Polar Freeze
by digby
If it's Tuesday, there must be more handwringing over "polarization":
“I think what we have seen in recent years — it’s really been playing out over decades — is that we’ve seen an alignment of the two major parties with the ideological base at the heart of those parties,” said Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.). “In the past, we have had a big segment of Southern Democrats who were more conservative than most Republicans. We had Northeastern Republicans who were more liberal than many Democrats. And now, we simply have more alignment of ideology and party.”
Consider the plight of GOP Sen. Orrin Hatch, who read the writing on the wall last year and promised a conservative conference that he “was prepared to be the most hated man in this godforsaken city in order to save this country.” What he basically meant was he was ready to do everything in his power to please the right.
[...]
But in a political environment where all the current incentives — such as super PAC money, cable news appearances, direct mail and Internet fundraising — are geared toward the extremes, the ideological middle is a political no man’s land.
This dynamic is hardly unique to Republicans, as much as President Barack Obama and Democrats want voters to think otherwise.
Centrist Democrats got that memo in 2010 — they saw how labor almost took down Sen. Blanche Lincoln, who ended up getting crushed in November anyway.
That’s just the Senate.
In the House, where the conservative Democrats known as the Blue Dogs saw their numbers cut in half in 2010, the climate isn’t much different. Five of the remaining Blue Dogs have already announced their intention to retire; two more lost reelection bids last Tuesday in Pennsylvania.
Among their sins: Departing from the party line to vote against the president’s health care plan.
“The lower the number of people who are from the center means the worse the environment is going to be,” said Rep. Jason Altmire, one of two conservative Pennsylvania Democratic incumbents who lost their reelection bids last week. “It’s certainly fair to assume that there will be more partisanship. There will be a wider divide than we have ever seen before in Congress.”
I think it's fairly clear that the Republicans have led the way in this sort of hyperpartisanship. We can look to Newt Gingrich's illustrious career for how it was done:
Often we search hard for words to define our opponents. Sometimes we are hesitant to use contrast. Remember that creating a difference helps you. These are powerful words that can create a clear and easily understood contrast. Apply these to the opponent, their record, proposals and their party:
abuse of power
anti- (issue): flag, family, child, jobs
betray
bizarre
bosses
bureaucracy
cheat
coercion
"compassion" is not enough
collapse(ing)
consequences
corrupt
corruption
criminal rights
crisis
cynicism
decay
deeper
destroy
destructive
devour
disgrace
endanger
excuses
failure (fail)
greed
hypocrisy
ideological
impose
incompetent
insecure
insensitive
intolerant
liberal
lie
limit(s)
machine
mandate(s)
obsolete
pathetic
patronage
permissive attitude
pessimistic
punish (poor ...)
radical
red tape
self-serving
selfish
sensationalists
shallow
shame
sick
spend(ing)
stagnation
status quo
steal
taxes
they/them
threaten
traitors
unionized
urgent (cy)
waste
welfare
That method of demonization, among hundreds of others, was extremely successful I'd say. The Democrats responded to such tactics by creating the Blue Dog caucus and the DLC. That dynamic is something you'll notice as you read the rest of the article:
Twenty years ago, moderates constituted 40 percent of Senate Republicans, and a third of the House GOP. Today, Republican moderates number 1-in-10 in the Senate and have all but disappeared from the House.
The Democratic Party exhibits a similar, if less pronounced pattern: Moderate Democrats make up 12 percent of the party’s House ranks in the current Congress, down from 35 percent in 1989. In the Senate, moderate Democrats make up 15 percent — down from 27 percent 20 years ago, all of this according to Poole and Rosenthal.
“In light of what happened in Pennsylvania — you see a guy like Tim Holden lose a primary, who was very middle of the road, reasonable, worked with both sides. You see him losing a primary to someone who’s a good bit more liberal — I think we’re seeing this loss of the middle,” said former Rep. Michael Arcuri, a Blue Dog Democrat.
“It just leads me to believe that it’s going to be harder and harder to get things done. It’s not that you don’t have good people there that want to work together, it’s just that their views are so far apart.”
It’s not just the parties that are the problem. The interest groups aligned with them are also helping to eliminate the center by serving as enforcers of ideological orthodoxy.
“The well-financed ideological advocacy groups also compound the problem, so that when you have someone from a safe seat, they have to spend their time making certain they’re extreme enough to avoid a primary challenge,” said Earl Pomeroy, a former North Dakota Democratic congressman who lost in 2010. “Basically, in the political marketplace, the elevation of the value of inflexibility over getting things done has been a big negative. And it’s largely fueled by well-financed interest groups that can take someone out.”
In interviews with numerous public officials, they all concede it’s going to get worse — and their only hope is that this is cyclical and that voters will eventually demand a functional government.
“We are not going to take back the majority if we don’t win moderate districts,” said House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.). “They’re the ones that are in contention. They’re the ones that are in play.”
It's interesting that they couldn't seem to find even one Republican to do on the record complaining about this situation, don't you think? Look at Toomey's quote at the beginning. They don't see it as a problem. They simply see it as an ideological realignment of the two parties. Apparently, these corporate Democrats do see that as a problem, despite their two huge wins in 2006 and 2008. I wonder why that is?
After all this garment rending over polarization, you have to love the final paragraph:
This isn’t political posing. The Republicans and Democrats the modern system produces literally come from different worlds and see no middle ground on the biggest issues of the day. They see elections — not the legislative process — as the place to settle their differences. Hence, the congressional elections unfolding before the country.
Bring the smellin' salts Miss Mellie! There's democracy bustin' out in America.
Here's the thing. The people haven't changed. All that happened was that the Southern Democrats switched parties with Northern liberals. The country didn't suddenly polarize, it was always polarized. Now it's sorted itself into two more or less ideologically consistent parties which means that elections have more meaning. I realize that this makes Washington social life a little bit less congenial but that's not really the concern of average Americans.
Our current system doesn't work all that well under these circumstances because it gives voters the impression that they have the ability to enact an agenda on their own behalf through the party of their choice and many of them get frustrated when it turns out the country is actually run by a bunch of wealthy aristocrats and corporations who don't give a damn what they say about anything. But that's not the voters' fault.
Perhaps the clarity this polarization brings will have the ironic consequence of eventually making people confront this common problem together. We live in hope.
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