Wedge Politics and How Republicans Work

Written by: snow bored on Jun 2, 2007 8:20 PM EDT

Linked to groups: Loop DFA

first in a series

crossposted here

i am a voracious consumer of data.  it's partly because i am a scientist, partly because i am innately curious, and partly because i am driven to understand the things in which i am interested.  i wish i was interested in simple, or simplistic, things.

so when i saw this report that argues that republicans are happier than democrats, i had to take note.  i'm interested in the differences between republicans and democrats, for a lot of reasons.  i live in a mixed household (liberal democrat and a democrat turned republican turned independent), but also because i was utterly dismayed that the anti-war forces in this country were so disorganized that they didn't even factor in to bush's decision to invade iraq.  this has been a constant theme over the last four years.

one of the things effected by this conclusion is wedge politics.  if i don't make this abundantly clear, then let me know.

i've said it before, and no doubt i'll say it again, i'm always looking for visceral voters.  people who vote based on an emotional connection to an issue, candidate or cause are *always* more reliable than rational voters or even habitual voters.  visceral voters basically have to vote to get their fix.  if they don't vote, they wind up beating themselves over it.

rational voters like to vote, but they don't need to vote.  visceral voters need to vote.  habitual voters generally vote. you can probably count on them voting, but they won't feel tremendously guilty if they don't vote.  visceral voters will.  so i have tried to support my campaigns on some grouping(s) of visceral voters that i could rely on.

i'll be the first to admit that my interest in visceral voters comes from my experience as a republican political consultant.  attracting voters with an emotional appeal is a hell of a lot easier than trying to rationalize with them.  it is also why it is imperative for a campaign's representatives, whether paid or volunteer, to stay on message -- and just as critical for the campaign to make it clear to their representatives what their message is. but i recognize that while the american electorate shares an emotional self (we're all emotional, to some degree), we do not share a common sense of what is rational or logical.  we don't share a common interest in issues, or necessarily weigh issues the same.  indeed, i've come to realize that americans are ala carte or part-time ideologues, picking up one thing here and another thing there.  these issues may not seem internally consistent to an outsider, objective viewer or real ideologue, but they seem perfectly logical to the person who holds them.  so basing a campaign on a rational discussion of the issues may seem ideal, but it is just as likely to be divisive as unifying.

as an aside, this also accounts largely for my blogging style.  i may be contrarian, who knows, but i definitely am inclined to make statements that are provocative.  'democrats are idiots' expresses not only my frustration about the differences between how republicans organize -- which is predictable -- and how democrats organize -- which is not -- but also a challenge.  prove me wrong!  i dare you!  get emotional, act on it.  the point is to motivate action, not discussion (which seems a bit annoying to people who just want to discuss something).  yeah, yeah, i'm all about change.  i've got no problem with pissing you off and motivating you to go out and kick some gop (campaign's) ass.

this poll got me thinking about the tactic and the validity of wedge politics to democratic voters.  wedge politics seems to be most effective when the audience is generally happy, but can get angry about this one differentiating thing.  you overemphasize the one thing that voters get angry about until parts of the electorate are so mad that they have to do something about it.  oh, by the way, vote for my guy (or gal) and you can relieve that tension.

if democrats (and independents) are a third less happy than republicans, this tactic may not be as successful as i once thought.  and for the democrats/progressives/liberals who are always angry about stuff, wedge issues will be completely irrelevant.  this wasn't so obvious coming from the republican side, where wedge issues are very effective, then trying to get democrats elected.  i can't say that i've completely digested the full meaning of this.

jeff's diary took this stream of consciousness thought to a different plane.  following his link and then trying to get to the front page (i clicked on Front Porch) i found unagidon's diary, "My 14th District", which i don't believe i had read before, probably because i was in the middle of the aldermanics.  i saw myself referenced and thought he deserved a reply.

now it's always interesting to see how other people retain what you write.  the first reference got me thinking.  "As Bored Now points out frequently, the Republicans treat their party organization like it's a business."  did i say that?  hmmm, that doesn't sound like me but i think i understand where he's coming from.

i don't know that i've ever thought about how "Republicans treat their party organization."  but that's ok.  what i do think about is how republicans coalesce.  i think the reason i don't think of a party like a business (but probably haven't expressed that thought) is because i think about how republicans rely on social networks.  in a large sense, the party is only one of the social networks available to republican campaigns.

my first introduction to this was in 1979, when i worked for john sears and the reagan presidential campaign.  one of the things i was responsible for was getting john's "bubble charts" to reagan for each event i worked and then reporting back that the candidate had met and talked to each influential listed therein.  i don't know if i can explain this well, but what we did was identify all the social networks we expected at each event and identify people whom the candidate *had* to meet, mainly as representatives or leaders of those social networks.  john would reduce these to a single page, with each group represented by a bubble (which each influential listed within that bubble) and lines connecting groups who were associated with each other.  the candidate, of course, wanted to get connected to all of them.

i still retain john's axiom that no candidate should run for office that doesn't have access to at least nine social networks.  and i still ask, who are the influentials? whenever i get involved in a new campaign.  who can i talk to that will filter down the message to his or her community or mobilize a group of activists?  who's the gateway?  i am stunned by the fact that democrats don't think about this or that campaigns don't have answers to these questions off the bat.

to me, the party is one (or more) social networks that can be folded into a campaign.  this is true whether the party is united or divided.  obviously, a united party is more effective for the purposes of a campaign.

"Now Bored Now might tell you (but who am I to put words in his mouth) that we need an organization like that, or at least an organization that can do that and he would be right."  yes, i do believe that democrats need an organization like that.  more accurately, democrats need to organize like that.  to some extent, some democrats and democratic campaigns, do organize that way.  the difference is that, in my experience, *most* republicans tend to organize like that.

in our political system, candidates are self-selected.  obviously, this is true to a lesser extent for machine candidates.  but candidates decide themselves to run.  truly recruited candidates are rare; more often than not, candidates think about running for office, as tammy duckworth says she did, long before someone tries to recruit them.  candidates-in-training are apparent to anyone who looks for them in campaigns, trainings and party organizations.

since candidates are self-selected, they are largely responsible for building their campaigns themselves.  even candidates with a lot of party support don't have all the social networks they require just from the party.  they have to bring their own set of social networks to the table.  one of the things that the internet offers campaigns is the ability to identify, recruit and mobilize these disparate social networks easier.

but this assumes that there is no primary.  in most primaries, the only social networks that candidates can benefit from are his or her own.  ardent supporters may lend the candidate their social networks, but smart candidates quickly make those social networks their own.  that was the purpose of the bubble charts.  what progressives don't seem to understand is that the party, be it republican or democratic, brings only one or two social networks to candidates that it supports.  if the candidate already has his or her nine social networks, the party's doesn't much matter.

this is why the differentiation between the republican party and the conservative movement is so important.  progressives and democrats seem to believe that they are some monolithic entity; they are not.  the two universes share an intersected population, but they are not one and the same.  this is important.  the marriage between movement conservatives and republicans is a marriage of convenience; like all marriages, the possibility always exists that they will get divorced.  but if you think about this two distinct groups as separate, not a single, social networks, then you understand that republican candidates can tap into two distinctly different social networks, leaving the candidate only seven shy of the ideal.  there is power in the conservative movement being independent of the republican party.  i don't know that this is the answer that unagidon was looking for.

"It is my impression (and maybe Bored Now can tell us more about this) that what the GOP does if a local grass roots movement arises around a candidate or an issue (often the same thing) is to co-opt it.  The GOP absorbs; the Democrats fracture."  right.  but i think there are good reasons for this.  i still believe that republicans crave power more than democrats, and this has wide-ranging implications.  if this is true, then it would explain why republicans try to weave together various points of view that one wouldn't believe natural allies (eg, fiscal conservatives and the religious right).  but it's more than that:

there are four reasons why:

1.) conservatives learned how to win, virtually anywhere.  this was the lesson that they drew from the 1964 election, when they imagined that, in your heart, you know he's (goldwater) right.

2.) they learned to "own" ideas.  lakoff (the academic) recognizes the influence that conservatives have had on academia, but more importantly, this stems from the william e. simon memo to conservatives to (paraphrase) let a thousand think tanks bloom.

3.) tired of the bias in the mainstream media, conservatives learned to build alternative media vehicles (direct mail, radio, then cable tv) so that they could communicate freely with their people.  iow, they went around the mainstream media.

4.) in the mid-80s, grover norquist began to coordinate the conservative messages, in a highly effective manner.

progressives do *none* of these things (i can't tell you how often i hear the lament about paul tulley).  it seems to me that progressives can hardly enact their agenda(s) without doing most, if not all, of them.  all the end runs that i see to avoid getting into the trenches and doing the hard work required to win elections (and, thus, filibusters, legislation or other reforms) is what i was thinking of.

plus, reform should be part of our message, not what we must do *before* we can win elections!

the emphasis on winning elections is not merely a repetition of conservative success.  this is still very much a closely divided country, and it seems to me that just a little hard work in campaigns & elections can go a long way towards gaining influence for the progressive agenda (should people ever agree on one).  i'm in the less talk, more action camp...

i'm going to expand on this a little, but i want to emphasize thinking about this in terms of social networks.  what we see in the republican infrastructure (i think of republicans more as an infrastructure than an organization) is a series of cross-fertilizing social networks, each independent of the others (the law requires this), but each communicating and cooperating with the others.

when i reiterate the need to learn how to win (as republicans and movement conservatives have), it is not just an organizational imperative.  republicans have a campaign doctrine, agreed parameters under which campaigns organize.  this campaign doctrine is commonly agreed to and widely shared by republican activists.  republicans share a common language, something that is definitely not true for democrats.  republicans don't start from scratch before every campaign.

republicans share a knowledge of campaign tactics.  this allows a modular approach to mobilizing volunteers and activists.  one of the reasons that the 72-hour program has been so successful is that they don't need to train volunteers beforehand.  they are already trained.  they already know what they are getting into.  when they make a commitment, they understand what they are committing to.  at higher levels, groups of republican activists work together in gotv election after election.  this sense of "we know what we're doing" among republican volunteers makes it much easier to recruit new volunteers.  new recruits come in expecting to get trained and used efficiently.  it builds confidence.

this training, this implementation, crosses social networks of republican activists.  some activists think of themselves as republicans (first), some think of themselves as christians, some think of themselves as single-issue advocates, etc.  but they all share a common language about voter contact, a common campaign doctrine, and knowledge of specific tactics that they employ.  this shared knowledge is pervasive, not just among the elite, but among the casual activist as well.  this is not organization (although organization is required), but a shared knowledge base of campaign tactics and a single campaign doctrine.  this is not only powerful, it is unifying.  it increases confidence.  republican activists are plug-n-play...

...to be continued

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