Ron Brownstein has a useful column in the LA Times about GOP electoral confidence. What interests Brownstein is the failure of Republican candidates to tack back to the middle.
The fact that moderates voted overwhelmingly for Democrats (57%-39% according to exit polls) was a big factor in GOP setbacks in 2006. However, Republican presidential candidates are just as emphastic about conservative orthodoxy as ever. First tier Republican candidates Giuliani and Thompson are just as unbending in their support of the war as ever. So is the second tier of John McCain and Mitt Romney. Republican candidates also support Bush on privatizing social security, deregulating the insurance industry, health reform, and tax cuts for the wealthy. According to Brownstein, the only place where Republican candidates deviate from Bush is on immigration issues where Bush deviated from conservative ideology.
Brownstein also notices that Republican candidates have wratched up their rhetoric concerning the Democrats, with Republican candidates routinely calling Hillary Clinton's health proposals "socialized medicine." Second-tier warrior Mitt Romney even views Hillary Clinton's "economic agenda amounts to "out with Adam Smith and in with Karl Marx.'" Brownstein expects that "these early volleys will, in fact, echo through the 2008 election and produce a dynamic in which the Republican nominee consistently tries to ignite ideological firefights and the Democrat tries to extinguish them."
In other words, the Republican candidate is going to devote a great deal of his energy to an ideological smear campagin.
But Brownstein doesn't quite understand the relative weight of conservative orthodoxy and ideological smear tactics in Republican campaign plans. GOP consultants and strategists talk about their confidence in the popularity of conservative orthodoxy. But Brownstein seems to be mesmerized by the displays of confidence.
He shouldn't be. Republican leaders can read the polls indicating a leftward shift in the American public just as well as the Democrats. They know that the public supports abortion rights, wants national health care reform, opposes the war in Iraq, and wants more government regulation of the economy rather than less.
So why are the Republicans projecting so much confidence in conservative orthodoxy. There are a lot of reasons. First, there's the matter of habit. The Republican leadership has responded to all their setbacks of the last 15 years by moving farther to the right. If moving to the right worked in 1992 and 1998, why wouldn't it work now?
The Republican base has also moved much farther to the right and the Republican leadership needs to keep the base happy in order to succeed.
Given the overall incompetence of the Bush administration (FEMA, NASA, Gonzales, etc.) and the various on-going Republican scandals, there's also a sense in which conservative ideology is the only card the Republicans have to play.
In the final analysis though, what drives Republican confidence is not faith in ideology; it's faith in their ability to smear the Democratic presidential candidate into being so personally unpopular that people will vote for the Republican despite everything. If anything characterizes the Republican base, the right-wing attack media, and GOP consultants and media types, it's their love for the language of insult, innuendo, put-downs, and name-calling. Conservatives have an abiding faith in their ability to find the "perfect smear" that will "raise questions" about the Democratic candidate and get people to doubt policy ideas that they would favor in public opinion polls.
For the right, faith in smearing far outweighs their faith in conservatism and its that faith in smearing that gives them confidence going into 2008.
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routinely calling Hillary Clinton's health proposals "socialized medicine."
Any chance you could detail your objection to calling a spade a spade?
No chance of that happening, ef.
Notice how only one side of the political spectrum does this? The Left, in no way, is guided by the moonbat left, the move-ons, firedoglake, peaceniks, etc ...
All of the Dems already occupy their self exclaimed middle of the American electorate. They would never cater to their base.
Professor, I too find that fascinating. As long as Americans are dying in Iraq, the person supporting that policy cannot win. I understand it was an amzing set of coincidences and skill that turned a war hero into a pussy and a pussy into a war hero in 2004, but there is simply no way to make it stick.
People know Hillary and they either hate or they do not. Those that do not will vote for her.
Besides Brownstein is the same tool who was able to report prior to the 2006 election that Karl Rove knew the Republicans would control Congress and, "maybe even pick up a seat or two." If you ever see him on TV, you see the epitome of the sort of "journalist" James Fallows denigrated back in the 90's and the sort Bob Somersby pillories everyday.
Bunch of clowns.
Speaking of such, unless Mrs. Clinton is arguing for a single payer system (and I wish we had one) you cannot refer to her program as "socialized medicine." Newsflash, she is not calling for single payer.
This issue is becoming more important to me by the minute. Being an impoverished student, I rely on my wife for health insruance. She has a fine middle class job, paying above average for Indiana (the median income in Indiana is around 32000/year). Nonetheless, her expensive, but fine health insurance is now too expensive and the employer is dropping it in favor of either an MSA system (disaster waiting to happen) or an 80/20 program, meaning our premiums aren't going to change, but we'll get less coverage! This is a solidly middle class occupation for a large company and they cannot cover their employees well enough.
This system is broken and needs fixed. Republicans can ignore it all they want, but it's only going to hurt them come 2008. At that time, with the nomination locked up, look for some two bit, changes nothing health plan from Guiliani or whomever. Says a lot that we know Guiliani and company would bomb people, but we're not exactly sure how they'd govern. It's because Republican voters, present company excepted, are babies and cannot face the reality of the world.
At least, that's what I think.
National healthcare, mandated choices, waiting lines for visits and procedures, bureaucracy on top of bureaucracy, and socialized medicine are simply not good positions to hold. It is the antithesis of the American spirit.
I tell you what, you take your candidate touting mandatory socialized healthcare and the meme that we are losing in Iraq. I will take the candidate that is an advocate for the free markets, the never quit attitude of the American spirit, and that failure is not an option.
Let's see which side more people side with.
Apparently Hillary thinks that proof of health insurance should be required at job interviews. Is that a position you want to get behind?
Proof of citizenship is.
As to your assertion above, we will see that bullshit "failure is not an option" idea (the world is black and white in Republican primary circles) and the 70 percent of Americans who oppose the war are not going to be scared into voting for Thompson or Guiliani. Sorry.
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