Posted on 01/24/2002 8:30:17 AM PST by Clemenza
TRB FROM WASHINGTON West Wing by Peter Beinart
For the media, the dramas of campaign 2002 will be personal: Can George W. save his brother? Can Andrew Cuomo avenge his father? Can Elizabeth Dole match her husband? But the most important race won't be about personality at all--because neither California Governor Gray Davis nor his likely Republican opponent, Richard Riordan, has much of one. It will be about which party can transcend the parity of election 2000 and set itself on the road toward a political majority. Richard Riordan may be the Republicans' last chance.
Everyone knows that election 2000 revealed a country evenly split between the two parties. But an election is just a snapshot, a static picture of a dynamic polity. And as Ruy Texeira and TNR's John B. Judis suggest in their forthcoming The Emerging Democratic Majority, key Democratic groups--Latinos, highly educated professionals--are growing rapidly. By contrast, key GOP constituencies--rural voters, non-college-educated white men--are in relative decline. Bush's triumphant war on terrorism may have obscured these trends over the past few months, but it hasn't altered them. Democratic candidates won big last fall despite Bush's immense popularity, and recent polling shows that already terrorism is no longer the public's dominant political concern.
In fact, the war may actually hinder the GOP's long-term success by making it too ideologically self-satisfied. In recent years Democrats have proven more willing to make the ideological compromises necessary to encroach on Republican turf. The 1994 elections, which decimated Democrats in the South and West, convinced party leaders to throw out their litmus tests and field candidates who could win. By 1998, as Dana Milbank revealed three years ago in TNR, not only were national party officials tolerating anti-abortion, anti-gun-control Democrats in conservative House districts, but they were actually intervening in primaries to make sure they defeated their more liberal rivals. Anything to give the party a shot at picking up the seat.
That pragmatism has paid off. In recent years Democrats--once considered a dying species in the South--have won the governorships of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Virginia. They have done it with candidates so fiscally conservative that in many cases they actually ran to the right of their Republican opponents--often promising lotteries, which distribute money from the poor to educational programs targeted at the middle class. Last summer almost half the Democratic senators from states that George W. carried voted for his tax cut. And not only have Democratic leaders not retaliated against these renegades, but they have gone out of their way to protect them politically--refusing to call for the tax cut's repeal, in part because it might embarrass pro-tax-cut Democrats who face reelection this year, such as South Dakota's Tim Johnson and Montana's Max Baucus.
The GOP leadership, by contrast, has been much less sympathetic to Republicans in states that went for Al Gore. In March 2000, Republican House moderates grew so frustrated with the National Republican Congressional Committee's bias toward conservative candidates that they threatened to stop fund-raising for the party altogether. The Club for Growth, an anti-tax group, has warned moderate Republican members of Congress that unless they move to the right, they will face primary challengers. And there's reason to believe the threats are working. Last summer every Republican member of the House voted for President Bush's tax cut. The White House cheered, but given that some of those Republicans represent increasingly Democratic districts, their votes could put them out of step with their constituents.
And nowhere are Republicans more out of step than in California, where Democrats control the governor's mansion, both houses of the state legislature, a majority of the congressional delegation, and every statewide elected office save one. The reason is that California is less white, less rural, and better educated than most other states. It exaggerates the trends that favor Democrats all over the country.
After brutal beatings in the last three election cycles, some California Republicans are finally swallowing their pride and doing what the Democrats did after 1994: backing candidates who reject many of the party's ideological tenets. Their great hope is former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan. Riordan is fiscally conservative and touts his business expertise. But on issues like abortion, gay rights, and immigration, he would make Paul Wellstone swoon. The combination seems to be working. Polls show Riordan running even with incumbent Democratic Governor Gray Davis.
But Riordan can't win unless conservatives turn out on Election Day, and unless the national Republican Party aggressively assists his campaign. And therein lies the GOP's fateful decision. If it abandons Riordan, it will remain moribund in California, putting Republican presidential candidates at a permanent disadvantage. What's more, it will have rejected perhaps the best model for long-term success in a host of other states--for instance, New Jersey, where the national GOP's rightward drift is increasingly making Republicans an endangered species--that are following California's demographic lead.
If Riordan wins, on the other hand, the most powerful Republican outside Washington will disagree with core Republican principles. As governor of America's largest state, Riordan would have the political platform that his ideological soulmate Rudy Giuliani lacked. And he could conceivably launch the first serious liberal Republican presidential bid in a generation, a bid that would shake the GOP to its bones. Instead of Republican expansion, a Riordan governorship could produce Republican fratricide.
My guess is that won't happen because conservatives won't give Riordan the support he needs to win this fall. Parties don't swallow painful heresies unless they realize they are in trouble. And two fluke events--the Florida recount and the terrorist attack--have conspired to shield Republicans from the reality that their party probably is. Election 2000 was the third straight presidential election in which the Democratic candidate won more votes than the Republican. In the 1980s three straight losses forced the Democratic Party to reinvent itself. But in 2000 the Supreme Court turned a Republican loss into a Republican victory, and so the GOP was allowed the illusion that it had reconnected with the American people. Last summer James Jeffords's defection from the GOP--and the overwhelming evidence that on the issues people cared about most (health care, Social Security, education, the environment), conservative stances enjoyed little public support--led some Republicans to worry about the party's long-term health. But then came September 11, which sent Bush's approval ratings into the stratosphere--and convinced many Republicans they didn't need to change one bit.
So Richard Riordan is a radical solution to a problem Republicans don't admit they have. That's why I don't think he'll win. And as he goes down, he may take the GOP's dreams of becoming America's majority party down with him.
What is this guy smoking? PLEASE! What solution does Riordan have for the Republican Party? To remake it into the Democrat Party? Why not just have one political party, that way no one will fight and we'll all just get along?
Gag me. The only solution to fix the Republican Party is to mean what we say and say what we mean: stand up for what is right, criticize what is wrong, and do what we promise.
Republicans have been losing in California because we have been throwing water on the our conservative fire. It's still there, but lets not dowse it, lets feed the flames. Let’s throw some kindling on our moribund conservative base in the way of a conservative candidate. It's that simple.
Bill Simon has begun his climb in the polls. Wait and see. If Simon is the nominee conservative victory will blaze across this great state. If Riordan is the nominee, then all we care about will sputter and smolder and eventually be extinguished.
It has been my experience that the opposite is true. I am a highly educated individual and I vote Republican, as do most of the highly educated professionals (engineers & techies of all races) I work with. It has been my experience that non-college educated people are the one more likely to vote DemonRATic. The professionals (ie "the rich") tend to vote Republican (excepting teachers and public employee union members, of course). The above statement reads more like wishful thinking than fact.
And, as the kids say, What up wid Cox? And Rohrabacher? These were good guys!
Dan
Moreover, why would a "moderate" liberill vote for Riordan when their paycheck comes from Davis?
Gunowners won't vote for him. He's worse than Davis. PRo-lifers hate him. Tax cutters hate him.
What is needed IMO in California is a Reaganomics candidate, who is moderate on guns(IE a John Engler on it can win. I'd prefer a Bob Dornan on it, but it won't fly), and moderate on abortion(no tax money for it). I think that would win, especially if that candidate hammers away at ECONOMICS.
IE - Get the moderate to vote right, without losing the base.
Judging from Mr. Beinart's articles, he seems to be reading a bit too much into "affluent" New Jersey's shift to the Dems. Jersey has always had one party, with two liberal wings.
Jones is a problem. He should realize he can't win and just drop out and endorse Simon. First, Jones can't raise the money necessary to win the primary, let alone the general. At the first hint of trouble, he caved on abortion. (There's nothing the governor can do. Well, the President of the U.S. can't overturn Roe v. Wade, but Bush is still doing a lot to promote a culture of life!) Jones led the charge to pass the multi-billion dollar Wilson tax increase in 1991, and now has the audacity to call that "leadership" and "working with a Democrat legislature to pass a budget."
That's not the leadership I want!
Bill Simon is a conservative. And, he appeals to everyone. He is even-tempered and has common sense. He talks smart, but not over the heads of everyone. And I think that people are sick and tired of career politicians. Jones said something in the Hedgecock debate totally condescending about how passing a budget in the legislature is nothing like passing a budget in a business. Well, maybe it should be! Our state SHOULD be run like a business, and the shareholders (taxpayers) should have more say in how it's run! Term limits passed because people were tired of career politicians running everything. Why does Bill Jones think he has a right to the Republican nomination? If anything, he has the LEAST right to it!
Anyway, that's my two cents. I agree, broomhilda, we need to work hard and be committed and I think Simon can pull it off.
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