Party Dynamics and the 2020 Election in Context
December 16, 2020
Inaccurate polling… Surprising split-ticket results… Denial of election results by large numbers of Republican voters and representatives in Congress...
There have been plenty of head scratching if not jaw-dropping developments related to the 2020 election. In Episode 17, “Party Dynamics in Context,” we turn to noted author and columnist, Geoffrey Kabaservice, for 2020 election analysis with historical insights punctuated by archival references to important voices both present and past in America’s two major parties.
This includes a look back to George Romney, father of Mitt Romney, and 1968 Republican Presidential candidate who blended high ideals with detailed policy prescriptions so lacking among candidates today.
But given the steady demise of moderates in the Republican party (as detailed in his seminal book Rule and Ruin), Dr. Kabaservice explains that today’s unprecedented Republican loyalty to Donald Trump, the individual, rather than to the party, is not so surprising. He also bemoans polarizing trends in both parties that have made legislative compromise so rare and difficult.
Turning to the 2020 election results, Dr. Kabaservice explains why swing voters seem to have gone for President-elect Joe Biden but not for Democrat candidates down ballot, as had been widely expected. He highlights some of the Democratic messaging, such as the most strident “Defund the Police” calls, that may have backfired in minority communities and swing districts concerned about crime.
What then about the future of the Republican Party and for bipartisan governance within a closely divided Congress? Dr. Kabaservice is not optimistic about major legislation but does see some hope for a possible centrist coalition in the house, as personified by recently elected moderate Republican Carlos Gimenez, the current Mayor of Miami.
For an informed, contextual view of the 2020 election and current party dynamics, tune into Episode 17 of the Purple Principle with Dr. Geoffrey Kabaservice, author of Rule to Ruin (Oxford Press) and Director of Policy Studies, Niskanen Center.
Source Notes
Geoffrey Kabaservice, Niskanen Center
John Buntin (2013). “California Republicans Try to Reenergize the GOP.” Governing Magazine.
Barry Goldwater. Encyclopedia Britannica.
Nelson Rockfeller at the Republican National Convention, 1968
“The Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Long Struggle for Freedom.” Library of Congress.
Brooks Jackson (4/18/08). “Blacks and the Democratic Party.” FactCheck.org
Ann Devroy (2/2/95). “House Republicans Get Talking Points.” The Washington Post.
Joseph Loftus (7/13/64). “Scranton Challenges Rival To a Debate at Convention.” The New York Times.
Boris Johnson approval rating. YouGov.
“Independent voters vital to Biden's win” (11/13/20). The Fulcrum.
Richard Hofstader (1955). The Age of Reform. Penguin RandomHouse.
Douglas Hanks (1/19/17). “Where Climate Change Isn't a Partisan Issue.” Governing Magazine.
Geoffrey Kabaservice (11/23/20). “The Future of the Republican Party.” Persuasion.
Brian Schaffner. Department of Political Science, Tufts University.
Transcript
Geoffrey Kabaservice:
The Republican party has become a monolith. First it became an ideological monolith, and now it has been taken over by Donald Trump and it is a personal monolith.
Robert Pease (host):
That’s Geoffrey Kabaservice, widely-read historian and columnist on the modern Republican party and U.S. politics. We’ll get his 2020 post-election analysis today.
Geoffrey Kabaservice:
A state like California is run top to bottom by Democrats and evidence suggests that they really fall short in a lot of important areas. It would be fantastic if there was a third party or a sane Republican party offering up real policies to the problems of homelessness, to the problems of water usage, to the problems of overly high rents forcing people out of the state.
Robert Pease (host):
Dr. Kabaservice is Director of Policy Studies at the Niskanen Center, a centrist think tank in Washington, D.C. He’ll give us his independent-minded take on polarization between and within the major parties. This The Purple Principle and I’m Robert Pease.
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
And I’m Emily Crocetti. And for listeners of my generation, it may come as a bit of a surprise, but as recently as the 1960s and 70s, the Republican party – with apologies to elephants – was a very different animal than today.
Robert Pease (host):
Sure, there was a strong conservative faction in the Repubican Party, personified by Barry Goldwater, the 1964 nominee for president.
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
But there was also a vibrant moderate wing represented by George Romney, father of Mitt Romney, as well as Nelson Rockefeller, who made this speech against racism at the 1968 Republican Convention, to a mixed response.
Robert Pease (host):
We don’t need to tell you, our indie-minded listeners, that polarization is a huge factor in all our problems in the U.S. Please stay with us for some deep insights into how we became so polarized.
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
Starting with Dr. Kabaservice, updating his critically acclaimed history of the decline of moderate Republicans, entitled Rule and Ruin, published by Oxford Press.
Geoffrey Kabaservice:
Well, I was writing about the decline of moderation in the Republican party. Moderates actually used to be a sizeable indeed and sometimes a dominant faction within that party. But really since the 1970s, the moderate faction has been dwindling and now I would say it's almost nonexistent. So in that sense, there wasn't much of a need to update the book. What obviously I didn't foresee was the rise of Donald Trump. But in some ways I haven't been all that surprised by Trump's rise, because what I saw in the Republican party with moderation absent was an ever harder line on ideology to the point where it actually couldn't offer or respond to actual problems. It was an ideology that in a way had disabled itself when it came to dealing with the issues that its constituents faced.
Robert Pease (host):
So, do you think it's no longer helpful to view U.S. politics through the lens of factions such as moderates versus conservatives or centrists versus Progressives?
Geoffrey Kabaservice:
Well, you know, I think that both the conservative Democratic faction and the moderate Republican faction have been badly squeezed in recent years. So certainly, it makes less sense to talk about factions within the party these days given how many votes are on party lines. On the other hand, I think Americans are still factional. I think there's still quite a lot of people in the “exhausted majority,” to use a phrase that's come up in recent years. And I think it would make much more sense to talk about people in terms of being moderate Republican stalwarts, even different kinds of conservatives. And it would make equal sense to talk about that on the Democratic side.
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
So when did moderate Republicanism begin disappearing from the Republican party?
Geoffrey Kabaservice:
Well, moderate Republicanism took a nasty hit in 1964 when Barry Goldwater, the very conservative Arizona Senator, became the GOP presidential nominee. And that was significant not just because a conservative for the first time sees the nomination, but also because Barry Goldwater was one of the few Republican legislators in Congress to vote against the 1964 Civil Rights Act. And that had long standing and permanent repercussions. It meant that African American votes for the Republican party, which had been about 40% of the total African American vote in 1956 under Dwight Eisenhower and even 33% under Richard Nixon, fell to single digits and has never really recovered. The problem was that the conservative faction gained strength with every passing year in the Republican party after 1970 or thereabouts. Richard Nixon really took the party in a much more populist direction after 1970. And life became more difficult for them after Ronald Reagan became elected in 1980, although Reagan himself was enough of a pragmatist that he understood there was a need for moderates in the GOP big tent coalition. But really this problem became worse with Newt Gingrich in the 1994 election. And moderates have really been marginalized in the party at this point.
Robert Pease (host):
Well, let’s drill down a little further on that. Why are moderate voices in Congress disappearing when there still seem to be a lot of purple states and districts out there?
Geoffrey Kabaservice:
Well, the wisdom in Congress used to be that members of each party were allowed to vote their district. And there was an understanding that if you were a Republican who represented an urban or suburban area, you would be voting somewhat differently than a Republican who represented a very rural area. Likewise, if you're in a moderate battleground, you would be given a pass by the leadership. And as you know, gerrymandering has become a big issue, and there are very few competitive districts in any given election year at this point, whereas there used to be many, and this is why the parties have really separated. The most liberal Republican, and I use that word in quotes, is considerably more conservative than the most conservative Democrat. So there's really a real division. It's a division in just about every way you can imagine.
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
And from your perspective why is it so fewRepublicans, moderate or conservative, have been willing to publicly disagree with President Trump over the past four years?
Geoffrey Kabaservice:
As I mentioned earlier, the Republican party has become largely a white working class party. This is a group of people who have not done well over the last several decades. These are people who have not benefited from globalization, who indeed have seen their fortunes decline. And these are people who really felt and were marginalized by both parties. There simply was not a lot of attention given to their perspective, their interests, by either party. And Donald Trump was the first candidate who came along who really was not a candidate of the status quo who was speaking for this Republican base.So it's very understandable that they are going to be loyal to that person, even though he really hasn't done much for them and indeed has hurt their interests in many ways.
Robert Pease (host):
You mentioned Newt Gingrich, who's obviously a conservative today, but was more of a moderate before becoming House Speaker and actually shocked House colleagues when he adopted his scorched earth policy. Do you see Newt Gingrich as a major precursor to Trump?
Geoffrey Kabaservice:
In many ways, Newt Gingrich is a precursor to Trump. And it is ironic as you mentioned, because Newt Gingrich was not just a moderate Republican, but arguably a liberal Republican. He actually was a delegate for Nelson Rockefeller at the 1968 Republican convention. But Gingrich did see the direction that polarization was taking, the way in which the country was ripe for somebody to step into that role of dividing the parties and knocking down Congress as an institution. And that's what he did. There's that famous memo from Frank Luntz where Republicans are instructed by Gingrich to describe Democrats and their ways in terms of treachery and sick and ill and all that sort of thing. Obviously that's had a major negative impact on our politics, but I do kind of believe that if Gingrich hadn't done that, somebody else would have because that was the direction that country already was moving in.
Robert Pease (host):
So, Emily, a lot to unpack there from Geoff Kabaservice on the historical turning points here, such as the surprising Goldwater nomination for President back in 1964.
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
Then the steady decline of moderate Republicans like Nelson Rockefeller, George Romney and others.
Robert Pease (host):
Which signaled and also shaped big changes in the Republican voter base.
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
And made possible the scorched earth tactics of Newt Gingrich in the 1994 midterms. This election radically changed the tone of congressional politics. We learned something about that from the Georgetown neuropsychologist Abigail Marsh in our “Heard from the Herd” episode.
[Previously recorded audio, Abigail Marsh]
You know, I really think that contact hypothesis is really what it comes down to. It's one of the oldest theories in psychology, which is that just contact with people who are different from yourself, especially in a non-antagonistic setting, is a great way to heal these divides. And one of the reasons for the current political divide relates to changes that Newt Gingrich made to the way Congress works decades ago, where he changed the length of the congressional work week so the congress people could go back to their home districts over the weekends, and then it turned out their families didn't move to D.C. They didn't hang out socially together in D.C. anymore. And so they used to have these friendships across different political differences and stopped having those friendships.
Robert Pease (host):
Which brings us to party polarization today in 2020. Most of the election is now behind us. The Republican party has lost the White House, but done better than expected at virtually every other level – though the Senate still hangs in the balance until the Georgia run-offs. I spoke to Geoff Kabaservice about what he found most surprising and significant about the 2020 elections.
Geoffrey Kabaservice:
So, I'm speaking to you on November 24th of 2020, and of course, all kinds of crazy things could happen in the future. I suppose the surprising thing was that it came to this point in the first place. For the entirety of our Republic's existence, there has been more or less peaceful and expeditious transition of power from a defeated administration to the incoming administration. And in this case, Trump resisted, he did not concede, he probably will never concede, but he attempted to use the power of the presidency to overturn the democratic outcome of the election. And perhaps what's most astonishing is that the vast majority of the Republican party went along with this attempt to in effect overthrow the Republic. So here we are.
Robert Pease (host):
So, certainly, historically, you know, yes, we're all surprised at the way the outcome was contested. On the other hand, wasn't there a fair amount of signaling, really pretty far back, even 2016, that Trump would never accept a defeat?
Geoffrey Kabaservice:
Yes, Trump did in fact say that he would not accept the 2016 outcome unless he won, which he did.So, you know, Trump is Trump. Trump has always been Trump. But again, I think what's different is that if Hillary had won convincingly by anything approaching the margins by which Joe Biden won this election, Trump may well have said, no, I really won, but no one would have gone along with him.
Robert Pease (host):
Okay, but this is confusing to our listeners who are primarily independents and don't really understand how you can be so loyal to a party. The leader of the Republican party, in this case Donald Trump, has lost, and would seem he's a weakened figure. Why are so many Republicans in office staying loyal to someone who just lost reelection?
Geoffrey Kabaservice:
Well, I would challenge one of the premises that you put forward there. I think this is actually a case where the vast majority of the Republican party is being loyal to the individual of Donald Trump rather than to the party as such. And the fear among Republican legislators certainly has been that if they were to come out and openly say that Trump has lost the election, that he should concede, that this would turn the party faithful against them and their political careers would be over. It's extraordinary, really, and I think largely unprecedented in American history that Donald Trump has taken ownership of the Republican party in this way, such that the party has no real independent existence outside of his candidacy and presidency.
Robert Pease (host):
What are the levers of control though? It would seem like the great concern traditionally has been avoiding primary battles. But many of these people don't have to think about primaries for years. The president's just been defeated. He’s 73. How are they maintaining this loyalty?
Geoffrey Kabaservice:
You know, I wrote a piece for the Washington Post, not too long ago, where I looked back at the 1964 election, and Barry Goldwater was the Republican nominee. This was the first time that a movement conservative had become the party's presidential nominee. And there was a lot of resistance to him. In fact, there was even an attempt by Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton to challenge his nomination at the convention. But the party back in the 1960s was very much of a factional party as most American parties traditionally had been. And as the Democratic party arguably is still today, that is to say it was a party that represented coalitions of interest, geographic, ideological, sectoral, you can kind of go down the list. The Republican party has become a monolith. First it became an ideological monolith, and now it has been taken over by Donald Trump and it is a personal monolith.
Robert Pease (host):
But what about the moderate Republican governors who actually handled COVID relatively well, not that anyone handled it really well, but I’m thinking about, you know, Governors Sununu, Scott, Baker, Hogan, Republican governors mostly in the Northeast, very much science-based. Why do they get so little mention within the Republican party and the media?
Geoffrey Kabaservice:
You know, the governors historically have been the most moderate segment of the Republican party because they represent states that include within them a wide diversity of voters and interests. They typically will include both rural and urban and suburban interests. They will have the need to balance a budget, which means they have to get agreement from all kinds of people within their state legislatures. They deal with the day-to-day problems of people. So no, it's not a surprise to me that a number of the Republican governors have distinguished themselves in generally being pretty capable in their approach to the pandemic.
Robert Pease (host):
Let’s talk a bit about right wing media then. It almost seems that the mask issue was initially polarized by right-wing media and then taken up by Trump. If you look back at the early reaction from people like Rush Limbaugh and some hosts on Fox, do you think the media really drives our politics more than we know?
Geoffrey Kabaservice:
I think that's an interesting, and ultimately unsolvable question. I think Trump watches media very carefully. And he wants to know what Limbaugh has been saying. He wants to know what Hannity is saying, what Tucker Carlson is saying on Fox. But I don't think it's entirely true that he takes his cues from them. But I think Trump figured that it would be better for him politically in the end to go with non-mask wearing and non-social distancing. And I don't really think that the conservative media dictated that course. I think he saw the signals as he usually does. He read the conservative room as it were, and then he went with his own gut.
Robert Pease (host):
But you could also say that had he not made that decision, had he said, wait a second, this is not a political issue. This is a science issue, a public health issue, and had gone with mask wearing and social distancing, he would have won reelection.
Geoffrey Kabaservice:
You know, I think Trump is unusual among leaders of developed countries in that he didn't receive the rally round the flag boost in popularity that you did see with other leaders who more successfully imposed measures to combat the pandemic. Boris Johnson, for example, who’s one of the closer parallels to Trump among Western developed countries did in fact see his popularity go up significantly as a result of his actions during the pandemic. Although I think his popularity has receded since then. So yes, it certainly should have been possible for Donald Trump to have handled the pandemic in a way that would have enhanced his popularity. I think he could have said, yes, let's just go with the science. Let's listen to the experts. We're all in this together. Let's care for each other and get through this. But that's also not in Trump's nature. He hates experts. He hates elites. He has never convincingly called for Americans to unite. His trademark is division. I think he simply saw an opportunity where he could score political points and gain advantage by calling for freedom, and we should not be subject to these restrictions by the people who were imposing upon us, and all business owners are going to get crushed by the shutdown, and so forth.
Robert Pease (host):
Well, let's talk a little bit about the role of independents in the 2020 election. It does seem there was a shift towards Biden from independents, especially in those swing states. What do you think it was that swayed them? Or is it something that Trump said, or COVID, or is it likely to have been in a Democratic messaging?
Geoffrey Kabaservice:
Well, I think that when it comes to independents, most independents are in fact leaning one way or another, that has been the traditional wisdom. But in fact, I tend to put a higher estimate on independents. I think they do in fact have some kind of capacity to change their minds and to be swing voters and tickets splitters. And I think that to some extent what happened in this election, compared to 2016, independents I think were voting against Hillary Clinton. She was a historically unpopular candidate. Donald Trump was also unpopular, but relatively untried and an unfamiliar quantity. When it came to this election, Joe Biden was known and didn't really have extremely high levels of resentment. So yes, this time you really did see a big break of independents in favor of Biden's candidacy, or against Trump's, depending on how you want to put that.
Robert Pease (host):
Let’s turn to the Senate for a moment. Where we're located, as you know, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, is quite near Maine. So we followed the Senate race in Maine, a very expensive race where the polls were not very accurate. But now that Susan Collins has won reelection, can she and Lisa Murkowski and the few other moderate Republicans exert any influence on the Republican caucus in a closely divided Senate?
Geoffrey Kabaservice:
It's an interesting question though, as to what Susan Collins will be in the Republican Party going forward. She's obviously very out of step with both Trumpy populists and with the sort of more run of the mill, highly ideological conservatives. But she, Murkowski, and Mitt Romney could actually form a kind of important potential critical swing group in the Senate, given how close the margins are likely to be. But on the other hand, you know, this kind of particular football has been pulled away by Lucy to the moderate leaning Charlie Browns for a long time now.
Robert Pease (host):
Fair enough, Lucy never did much in moderation. But back to this very perplexing election result. Considering how well Republicans did at virtually every level except the White House, what do you think were the key messages on the Democratic side that turned off swing Republican or Independent voters?
Geoffrey Kabaservice:
Well, that's the $64,000 question right now. In fact, I don't know if you listened in on that conference call that took place among House Democrats shortly after the election. But it was fascinating because you did have a number of the comparatively moderate Democrats blaming their more progressive colleagues for the losses of so many of the relatively moderate Democrats. We won't know for quite some time what really turned the dial in some of these districts. But, you know, the hypothesis certainly is that in, let's say majority-minority Hispanic districts like those in South Florida, that tying Democrats to the self-professed socialism of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders was in fact important in moving a lot of voters there, because these are people who either fled from socialist regimes in Central and South America, or they have parents or other relatives who did that. And maybe even the tearing down of statues across the country made them think of the kind of socialist revolutions that they had seen, or at least had heard about. You can also say that maybe the “Defund the Police” slogan that so many Progressives embraced this past summer proved to be determinative with at least some of these constituents in the swing districts who really do fear a return of the kind of levels of crime that we saw in the seventies, eighties, and nineties. In fact, if you look at the polls of African-American opinion, African-Americans are much more resistant to the “Defund the Police” slogan than are white liberals. So it could also be that this slogan backfired with some of the minority constituencies whom white Democratic liberals thought it would please.
Robert Pease (host):
That’s our special guest this episode, Geoff Kabaservice, author of Rule and Ruin, and Director of Policy Studies at the Niskanen Center. Geoff’s breaking down the 2020 election for us. And, Emily, again, a lot to unpack in terms of how Trump lost the White House for Republicans.
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
And why independent-minded voters didn’t vote Democratic down ballot as might have been expected, especially during a pandemic and a recession.
Robert Pease (host):
And why some of the messaging that won Democratic primaries clearly did not resonate in the general elections. Former Congressman Jason Altmire spoke to us on that point in our earlier episode, “Outlook from Dead Center.”
[Previously recorded audio, Jason Altmire]
It's all about the way we handle elections in this country. One of the questions I get asked most often when I speak around the country about these issues is, why is there so much partisanship in Washington? We don't see that in our neighborhood. Why is that what we're getting in Congress? Well, the answer is because we're electing partisans. We have a system that is designed to elect and protect people on the political extreme, on the fringe. And that is because primarily of what happens in our primary process.
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
And, unfortunately, it certainly seems like we are just as polarized as a nation coming out the 2020 election as we were going into it. And that’s going to make effective government more difficult, to say the least.
Robert Pease (host):
And that’s the real tragedy here. I asked Dr. Kabaservice about polarization between and within the major parties, and whether the huge ideological divides suggest any opportunity for a third, more centrist party.
Geoffrey Kabaservice:
You know, in a rational system, or at least the system that's more along the lines of the multi-polar, multi-party systems of other countries, we would have at least four different parties, probably more like six. But that's not the system that we have. You know, the witticism of the historian Richard Hofstadter still applies. He said, “third parties are like bees, they sting, and then they die.” They can seize upon an important issue that neither party is really taking into account and they can make one of those two parties take account of that issue. And then that third party tends to die away. But to be honest, I think that the split potential is bigger on the Democratic side, because the Democrats have to cover a wider geographical area, a wider socioeconomic span in a way, and they have to manage a greater diversity of constituencies. The Republican party's base is older, mostly Southern white people with a particular appeal to men. And it's simply easier to shape more uniform messages to that kind of constituency. You know, again, that may change given that the Republican party is now largely a working class party with between 60 and 70% of its voters non-college educated. And you know, minority groups such as Hispanics and African-Americans are also predominantly working class.
Robert Pease (host):
Let’s go back to this loyalty issue again. It's a small number, but it did seem like during the runup to the election there were a few other new anti-Trump or at least not fully pro-Trump voices in the Republican party. I'm thinking about Liz Cheney in the House and Ben Sasse in the Senate. Do you think that represents maybe a generation of people not so happy with their party right now?
Geoffrey Kabaservice:
I think there's actually a lot of people in the Republican party in Congress who are not happy at this particular moment. I think the job of being a legislator has become much less satisfying for a lot of reasons. And these reasons, some of them predated the Trump era, but I think Trump has made things worse. So I actually, despite what I just told you, do have some hope for moderate Republicans in this forthcoming Congress. But my hopes are more at the level of the House because, you know, again, contrary to the pollsters’ predictions, what you saw in this past election was almost no Democrats winning in what were thought to be Republican leaning or toss-up districts. Republicans did extraordinarily well in a lot of these districts where a Democrat had won in 2018, usually turning out a moderate Republican who had previously occupied that district. So I think there's actually an opportunity for people like, let's say Carlos Gimenez in Florida who, you know, was elected in the Miami-Dade district, where he had been mayor, where he had successfully handled the pandemic, where he's interested in issues of climate change and some kind of resolution of the legal status for dreamers. You know, I think there's actually some possibility for him to form a group with other like-minded moderate Republicans and also to work with the center left faction in the Democratic party. But again, that remains to be seen.
Robert Pease (host):
Right, so let’s talk a little bit about global warming. I know from our previous conversation that global warming is an important initiative area of study at Niskanen Center. What do you think the Republican reaction will be to what will probably be the U.S. rejoining the Paris Accords, if that happens, and any other efforts on climate change?
Geoffrey Kabaservice:
I do think it's true. The United States will rejoin the Paris Climate Accords and that there will be Republican reaction against this simply because in our polarized environment, that's what you expect. But I do think that climate change is an issue that actually may have a greater impact on the red states than on the blue states. Gimenez, for example, comes from an area which is coastal and low lying, like much of Florida. And this is simply an area that is seeing real estate values take a hit from rising sea levels. There's a real, tangible, physical threat from this phenomenon to property owners and every kind of Republican voter in the state. So at some point their representatives, I think, are going to have to respond to this danger and work with Democrats to actually try to get some solutions there. The issue though, is that I don't think there is any room in the current political climate for big ambitious democratic solutions, such as the Green New Deal. I simply think those things are off the table. If any kind of progress is going to be made, it's going to have to be fairly incremental progress.
Robert Pease (host):
Let’s turn to your recent article, the “Future of the Republican Party” you've written in Persuasion, where you've sketched a couple of scenarios.Could you tell us what you think the most likely scenario is for the Republican party after this election?
Geoffrey Kabaservice:
You know, my feeling about the future of the Republican party is not optimistic for the most part. I think that Trumpian cultural war appeals are going to have a lot of resonance with the base for years to come. And the cooperation with the Democrats generally, and Joe Biden specifically, are going to be regarded with great hostility by many of those voters at the base. So the future does not really hold much in the way of bipartisanship or cooperation or harmony between the parties. But I also think that the Republican party is likely to muddle through with a mixed Trumpian and plutocratic message and agenda, if that makes sense. That is to say, it's not going to become a genuinely populist party, one that's oriented toward the needs, economically, socially, of its working class base. It's not going to be a party that's out there outbidding Democrats for a $2 trillion infrastructure rebuild plan. It's not going to be a party that's taking the lead on how to combat the opioid epidemic, which afflicts so much of Heartland America. But its heart is going to continue to be with the agenda of its donor class. It's going to call for tax cuts under all situations. It's going to call for regressive economic measures. It's going to call for cutbacks in the social welfare safety network, even though its own followers depend disproportionately on that kind of social safety network. And it's just going to be a kind of incoherent muddled party. And if anything, it's going to militate against coherent functional government.
Robert Pease (host):
Given that scenario, if there were one Republican from the past that you could bring back to life at this time, who you think might make a difference, might be able to steer the party in a more constructive direction, who would that be?
Geoffrey Kabaservice:
Romney. Not Mitt Romney, George Romney, his father. George Romney was the head of the American Motors Corporation, and then became the governor of Michigan and was a Republican, a pretty conservative Republican in a lot of ways, but really believed that the Republican party was the party of all citizens, that it should be a one nation Republican party. As opposed to the Democrats, which even then he saw as splitting down into being the party of different group interests. George Romney was somebody who launched his presidential campaign by touring some of the most deprived parts of the United States, the inner city African-American ghettos and the worst served areas of Appalachia. And he really believed that the Republican party should speak to and for these people, that it should come up with policies that could actually improve their lives. So, you know, I'm really looking for a kind of figure who can achieve that level of popularity, who can appeal to so many people who don't even now think of themselves as Republicans, who can be persuaded that the Republican party can actually be a force for progress and change and original ideas in the American solution. So yes, if I could bring back George Romney right now, I think he would actually have a real appeal to a lot of Americans.
Robert Pease (host):
That was Dr. Geoff Kabaservice, Director of Policy Studies at the Niskanen Center, giving us some much needed historical perspective on the 2020 elections and polarizing factors in both parties.
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
In future episodes we’ll be looking out for independent-minded George Romneys from any party, major or minor, who might be able to help bridge the partisan divide, nationally or locally.
Robert Pease (host):
At which time we will happily move onto other topics. But for now, however, partisanship still seems second maybe only to COVID as our national disease.
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
And COVID has vaccines in the pipeline, whereas partisanship is not so easy to cure. But maybe our independent-minded listeners have ideas how to bridge polarization, restore a more civil society and more responsive government.
Robert Pease (host):
If so, we’d love to hear your thoughts for topics and guests for Season 2 of The Purple Principle, starting in February 2021.
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
Next up, though, we’re going to take a look at the inaccuracy of polling in the 2020 election, with Dr. Brian Schaffner of Tufts University.
Brain Schaffner
I think it's not merely a case of what some have called the “shy Trump voter syndrome,” where people are not willing to admit that they voted for Trump. I mean, that doesn't explain why we are off with Susan Collins in Maine, for example, or in lots of other Senate races. I think it's just that there are some people out there who were just not able to get into our samples in the first place. And it's those people who are very strong Republican supporters that we're not picking up.
Robert Pease (host):
Join us for that episode, share us on social media, and please send your feedback our way at purpleprinciple.com. This is Robert Pease for the Purple Principle team. Emily Crocetti, Kevin A. Kline, Emily Holloway, and Johnnie Dowling. Our original music is composed by Ryan Adair Rooney. Happy Holidays to all. Here’s to a much better 2021.