Hullabaloo

Friday, March 22, 2013

 
Just because they're crazy doesn't mean people won't vote for them

by digby

Kevin Drum talks about the Andrew Kohut finding that all the Democrats are ecstatically passing around today, which says that Republicans are doomed, I tell you, doomed. Kevin writes:

This has practically reached the status of conventional wisdom these days. Republicans are doomed because they don't appeal to the young, or to Hispanics, or to women, or whatever. Their core base of pissed-off white guys is shrinking, and they're inevitably going to shrink along with it.

That makes sense to me. And yet....there's something about it that doesn't quite add up. Republicans control the House, and no one seems to think that's going to change in the near future. (And no, it's not just because of gerrymandering.) On the other side of Capitol Hill, Democrats seem genuinely concerned about holding onto the Senate next year. As for the White House, Republicans have only lost two presidential elections in a row, both times in years where the fundamentals favored Democrats. And they continue to hold outsize majorities in state legislatures and governor's mansions.

This doesn't seem like the markers of a party so far outside the mainstream that they're doomed to extinction. Frankly, they seem to be holding on fairly well.

Not only that, they are moving their agenda of shrinking government while protecting defense spending and making everyone hate the government at the same time. To top it off the Democrats are eager to do their dirty work for them and take the blame for cutting vital and popular programs. Let's just say they are a very effective opposition party.

Kevin doesn't mention the states, but this extreme party has been doing some pretty extraordinary work at the the state level and haven't paid a price for it as yet.

I think he makes an important observation here:

I agree that the Republican Party has some long-term demographic problems that are pretty serious. Nevertheless, it's not clear to me that the American public is ready to throw them overboard. Or, perhaps more accurately, the American public has so far shown little inclination to throw them overboard when their only alternative is the Democratic Party.

People who vote on social issues will have no problem making that choice at the moment. But on the larger issues of war and peace and the economy, I am guessing that it's not entirely clear to most people what's going on. They probably sense that the Republicans are being obstinate and uncooperative, and maybe they don't like that. But I'm not really sure they think the policy differences are that huge. Why would they? They aren't. So, if they aren't going to vote based on the culture war (and not everyone does) they'll use the "who I'd like to have a beer with" heuristic for president and flip a coin for the congress. That could go either way.

I'm just not sure that the fact the GOP has gone batshit is the guiding fact to most people when it comes time to vote. If anything, the old "not a dimes worth of difference between them" may be more salient. They like Obama, they didn't like Romney. But I'm not  convinced that translates into partisan loyalty. We'll see. I hope I'm wrong because the Republicans really are batshit ...



Update: Also too, Perlstein


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digby 3/22/2013 02:11:00 PM