R4′08 is please to present the following guest editorial by Sean of the seminal My Election Analysis. Sean wished to provide our readers with a rebuttal to some of the pessimism that has been prevalent around here lately.   _____________________________________________________________________________________

Conservatism: Not Dead Yet One of my favorite times of the election cycle is actually August of the off year. This obviously isn’t because much of anything interesting is happening in Washington or in the election races. Rather, it is because August of the off year is when the Almanac of American Politics comes out. As any casual observer of American politics knows, the Almanac is the bible of all things political, with a repository of election results, descriptions of politicians, and other indispensable nuggets of information about American politics. For my money, the best part of it is the lengthy introductory chapter where Michael Barone – probably the best analyst of American politics – gives his take on what occurred in the previous election.So when Kavon Nikrad asked me to write up my thoughts on the state of the Republican Party in the aftermath of the 2006 election – intended largely as a rebuttal to some of the postings by Dave G and others on that site — I thought it might be useful to turn to the Almanac’s take on the election. Barone writes:

“It was widely asserted by journalists and Democrats that Americans had undergone a fundamental shift in attitude on economic issues and the place of government, that they had rejected the policies of the 1980s and embraced governmental solutions. On cultural issues, polls showed an American people willing to tolerate behaviors that a generation ago were considered illegitimate and for a feeling that people should be left to their own decisions on moral issues.”

It seems that Barone is validating the doom-and-gloom view of the GOP’s future. But there is a caveat. This isn’t an excerpt from this year’s Almanac of American Politics. It is an excerpt from the 1994 Almanac, written right after Bill Clinton’s electoral college landslide, and after Americans elected a 57-Democrat Senate majority, and a 258-Democrat House majority.

And this is the gist of my response to DaveG. We’ve been here before. About once a decade, very erudite people proclaim the death of conservatism (in fairness, Barone concluded that the above people were incorrect). It happened in 1964, 1974, 1982, and then in 1992, 1996, and 1998. And yet, somehow, conservatism bounced back in fairly short order each time. I suspect the future is not much more grim for modern conservatism. What we are probably seeing today is not a conservatism that is dead, but rather two things: a conservatism that is exhausted after holding power for six years in very trying times, and a conservatism that has comparatively receded from the successes of 2002 and 1994, but that is still fairly healthy.

I say “probably,” and that is my very important caveat at the outset of this. We may well be seeing the dawn of a new leftward lurch in this country. Voters who remember the results of liberal excess in the 1970s grow increasingly few and far between. Most voters don’t recall that the scandals which engulfed the GOP Congress were preceded by similar scandals that plagued Democrats for most of the 80s and early 90s; how many people today remember that the Democratic Speaker and Majority Whip both resigned as a result of separate ethical scandals in the 101st Congress? As the culture wars of the 60s and 70s recede, as whites begin to move back into urban cores, as globalization continues its march, we may see a resurgence of pro-government mentality in the United States. I don’t purport to have a crystal ball.

And it is also appropriate to acknowledge that Dave G has several prominent thinkers in his corner. John Podhoretz notes that liberal candidates won 51% popular vote in 2000. Perhaps, JPod argues, 2002 and 2004 were exceptions to the rule, brought about by the recency of 9-11? John Judis and Ruy Teixeira have been voices in the wilderness for years, hypothesizing as early as 2001 that demographic changes would make Democrats the majority party by decade’s end. A widely-cited Pew Poll shows conservative name identification plummeting. This may be the most widely cited poll on the internet; today Pew’s Andrew Kohut and Carroll Doherty are touting their polls results, citing changes from 1994 and 2002 as evidence that conservatism is losing its luster. And conservative bloggers Patrick Ruffini and Patrick Hynes have added their two cents about what’s going wrong.

I think that when these claims are held up to microscope, they aren’t as strong as they seem at face value. In short, there are good reasons why the present state of despondency among conservatives, in both the long-term and the short-term, is unwarranted. This isn’t to say that conservatives should be bullish by any stretch of the imagination, but neither should they be looking for a good spot on the Verrazzano Bridge off of which to jump.

Loss of Congress  Let’s start by looking at the immediate source of stress for GOPers: The loss of Congress after twelve years. At least part of the GOP’s present problem is an almost-inevitable outcome of six years of one-party rule (setting aside the brief Daschle interregnum in the Senate, where Republicans still ran the show with the post-911 issue agenda). Since FDR constructed the New Deal coalition in the 1930s, no President has ever enjoyed eight years of rule with a Congress of the same party; indeed, in the past sixty years, no party other than the GOP of 2000, 2002, and 2004 and the Democrats of 1960, ‘62, ‘64 (and ‘66) has had control of Congress and the Presidency handed to them in three consecutive elections (even FDR is not a huge exception to this rule – the New Deal was effectively dead after the 1938 elections, when anti-New Dealers took over Congress and ran it for the next 20 years).Moreover, every President since Teddy Roosevelt has left office with fewer seats in the Congress than he had on the day he was sworn in. Bush lost a net of 19 seats over the course of his Presidency. This compares especially favorably to previous two-term Presidents: Clinton lost 47 seats over his two terms, Reagan lost 16, Nixon/Ford lost 48, Ike lost 70, Truman lost 7, and Wilson lost 51. Even the great FDR left his successor with 71 fewer seats than he had when he first entered the oval office, and likely would have lost far more net seats had he survived through 1946.It is nearly impossible to go through eight years of a Presidency without a recession, war, major scandal, or policy overreach. These tend to tarnish a party’s image. Bush has dealt with all four; it is quite frankly amazing that more damage has not been done to the Republican brand. The bottom line though, is that Republicans losing Congress in 2006 wasn’t historic. Indeed, by historical standards it was a fairly mild tsunami that washed up on the shores. What would have been historic would have been Republicans had kept control of the House.  Party ID  Next, the famous Pew poll. Pew does show a drop-off in Republican party ID of late, especially when compared to 2002. But other polls are more inconclusive, and show a much more evenly matched partisan identification. Rasmussen shows a dropoff in party ID for both parties, with a relatively small (and once again closing) gap in identification. Harris shows a more robust 9-point lead (which is less than Pew), but which is also roughly where the parties found themselves in 2000, right before the voters handed united control of government to Republicans. Indeed, take a look at the trends in Harris over the past forty years (you will have to excuse the fact that it reads right to left; this is not a sign of any forthcoming conversion to Judaism on my part so much as a testimony to my ignorance of Excel). Here is the gap between Republican and Democratic Party ID (which Harris has never registered as favoring Republicans):

Even in the heyday of the Reagan years, the partisan gap was 11 points, and in the 1970s, shortly before Reagan’s election, Democrats averaged a whopping 21-point lead in identification. It might be cold comfort to say that “things have been worse” for the GOP, but the real story is that things have been worse for the GOP on the eve of big victories. And there is another cautionary tale here: Past performance does not predict future behavior. Someone looking at the numbers in 1978 could easily conclude that the GOP was on the verge of extinction. In 1982 many could (and did) conclude that the GOP gains of the late 1970s and early 80s were ephemeral. I will also note that the Republican “collapse” in party ID during the late Bush years is nothing compared to what the Democrats suffered from 1977 through about 1984.Just to give a different look at this, here are the raw partisan ID numbers. Again, what would someone in 1978 have concluded? And have the Democrats really improved their lot all that much?: Now, this doesn’t mean that the recent trend won’t continue. It might. But as of where we stand right now, we still appear to be trading in the same Party ID band we’ve been in for the past 20 years. The GOP has lost some of its gains from the peak of 2002, but getting those voters back was low-hanging fruit for the Democrats. We’ll see how easily future gains are made. Issue Agenda The Pew Poll is also cited as proof that the issue agenda has changed since 1994. In truth, what Kohut et al have done is cherry-pick some poll questions from the larger group, cherry-pick the year from which they are taken, and read the trends accordingly. Before I go on, let me say that Kohut is fine pollster, Pew is one of the best polls out there, and I don’t think this is any “liberal bias” or anything on his part. It is an interesting story. It isn’t very interesting to say that “values haven’t shifted much in the past twenty years.” There’s any number of stories you can tell based on this data, and the story Kohut tells is true, but you have to keep in mind what unique years 1994 and 2002 are. And the few questions Kohut picks really are cherry picking. Looking over the whole poll, some questions show dramatic shifts against the GOP. Some show no change in the long run, but show short-term trends against the GOP. Some have given almost the exact same result year in and year our. So I propose to give my results for all the poll questions where I have data going back to 1987. I will also tell my story from a more neutral year than either 2002 or 1994: 1987. Some further explanation of my approach is warranted (as opposed to the approach in Kohut’s story).It is true that general attitudes have shifted toward Democrats on many issues since 1994, and on foreign policy issues since 2002. Those are poor years to choose as baselines. 2002 obviously saw a spike in hawkish sentiment, given the recency of 9-11 (indeed, there was a similar spike in 1990, the year of the Gulf War). 1994 represents a spike in conservative orientation on many issues, precipitated by the fumbling liberalism of the first half of the first Clinton term. In other words, conservatives benefitted from many of the same things that liberals benefitted from in 2006, namely, the other side was in charge. When things went wrong, as it inevitably did, the blame fell entirely on the other side. But, once conservatives shared power, they began to make their own missteps, and take their own share. I think the same thing is beginning to happen with liberals in charge of part of Congress, and expect this to accelerate if they take over in 2008.To look at it in a different way, in 2002, only 48% of people surveyed thought that government regulation of business does more harm than good. Today it is 57%. Using Kohut’s mode of analysis, one could posit that society is becoming more libertarian. The better conclusion, though, is to recognize that 2002 marked a spike in distrust of business, due to Enron and other corporate accounting debacles. Sure enough, the answer to this question was identical in 2007 as it was in 1987.Similarly, someone looking at the Pew data in 1990 – again, four years before a very good year for conservatives – would see that 80% agreed that the rich got richer and the poor got poorer, a spike of 6 points from 1987. But that turned out to be a spike, probably due to the recession. The number today is 73%, one point lower than it was in 1987.To avoid this problem, I compared every question for which there was available data from 1987. I chose 1987 because (a) it is the oldest of the data and (b) it was a relatively “normal” year – after good Dem year in 1986, but before a big Republican victory in 1988. In other words, it seemed unlikely to be very much affected by short-term events. I’ve summarized the questions in the table below, along with the affirmative answer in 1987 and the affirmative answer in 2007. I follow with the net change in what is the “conservative” answer, though some times it is difficult to assign a “conservative ” answer:

Question	1987	2007	Diff.
Most elected officials care what people like me think	47%	34%	+13%
The government is really run for the benefit of all the people	57%	45%	+12%
There needs to be stricter laws and regulations to protect the environment (90% in 1992)		83%	+7%
Voting gives people like me some say about how government runs things	78%	71%	+7%
There are clear guidelines about what’s good and evil that apply to everyone	34%	39%	+5%
People like me don’t have any say about what the government does	52%	48%	+4%
Prayer is an important part of my daily life (change in “completely agree”)	76%	78%	+2%
Government should take care of those who can’t take care of themselves	71%	69%	+2%
Rich just get richer, poor get poorer	74%	73%	+1%
Business Corporations make too much profit	65%	65%	0%
Government regulation of business does more harm than good	57?%	57%	0%
Government should help the needy even if it means greater debt	53%	54%	-1%
When something is run by the government, it is usually inefficient and wasteful	63%	62%	-1%
We should restrict and control people coming into our country to live more than we do now.	76%	75%	-1%
It is best for the future of our country to be active in world affairs	87%	86%	-1%
We will all be called before God at the Judgment Day to answer for our sins	81%	79%	-2%
We should try to get even with any country that tries to take advantage of the U.S.	42%	40%	-2%
I have old fashioned values about family and marriage	45%	41%	-4%
Books that contain dangerous ideas should be banned from public school libraries	50%	46%	-4%
The strength of this country today is mostly based on the success of American business (largest gain in 18-29 group)	76%	72%	-4%
Business corporations generally strike a fair balance between profits and the public interest	43%	38%	-5%
In the past few years there hasn’t been much real improvement in the position of black people )	36%	41%	-5%
Best way to ensure peace is through military strength	54%	49%	-5%
I never doubt the existence of God	88%	83%	-5%
Women should return to their traditional roles in society (disagree)	66%	75%	-9%
We should make every effort to improve the position of blacks and minorities, even if it means giving preferential treatment	24%	34%	-10%
AIDS might be God’s punishment for immoral sexual behavior	43%	23%	-20%
Women should return to their traditional roles in society (completely disagree)	29%	51%	-22%
School boards should have the right to fire homosexual teachers	51%	28%	-23%
I think its all right for blacks and whites to date each other	48%	83%	-35%

In fact, the poll reveals attitudes that are not appreciably less conservative when measured against the heyday of the Reagan years in 1987 (save on gay rights and a few other issues, where conservatives are fighting a long-term losing battle). In fact, I’m not sure many of the questions that show more than a five-point decline are really “conservative” positions. Regardless, people aren’t more trustful of government to run things, and aren’t appreciably more sympathetic toward the poor. More people actually say prayer is a part of their daily life, and that they never doubt the existence of God. Looking the table over, most of the movement has been well within the margin of error of the result in 1987.There are other interesting results which relate to my point about reading too much into spikes. The number of people who think that government is inherently inefficient and wasteful is roughly unchanged from 1987. There was a massive dropoff in 2002, though, which turned out to be a short-term spike in faith in government post 9-11. The number of people who think there has been little improvement in the lot of blacks has slightly increased, but it is down from 1992 – a spike caused by the LA riots. The “peace through strength” number is roughly unchanged, but it is way down from spikes in 1990 and 2002 – the years of the successful gulf war and the 9-11 response.Interestingly, racial preferences have lost some appeal among blacks, even as support rises among whites. Only 34% believe that success in life is largely determined by forces outside of our control. And a host of corporations, from Johnson & Johnson to Coors to Wal-mart have approval ratings above 70%; the only ones below that are Halliburton (less than 50% have any opinion) and Exxon. If America really is, in DaveG’s words disinclined “to allow the US to become a nation of WalMart employees” they sure seem to have a funny way of showing it.Finally, for those who think that civil liberties is a winning issue for Democrats, consider this question: “The police should be allowed to search the houses of people who might be sympathetic to terrorists without a court order.”37% said that this should be allowed. This is remarkable, given the question. Nearly two in five people think that (a) warrantless searches should be allowed (b) by the police, of (c) houses of people who are (d) sympathetic to terrorists. Granted, I am a libertarian-leaning Republican, but this is astounding to me. This is a widespread approval of a very draconian policy prescription. For those who think that warrantless wiretaps by spy agencies of telephones is going to rile independents up against Republicans, I’d think again.

(On a different note, for those who believe that government-run health care is inevitable, a different poll shows that while 53% claim they are willing to pay higher taxes for health care, that is actually significantly lower than the 66% who responded affirmatively in 1993, shortly before HillaryCare crashed and burned.)

The bottom line is that the evidence shows that pro-conservative views are down from 1994 and 2002 – two very good Republican years – but are still around the level that they were in 1987. In other words, after six years of a pretty good Democratic President and seven years of an incompetent Republican President, public attitudes are all the way back to where they were in the seventh year of the best conservative President possibly ever. That doesn’t strike me as bad news. In fact, again, given what Dubya has dealt with, and how he’s dealt with it, I’m actually surprised it isn’t worse.

The Emerging Democratic Majority Now, it is possible that the trendlines are going to continue to decline for Republicans, given demographic and economic shifts. This strikes me as unlikely, except perhaps on the social issues, given that most of the trendlines are established from 1994, and most of the pro-Democrat trendlines have actually leveled off in the past few years after coming off of their post-1994 and 2002 peaks. But let’s look at the data here.This analysis depends on demography for its predictions, in order to bolster its claim that Republicans are doomed as a younger generation ages, and as Hispanics become a larger part of the electorate. As Jay Cost has written here and here, one should beware supposed seers bearing deterministic theories of history. To make a legalistic argument, I incorporate by reference his posts in their entireity here, but you should go read them. They’re almost as long as this piece, but are well worth the time.A few additional thoughts. I think Cost’s point about the difficulty in predicting future events is especially important. Who in 1974 would have predicted a GOP landslide in 1980? Who in 1928 would have predicted Democratic dominance beginning in two years? What objective observers expected Democrats to essentially cede the gun control issue after 2000, or to make gains on the national security issue after 2004? And do you remember all that talk about how the 100 fastest growing counties in 2004 all voted for Bush, and how that meant Dems were doomed?Even in specifics, I am skeptical. For one thing, Hispanics and blacks are among the most culturally conservative segment in society. If the Democrats are really going to rely upon them, it seems likely that they will have to shift rightward. Indeed, the growth of heavily Catholic Hispanics might reverse the decline in the salience of social conservatism. Moreover, as Cost points out, someone looking at the data in 2004 would expect that Hispanics had shifted strongly toward Republicans, especially from 1996 when Rs got all of 20% of the Hispanic vote. The party’s stance on immigration reform probably is a short-term step back; it remains to be seen whether a hardline stance on illegal immigration drives Hispanics away in droves. And an often-overlooked fact is that blacks are one of the few groups where Republicans did about as well in 2006 as they did in 2004, and they actually did better than they did in 2000.Finally, the youth vote. I am skeptical of polls of the “18-29″ demographic, or worse, “18-34.” This poll group includes everything from high school students to partners in major law firms. In turn, this makes it difficult to interpret the importance of shifts from Republicans; if the shift towards the Democrats comes across the group as a whole, or from the older cohort, it is bad for Republicans. If the shift is coming from high school and college students, views have not yet hardened, and an incompetent Democratic Administration (and most Administrations, regardless of party, are incompetent) can go a long way toward reversing that outcome. Regardless, this is mostly a replacement action that won’t affect Republicans for a while – the most heavily Democratic age cohort, the New Deal generation – is steadily growing smaller as they die off. Given that the most likely to vote in this country by far is still the older people, Republicans can look forward to the number of good Democratic voters who are most likely to vote dropping off, while the most Republican generation becomes more-and-more likely to vote. In other words, in the short-to-medium term, I’d much rather have an edge in the 35-65 demographic than dominate the 18-34 demographic.

Short Term Even in the very short term, the death of conservatism is overstated. While George W. Bush is currently a drag on the party, it becomes someone else’s party in fall 2008, though Democrats will try to make it otherwise. The best thing Republicans have going for them stems from a decision made by George W. Bush in 2000 to make Vice President a man who would not try to succeed Bush. Because of that, all of the current GOP frontrunners can lay claim to the “outsider” mantle more easily than can Democrats. This year, that is important. Indeed, it fundamentally changes the dynamic of elections where a party tries to win a third term. Usually, a Vice President is trying to claw out from under a President’s shadow (or weight). The Republicans do not have this problem as badly as they could this year.It is because of this that Republican contenders fare much better in polls than does “generic Republican.” A recent Gallup poll shows that voters trust Rudy Giuliani to handle the economy at about the same levels as Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama; McCain is further behind but leads Edwards. Giuliani and McCain have double-digit leads on fighting terrorism over the three Democrats, and are even when it comes to handling the War in Iraq – which astounding given the public’s mood. When Mitt Romney’s and Fred Thompson’s numbers are adjusted to split the substantial number of voters that have no opinion of them, they perform similarly well. (The GOP candidates trail in the health care measurement, but that is historically true). Scott Rasmussen made a nearly identical finding in earlier this month, finding that named Democratic candidates have no edge over Republicans on a host of key issues, including Iraq, the economy, and restoring the nation’s optimism (see also here).Finally, I am somewhat alone in this assessment, but I believe that Republicans have a much stronger slate of candidates than do Democrats this time around. I think that Giuliani, Romney, Huckabee, and Thompson (and even McCain) are all formidable candidates for different reasons. I don’t believe Obama is ready for primetime, and would be chewed up alive by a Republican should he get the nomination. Edwards strikes me as a similar lightweight, who shockingly seems to be putting his foot in his mouth every day. Richardson would be formidable, but Dems don’t seem to be particularly interested in him. Hillary is a good candidate, but Rove might well be correct that she is fatally flawed given her high negatives. Even with universal name recognition, she is unable to top 50% against a fairly obscure Republican like Ron Paul, at a time when the GOP brand is not particularly strong compared to the past couple of elections. Hillary actually trails Rudy Giuliani, and worse (from her perspective) trails Fred Thompson, who trails her significantly in name recognition. I would love to see them if the surge really works, or if any number of things happen that could make the national environment improve for the GOP. Conclusion As a final note, I think DaveG’s missive today has some interesting thoughts in it. What I’m intrigued by, though, is this paragraph:

Truth be told, most of the goals that conservatives set out to accomplish three or four decades ago are complete. The days of 70-percent tax rates are over; when even liberal Democrats can’t stomach a top tax rate over 40-percent, conservatives have won the debate on that issue. The median Supreme Court Justice is now the center-right Anthony Kennedy. Those who remember what the average SCOTUS Justice looked like during the days of the Warren Court can appreciate the seismic shift this has meant for our nation’s jurisprudence. Welfare was reformed; a Democratic president proclaimed the end to the era of big government. And the major foreign policy issue that conservatives had assembled around, the destruction of Communism, was accomplished.

If this is the case, then why in God’s name is conservatism as we know it dead? If we aren’t going back to 70% marginal rates, or even 50% rates, how are we in trouble? Reagan’s tax cuts cut the top rate to 50%. We don’t seem eager to roll back welfare reform and undertake more transfer payments; instead we seem to be (if anything) adopting a greater governmental role in helping people get health insurance, or prepare for their education. This is not wealth redistribution or transfer payments, this is essentially investment in infrastructure, and fits more within Reagan’s framework than Roosevelt’s (or Johnson’s) (remember the short-lived catastrophic health insurance plan that Reagan signed?). Obviously, the devil is in the details, but if government guarantees health care for those who can’t afford it within a Massachusetts-style, market oriented framework, I don’t consider that a loss; remember, none of the Democrats are talking about a single-payer type system. Indeed, re-regulation or nationalization of industries is out, and we are a very, very, very long way from the planned economy that seemed inevitable to observers in the 1930s.

Even on social issues, conservatives have won. By conservatives, I mean conservatives, and not the religious right, a more rigid minority in the Republican party to whom the following doesn’t apply. The goal of a conservative is not to ensure that society never changes. It is to ensure that changes are made deliberately, through evolution, rather than revolution, to ensure that the changes we make are wise ones. Over the past forty years, we have accepted that society is better off if women are allowed to work. We haven’t, however, adopted comparative worth theories of compensation, or other radical, unworkable theories favored by the feminist left. We’ve become gradually more tolerant of gays, and may well decide that gay marriage is okay. But that decision will only come after decades of discussion, in large part thanks to conservative efforts to keep state Supreme Courts from declaring gay marriage a right. We’ve increasingly accepted racial minorities, while rejecting some ideas such as bussing, and much in the way of racial preferences (probably moving toward a more class-based system). Society has changed for the better in many ways in the past forty years, and conservatives have played a large role in ensuring that the changes we made were good ones. SoCons will continue that role as the slate of social issues continues to evolve.

I don’t wish to overstate my case. Issues may trend against the Republicans through a Democratic Administration. The young may foretell a leftward march. And in the short-term, all the Republican candidates have flaws of their own (but then again, every candidate does; lord knows W and Bill Clinton did). We’re closer to President Hillary than I ever would have expected. But neither are things as bleak for Republicans as they’re made out to be, and an incompetent Clinton Administration, or for that matter, any Democratic Administration that tried to overreach, would go a long way toward restoring faith in the GOP. But with that, as with everything, only time will tell.