AN ENDURING REPUBLICAN MAJORITY?
Edsall, Thomas B.
The Republican party under Ronald Reagan has shaped a fragile majority in presidential elections whose strength and vitality will be tested in 1988. In terms of partisan allegiance, the GOP has...
...Clearly, the Republican party is not equipped to tap into either popular suspicion of corporate power or into the belief that the nation's tax policies are designed for the benefit of the rich...
...but at the moment the right remains divided, while Bush is proceeding to expand his base significantly among party moderates, his 1980 supporters, and Reagan loyalists...
...For Bush to win the presidency would, then, suggest that a majority of the electorate has made a commitment to a party demographically dominated by the affluent, and that there has been an economic inversion of the New Deal coalition into a new Republican majority...
...Demographically, the coalition of voters who identify with the Republican party is not only white, but it is coming to increasingly represent the emergence of a new majority of the affluent...
...Bush, in the meantime, has quietly set up an organization that is expanding his support into the Republican right, largely by capitalizing on his loyalty to the president in order to win the support of conservatives who backed Reagan in 1976 and 1980, including many who were bitterly opposed to Bush when he ran against Reagan in 1980...
...This perception was reinforced in spades by the enactment of the budget and tax cuts of 1981—when the GOP became, in effect, the party of regressive redistribution—and by the subsequent recession of 1981-82...
...The extraordinary disparity between the financing of the two parties is reflected in part by the fact that this past fall the Democratic National Committee financed its first poll since 1981, at a cost of $125,000...
...Kemp, an opponent of abortion, has attempted to maintain his conservative credentials by emphasizing the "profamily" elements of his economic policy, including the proposed raising of the personal deduction to $2,000, instead of promoting his stands on more divisive social issues...
...Continued GOP control would sharply increase Reagan's ability to determine the nation's legislative agenda through his entire eight years in office...
...The shift of upscale Southern whites to the GOP and the increasingly strong ties of blacks to the Democratic party have produced a restoration of economic divisions between the two parties very similar to those of the Depression...
...In terms of presidential voting, the major strength of this coalition is geographic: in the past five elections, a bloc of Southern and Western states has voted Republican by significantly stronger margins than the country as a whole...
...In a reflection of Reagan's political genius, the religious right has, to date, been drawn into the Republican fold without making significant headway at the federal level on its own agenda of banning abortion, restoring prayer, teaching creationism in public schools, and regulating the content of school textbooks, the publication of pornography, and sexual relations generally...
...during 1984, the Republican National Committee paid Richard Wirthlin's Decision-Making Information $168,000 for poll data every month...
...In this context, the most advantageous scenario for the Republicans between now and the 1988 convention would be to avoid an intense nomination fight...
...In 1958, for example, when a recession severely undercut the Republican party under the leadership of Dwight Eisenhower, just 14.3 percent of all families had incomes in excess of $25,000 (in 1980 dollars...
...Leaders of the hard ideological right—directmail specialist Richard Viguerie, Conservative Caucus chairman Howard Phillips, and Paul Weyrich, leader of the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress—have all begun to criticize Kemp for failing to adequately stress abortion and other social issues...
...As a candidate claiming the Reagan mantle, he looks, walks and talks like a quintessential Eastern, Wall Street Republican, the enemy of the conservative wing of the GOP from Taft through Goldwater to Reagan...
...As proposed by President Reagan, the "populist" tax-reform bill gave by far the largest tax breaks, in dollar and percentage terms, to those making more than $200,000 annually, in effect making a mockery of populist goals...
...A bitterly fought struggle for the nomination is the only way for the discordant factions within the GOP to force consideration of their own objectives, in a process that could replicate the degeneration of the Democratic party from the collective expression of a majority consensus to a network of conflicts between isolated interest groups...
...Most important, his public persona lacks Reagan's appeal: he claims Texas roots while appearing most relaxed sailing off Kennebunkport, Maine...
...Bush also brings to a campaign for the Republican nomination a set of substantial liabilities...
...For the Reagan administration, this is a tough choice to make...
...Why has a realignment failed to fully materialize...
...This is a very difficult question to answer and what follows is only a tentative exploration...
...Timing a recession to occur after the 1986 election would significantly increase the likelihood of the GOP holding onto the Senate...
...By conservative estimate, the rise of the Christian right, and its firm alignment with the Republican party, resulted in the switch, from 1976 to 1984, of about 8.25 million to 9 million voters from the Democratic party to the Republican party...
...The success or failure of the 1988 Republican nominee is likely to be, in effect, a gauge of realignment...
...Among many of these independent voters the religious right agenda is unacceptable...
...In many respects, the Reagan–Republican coalition has the kind of coherence suggesting durability, if not growing muscle...
...At the same time the GOP has been the beneficiary of the steady erosion of participatory politics, through the decline of the precinct and ward organization...
...The Administration of Ronald Reagan has intensified a strong return to class divisions between those who identify with the Republican party and those who identify with the Democratic party...
...To the extent that these issues become central to either the legislative agenda or the political debate in the contest for the Republican presidential nomination, the Republican party will be in a no-win situation, threatened by losses from the social-issue right insofar as its agenda is rejected, and by losses among the broad spectrum of voters who do not support the notion of government regulation of personal behavior...
...These strengths, combined with the presence of a highly popular incumbent president, economic recovery, and a Democratic party in shambles, raise a basic question: with all these advantages, why hasn't the Republican party already gained clear majority status...
...But the nation does not yet appear ready to grant a full-fledged majority commitment to a party of the elite...
...Republican strategists are aware of this liability, and a central political rationale behind the Reagan administration's sponsorship this year of tax reform was to create a "populist" appeal to the middle and lower-middle classes by attacking loopholes used by corporations and the rich...
...These voters, in turn, are demonstrating a commitment to the GOP far deeper than voting for Ronald Reagan: over half of the GOP's 1984 gains in the House of Representatives, and a substantial proportion of the Republican pickup of 300 state legislative seats, particularly in North Carolina and Texas, came in areas where fundamentalists were most active...
...17 In addition to the fundamentalist vote, new Republican support comes in large part from those voters who initially describe themselves as political independents, and who voice a leaning toward the GOP only when pressed...
...Overall, the three major Democratic committees— the Democratic National, Congressional, and Senatorial— were outspent by the parallel Republican committees in the 1983-84 election cycle by a margin of four to one...
...PERHAPS THE CENTRAL LIABILITY Of the Republican party is the continuing public identification of the GOP as the party of the rich and of corporate America...
...Bush set up a political action committee to channel money to 1986 House and Senate candidates, and in just six weeks the PAC raised far more money than any of his competitors were able to raise over six months...
...The Republican party has gained strength in large part because the nation itself has become more affluent...
...It would also, however, create the possibil18 ities of a replay of Reagan's first term to the benefit of whoever is the Republican nominee in 1988...
...Over the past generation, however, the identification of the GOP with the rich has become less and less a liability as the population as a whole has become more affluent...
...Financially, Republican ideological and economic homogeneity makes party activists an ideal donor base, perfectly suited to the directmail fund-raising tactics required by the campaign 16 finance reforms of 1972 and '74...
...Neither camp is in any way likely to bolt to the Democratic party in a fashion paralleling, for example, the shift of once Democratic Southern whites to the GOP...
...The second major Republican vulnerability is its deep dependence for support on the mobilization of the fundamentalist religious community...
...Timing a recession to occur before the 1986 election would, in turn, ensure Republican loss of the Senate...
...If Bush is to be successfully challenged, it will have to be from the ideological and Christian right of the party...
...By the start of the Reagan administration, however, this percentage had grown to 39.3...
...His supporters include the two top strategists of the Reagan–Bush '84 Committee—Edward Rollins, the campaign manager, and Lee Atwater, the deputy campaign manager—along with Republican pollster Robert Teeter, who has the best data base of any survey specialist of either party...
...At the same time, Marion G. (Pat) Robertson, the television evangelist and host of the Christian Broadcasting Network's 700 Club, has set in motion the start of his own bid for the GOP nomination, which, if he follows through, will further divide the GOP's conservative wing...
...If George Bush is to be the Republican party's nominee, his liabilities and strengths will, in many ways, make him an ideal test of the degree of realignment that has taken place in the United States...
...The partisan makeup of the electorate has substantial consequences for the internal strength of each party...
...None of the prospective candidates—Vice-President George Bush, New York Representative Jack Kemp, Kansas Senator Robert Dole, Nevada Senator Paul Laxalt—has demonstrated the political appeal of Ronald Reagan...
...In Reagan's first term, a recession forced significant losses in the 1982 election, but then set the stage for an economic resurgence for the 1984 election, making Reagan invulnerable, and leading to a GOP landslide...
...The difference now, however, is that this time the party of the poor and the working class is no longer the majority party...
...Jack Kemp, at the moment, has emerged as the main challenger to Bush, but Kemp is already experiencing difficulty holding his base together...
...WHILE IT IS FAR TOO EARLY to predict anything concerning the outcome of the 1988 Republican primary fight, current signs are that Vice-President George Bush is moving toward an early lock on the nomination...
...His way of dealing with the issue did not boost support on the right and, more generally, damaged his credentials as a candidate equipped to make the kind of decisions required of a president...
...IN THIS HIGHLY DELICATE PROCESS not only of determining the Republican nominee but of determining whether the Republican surge will continue after Reagan, perhaps the central question will be the timing of Administration efforts to control the economy...
...In addition, whatever political momentum has developed behind the legislation has come from one segment of the business community—such "high-tax" corporations as IBM and Proctor & Gamble, which would benefit from the proposed lowering of the top corporate rate from 46 to 33 percent—while there has been no public outpouring of support...
...for any one of these politicians to win against a credible Democratic candidate will require the conversion of what has been the Reagan coalition into a Republican coalition...
...This turned out, however, to be a demonstration of the continued strength of the affluent in the Republican party...
...This latter alternative represents the kind of gamble no politician is likely to take, particularly when there is any expectation at all that a recession could be avoided altogether...
...If the Administration and the Federal Reserve determine that a recession is inevitable between now and the 1988 election, the key questions will be, first, should an attempt be made to time the emergence of the recession and, if the answer is affirmative, then when—before the 1986 election or before the 1988' election...
...In terms of ideology, there are divisions within the Republican universe— ranging from the fiscal conservatism of Senator Dole to the tax-cutting strategies of Jack Kemp—but these are not fissures...
...These states provide 202 of the 270 electoral votes required for election...
...George Bush, unlike Ronald Reagan, would have severe difficulties making a quasi-populist appeal...
...Kemp, in addition, damaged his own credentials among conservatives and other supporters by the vacillating stand he took on sanctions against South Africa: first voting against them, then voting for them and, after his second vote, saying President Reagan would be "wise" to veto the legislation...
...This decline has produced a parallel rise in the importance of a national fund-raising apparatus to finance the acquisitions of political high technology: computerized poll and census data, tele-marketing, demographic targeting of mail, television (cable, UHF, and VHF), and radio appeals...
...In terms of partisan allegiance, the GOP has made striking gains over the past five years, reaching near-parity with the Democratic party for the first time since the late 1940s...
Vol. 33 • January 1986 • No. 1
