Only the views of partisan Democrats matter. The Republicans are just Southern hicks and “Sun Belt Cowboys”. Those are apparently the views of Harold Meyerson who in his most recent column argues implicitly for a healthcare reform bill that pleases the Democratic base:
Hard to believe, in fact, that they’ll ever be found, given the increasing rigidity, insularity and extremism of today’s Republican Party. The problem is that the GOP is no longer a truly national party in its geographical composition or its ideological breadth. Throughout U.S. history, our two major political parties have usually contained multitudes and contradicted themselves accordingly. For much of the 20th century, the Democrats were the party of the white South, the immigrant north and labor unions. The Republicans were the party of Wall Street bankers, Main Street merchants, professionals and Sun Belt cowboys.
But today’s Palinoidal Republicans have lost most of the professionals, much of Wall Street and an increasing chunk of suburbia. What they can claim is the allegiance of the white South and the almost entirely white, non-urban parts of the Mountain West. Of the 40 Republican members of the Senate, fully half — 20 — come from the old Confederacy, the Civil War border states where slavery was legal or Oklahoma, which politically is an extension of Texas without Texas’s racial minorities. Ten others come from the Mountain West. The rest of the nation — that is, of course, most of the nation — has become an ever-smaller share of Republican ranks.
His comic book view of American politics is at odds with the reality. 42.8%. 47.8%. 46.8%. 48.9%. These are the percentages of voters who don’t identify as either Democratic or leaning Democratic in the states of New York, California, New Jersey, and Michigan, all important to the Party, according to a recent Gallup poll. Southern hicks or cowboys?
It’s possible to govern by a tyranny of the majority and a bare majority at that. For a while. Prudent politicians will realize that good governance comes not from appealing to the extremes whose views are tainted by caricatures of political realities but by ignoring the extremes and forging coalitions among those with more moderate views.
Unfortunately, now as always prudence is in short supply.
Wouldnt it be more accurate to look at those who actually self-identify as Republican rather than those who are not Democrats? Look at the poll again and find the states where over 40% claim to be Republicans. Never having voted for a Democrat until 2006, I hope the party gets it back together, but what I see now is not encouraging. It seems even worse than when the Dems were in total disarray, but that is probably just due to the fog of time.
Steve
The fewer people that associated themselves with the two major parties, the better in my opinion.
I don’t think so, Steve. I think that obscures the actual political situation in the U. S. where the number of those disaffected with the two main political parties outnumber those who identify strongly with the parties.
A Congressional representative is supposed to represent his district, not the most radical residents of the district.
A Congressional representative is supposed to represent his district, not the most radical residents of the district.
Very true, I would add that they are not supposed to represent only their party’s interests as well.
Of course, gerrymandering has done a lot to reduce the number of politically centrist and diverse districts which has few positive effects IMO.
steve,
Harold Meyerson goes off the rails when he thinks there are only Democrats and Republicans and fails to realize that there are large numbers of people who don’t want to be affiliated with either party. Maybe they just don’t want to get the mailers and money begging phone calls, but I’m skeptical. If it is the case that these people don’t want to be affiliated with either party, then neither party can count on them for consistent support. If the Democrats start to lose California what then?
If people actually start to evaluate their parties rather than blindly follow, what then could be pretty good. My general sense, based on little data, is that the non-affiliated are largely low information disaffected and a smaller group of pretty well informed and disgusted. The latter group can be won by rational argument. The former will sway on emotional appeals as always.
Meyerson is over the top, but if so, then it would also be wrong to refer to the Dems as the party of the coastal elites would it not? At any rate, most of this will level back out, IMHO, as people get over the Bush years.
Steve
Meyer goes off the rails in claiming that the southern and Mountain West constitute the greatest aggregate of the GOP, but one of his points – that the GOP leadership and its representation at the national level is dominated by southerners and Mountain West folks – is true. That means that in many ways, the GOP has become a party of those areas, since those are the views that get represented in Congress.
That’s impossible, Dave, when one of the parties is willing to simply oppose anything and everything the other party supports in the hopes of damaging them in the next elections (I’m not just talking about the Republicans here, although they’ve done it twice – you saw the Republican leadership do this on the Clinton budget back in 1993, and they’re doing it now).
Besides, I think you’re over-estimating the importance of centrism. Several parliamentary governments (such as Great Britain) get along quite well with party-line-voting and the like that would make many Americans scream “divisive partisanship!” or the like.