocal aversion to liberalism. This aversion is baked into the conservative movement. Although most Democrats have not embraced liberal ideology, Republicans view the Democrats as liberal standard-bearers. Republicans see political conflict as thoroughly ideological and their critique of Democrats is consistent with that stance.

Democrats have a practical, instrumental view of politics. The focus is not ideological, but pragmatic. But whether or not Democratic voters (and officials) identify as liberal, the Democratic Party looks to government to right wrongs and to offer a helping hand. The Republican view of Democrats as their ideological opponents is accurate insofar as Democrats seek public policy solutions to social problems, while Republicans harbor mistrust of government and oppose expanding its reach.

Having it both ways

Grossmann and Hopkins point to the contradictory views of voters as a reason the United States has settled into a dynamic with a fundamental asymmetry (which they characterize as a “foundational imbalance” and “mismatched nature”) between the two political parties. A majority of Americans can be found to affirm an ideological commitment to traditional American values (and suspicion of government) in agreement with conservative Republicans, while at the same time more than half support an array of specific domestic programs (aka left of center Democratic policies) that offer practical benefits. In other words, most Americans are at once ideologically conservative and operationally liberal. (One version of this inconsistency is to cling to cherished benefits, while casting shade on government, the source of the benefits: “Keep your government hands off my Medicare.”).

Both parties play to their strengths in political battles: Republicans sound abstract conservative themes, such as the virtue of limited government, while Democrats affirm the social identity of their coalition partners and tout an array of specific programs that benefit them.

Because most domestic policy programs are highly popular (especially big, expensive programs), while most voters also embrace conservative rhetorical sentiments (such as demanding limited government), the governing majority can shift back and forth, depending on how voters with these contradictory attitudes lean from one election to the next.  

The asymmetry between the Democratic and Republican parties results in a cascade of practical implications. I’ll explore various consequences in future posts.

(Image: Thomas Nast, Stranger things have happened.)