On Money and Politics,
Edsall, Thomas B.
Money is not the only gauge of political vitality, but in the case of both the Republican and Democratic parties, money reflects the general stagnation of partisan competition as the...
...The waning of the conservative movement, the Iran-contra scandal, the burgeoning federal deficit, and the conviction of former Reagan appointees on charges related to influence peddling, have all contributed to a loss of financial support, as revenues dropped from just over $38 million in 1985, the previous nonelection year, down to $32 million in 1987...
...The enlarged role of the South in the 1988 nomination process appears likely to force some of the moderation Kirk has been seeking, although the southern Democratic primary electorate has become increasingly similar to that of the northern Democratic primary...
...At the same time, the potential capacity of the GOP to reward the loyal and penalize dissidents was a significant factor in the achievement of a series of near perfect party-line votes by Republican House and Senate members at the start of the Reagan administration, before the recession of 1982 broke the full commitment to the Reagan agenda...
...The Republican National Committee has, in the past decade, regained its status as the central organ of a strong political party, exerting an unprecedented influence over the political process at a national level...
...The erosion of financial support for the GOP has not leveled the playing field between the two parties...
...The South has a much higher proportion of black participation in primaries than the North, but working- and lower-middle-class white participation has been declining there over the past decade, just as it has elsewhere, producing a shrinking white Democratic electorate with generally middle-class liberal stands...
...Although Democrats contend that their success in winning Senate seats in the South in 1986 signals a potential end to the near lock held by the GOP in presidential races, the polls, focus groups, and voter interviews suggest that the GOP has continued to make firm gains in both the South and the West, gains which, if they hold up, will give the party's nominee a better than even chance in November...
...Money will remain a major factor in both the primary and general election contests, but perhaps the most important outcome of the November election will be a reading on the durability of the shift to the right in the South and the West, two regions that have become, over the past twenty years, firm bases for Republican presidential candidates...
...backlash against the social dislocations of the civil rights, antiwar, and women's movements...
...The cash advantage of the Republican party not only facilitated the initial stages of this power shift, but also reflected the financial endorsement of an increasingly conservative political party by one-andahalf million donors...
...The technological advantage resulting from the financial dominance of the GOP was a key factor in the success of the party in winning the tight, competitive House and Senate elections in the late 1970s and early 1980s...
...This large universe of contributors, drawn almost entirely from the affluent, demonstrated with their contributions a growing partisan commitment that paralleled increasingly strong Republican voting patterns within this income group...
...140 • DISSENT...
...Democratic direct-mail donors want a party on the cutting edge of such issues as contra aid, abortion, gun control, and gay rights—a party aggressively fueling the ideological fires Kirk has been trying to dampen...
...The direct-mail contributor base of the Democratic National Committee, however, is largely composed of a thin slice of affluent liberals living in a handful of upscale enclaves across the country...
...In a number of respects, the financial condition of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) reflects a similar situation...
...In terms of contributions, the Republican National Committee continues to have better than a four-toone advantage over the Democratic National Committee...
...These contributors have no interest in a moderate party...
...q ED...
...The restoration of the national Republican party has been based on a leverage very different from the vote-producing muscle of local, urban political machines in the first half of this century...
...the rise of the religious right...
...Money is not the only gauge of political vitality, but in the case of both the Republican and Democratic parties, money reflects the general stagnation of partisan competition as the Reagan years come to a close...
...Kirk, since taking office after the 1984 election, has attempted to moderate the party...
...More important, the Republican party's decisive technological advantage occurred in tandem with the coalescing of conservative pressures and forces in the late 1970s, which culminated in Reagan's election...
...Democratic fundraising has remained stagnant at roughly $7.5 million in 1987, an amount that in fact reflects a decline when adjusted for inflation...
...The Democratic party has been caught in its own bind between the goals of its chairman, Paul Kirk, Jr., and the ideological commitments of its fundraising constituency...
...NOTE: We go to press too late for comment on Jesse Jackson's remarkable victory in the Michigan Democratic caucuses...
...Deepening resentment of state, federal, and local tax burdens...
...working- and middle-class opposition to welfare programs...
...In our next issue we shall discuss this development fully...
...Although the ideological content of the battle for control of the Republican party may well be transformed in the coming months, at the moment the struggle seems to be resolving in favor of a kind of centrism that does not generate the strong financial support typical of the party in the early 1980s...
...and a politicized business community—all these produced a political moment ripe for the establishment of a right-center national majority...
...The party's off-year convention, which had served as a forum for peace, gay rights, and other activist groups, has been terminated, and Kirk has disbanded most of the single-interest caucuses that had held official status within the DNC...
...This shortfall left the Republican National Committee in a weakened position as the presidential year began and this lack of funds could prove critically important in the upcoming federal elections...
...Instead of a traditional political machine, the Republican National Committee is a money machine, using its success in raising cash to finance the acquisition and development of a technology-based politics: polls, focus groups, voter lists, computers, direct mail, and detailed„ research into Democratic records...
...At this writing, the tenor of the Democratic nomination contest remains less clearly defined than the GOP battle...
...For the Republican National Committee, which in the late 1970s and early 1980s turned into a technological powerhouse employing an unparalleled army of operatives and consultants, 1987 marked the first significant decline in cash flow in over a decade...
...As of late February, the split between the religious and economic wings of the conservative movement within the GOP, represented to some degree in the early stages of the campaign by Pat Robertson and Representative Jack Kemp, appears to have severely weakened the political right, turning the contest for the Republican nomination into a battle between George Bush and Bob Dole, representatives of the two establishment wings of the GOP...
...But the diminished cash flow reflects the lost vitality of the conservative revolution that altered the SPRING • 1988 • 139 A Letter from Washington face of American politics in the first part of this decade...
Vol. 35 • April 1988 • No. 2
