Power Line: Realignment: Rolling...to a stop?

January 20, 2005

Realignment: Rolling...to a stop?

Forgive me for repeating myself: Everything I think I know about American politics I have learned from studying the works of Professor Harry V. Jaffa and his students at the Claremont Institute. It is the audacious project of of the Claremont Institute to restore the principles of the American Founding to their rightful, preeminent authority in our national life.

Key to the success of the project is the intellectual reclamation undertaken by the institute's flagship publication, the Claremont Review of Books (subscribe here -- please!). The magazine is to play the same role in inspiring the rollback of the Progressive undoing of the Constitution as the New Republic served in paving the way for the abrogation of limited constitutional government after that magazine's founding in 1914.

In only its fifth year of publication, the magazine is making headway under the inspired leadership of editor Charles Kesler; Kesler is to the CRB in its current incarnation roughly what Herbert Croly was to the New Republic at its inception. At the request of the White House, 30 issues of the just-published winter issue are in the course of expedited delivery to a few of the magazine's most influential readers.

The new issue of the CRB is hot off the press. The theme of the issue is the election just concluded. At our request, the CRB has made available online a few of the most provocative pieces in the issue. This morning the magazine has made available the issue's keynote essay on the election, Professor Andrew Busch's "Rolling Realignment." Beginning with Upside Down and Inside Out on the 1992 election, Professor Busch has co-authored (with University of Virginia Professor James Ceaser) the authoritative quadrennial analysis of each presidential election. Their 2005 book is forthcoming; in the meantime, we have Professor Busch's essay.

We have occasionally discussed the issue of party realignment on this site. I took a skeptical look at the thesis that a Republican realignment had occurred in "What is realignment?" and briefly noted Professor Peter Schramm's consideration of realignment in the context of the 2004 election in "Reconsidering realignment."

Professor Busch puts the issue with respect to the 2004 election:

Perhaps more importantly, a closer examination of the voting data shows decreased, not increased, polarization. If 2004 had been a really polarizing election, one would expect that Bush's vote percentages would go up in the red states compared with 2000, but that they would go down in the blue states. But this is not what happened. A comparison of the Bush vote in 2000 with his vote in 2004 shows that in the 29 red states, he gained an average of 3.3 percentage points. In the 19 blue states, he gained an average of 3.0 percentage points. (In the three switchers, he gained an average of 1.7%.)

Bush gained big in reliably liberal bastions like Hawaii (+8 percentage points), Rhode Island (+7), Connecticut and New Jersey (+6), New York (+5), and Massachusetts (+4). Altogether, he improved his vote proportion in 48 states—of which only 5 improved by less than 1%. His vote share dipped in only two states, one very blue (Vermont, where he fell from 40.7 to 38.9%) and one very red (South Dakota, from 60.3 to 59.9%). An examination of voters by type of community shows that Bush's biggest gain by far was among big-city dwellers (+13 percentage points), while his suburban and rural support remained stable. He made bigger gains among women than among men, bigger gains among Hispanics than among non-Hispanic whites, bigger gains among Jews and Catholics than among Protestants, bigger gains among rare church-goers than frequent church-goers, bigger gains among non-gun owners than among gun owners. In short, Bush did extraordinarily well in his base, but his gains came primarily from the Democratic base and those in the middle. The only reason he did not win more blue states was that he started off in them so far behind. These observations open up a new possibility, one so contrary to the conventional wisdom that it might be pronounced heretical by the high priests of the New York Times. Perhaps the polarization that grew through the 1990s peaked in 2000—and actually began to recede in 2004. At the very least, it must be acknowledged that George W. Bush gained across the board, in virtually every region and every demographic group.

Given this picture, it is not unreasonable to ask again whether we are in the midst of a Republican realignment. To begin with, one can conduct the simple exercise of comparing today's Republican dominance of governmental institutions with, say, the situation in early 1968, when Democrats controlled the presidency, both houses of Congress, and an overwhelming majority of state legislatures. Clearly, something fundamental has changed. Contrary to Democratic hopes, 1968 and 1980 were not flukes; 1994 was not a fluke; and now, for the first time, Republicans have put together the full package.

The good news, according to Professor Busch, is that the Republican realignment appears to have begun with the election of Richard Nixon in 1968. Given the usual period within which a realignment holds, the bad news is that the Republican realignment may therefore "be closer to its end than its beginning." Professor Busch concludes:

Democrats in 1964 saw an endless horizon of victory stretching out before them. Only now can we see that the New Deal alignment had actually reached its peak and was on the verge of a steep descent. That descent was, to some extent, unsurprising. The coalition was aging, new strains were developing, and most of the coalition's policy agenda had been achieved. On the other hand, there was nothing inevitable about the Democrats' collapse. On a pyre formed by Vietnam, the Great Society's overambitious schemes, the embrace of the counterculture and left-wing isolationism in 1972, and dozens of controversial court decisions openly celebrated by liberals, the Democrats slowly immolated themselves. Meanwhile, an energized and organized conservative movement was preparing to come to power.

Will 2004 be for Republicans what 1964 was for Democrats, a moment of triumph followed by a season of loss? Or will 2004 be, as Karl Rove has argued, another 1900, a close but broad victory that lays the foundation for a generation of dominance? Everything will depend on the choices Republicans make, the choices Democrats make, and the events that both will have to confront. If history is any guide, for Republicans hubris will be a more dangerous adversary than Harry Reid.

Don't miss this one.

Posted by Scott at 06:15 AM |

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