To counter the demographic growth of Democratic constituencies whose votes threaten Republican success in high-turnout presidential elections, Republicans have begun a concerted effort to rupture the partisan loyalty of the remaining white Democratic voters. Their main target is socially liberal, fiscally conservative suburbanites, the weakest reeds in the Democratic coalition. These middle-income white voters do not share the acute economic needs of so-called downscale Democratic voters and they are less reliant on government services.
The Republican strategy to win over these more culturally tolerant, but still financially pressed, white voters is to continue to focus on material concerns – on anxiety about rising tax burdens, for example — while downplaying the preoccupation of many of the most visible Republicans with social, moral and cultural repression.
The current effectiveness of the anti-tax strategy was demonstrated in the unexpected victory of Larry Hogan, the Republican gubernatorial candidate in deep blue Maryland, who defeated Anthony Brown, the highly favored Democratic lieutenant governor.
If Republicans stuck to fiscal issues they couldn't lose. And note: "socially liberal, fiscally conservative" is short hand for libertarians.
Significantly, Gardner also stiff-armed the Christian right on issues of contraception and abortion in his successful two-point win over Mark Udall, the Democratic incumbent. Gardner highlighted a more culturally tolerant approach when he endorsed over the counter access to the “morning after” pill – a form of contraception many in the right to life movement consider a form of abortion – and when he renounced past sponsorship of a “personhood” constitutional amendment titled “The Life Begins at Conception Act.”
In a mea culpa comment rarely heard in campaigns, Gardner told The Denver Post:
I’ve learned to listen. I don’t get everything right the first time. There are far too many politicians out there who take the wrong position and stick with it and never admit that they should do something different.
Despite this, not only did the Christian right stick with Gardner, but white evangelicals provided his margin of victory. These religious voters, who made up 25 percent of the Colorado midterm electorate, voted for Gardner over Udall by a resounding 70 points, 83 to 13. This margin was enough to compensate for Udall’s 20-point victory, 57 percent to 37 percent, among the remaining 75 percent of the Colorado electorate.
The clear implication of these results for Republican candidates running in 2016 and beyond is that you can break with conservative orthodoxy on some issues to better appeal to a general election electorate without paying the price of losing white Christian support.
Colorado? Hmmmmmmmmmm. I wonder what else he didn't mention.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
Next door to Maryland, we were smothered in Brown/Hogan ads.
The Dems attempted to stick Hogan with both abortion and gun control issues. The abortion issue was tried against candidates in Virginia as well. It apparently has lost all traction. Voters around here do not believe Republicans can or will change abortion law, and Hogan was not saying he wanted to.
The gun control ads revealed that Hogan had filled in a NRA questionnaire that earned him an A- rating from the NRA. Hogan would not publish his replies, however, so instead the Dems went on a rant about the NRA, among other things accusing them (by implication of the visual images) of wanting to leave AR-15's lying around on city streets and on playgrounds. They accused the NRA of backing allowing people on the "terror watch list" to buy firearms.
Looking at the response of the western Maryland counties, the criticism of the NRA probably helped Hogan get out the vote. Among that set, you would probably find little squawk about denying convicted felons the right to buy firearms, but probably considerable sensitivity about using "terror watch lists" for the same purpose. Those are based on weak suspicions, and cases of denying innocent people the right to board airliners because they have a name similar to suspects have shown the folly of the approach. Convicted felons have had their due process. People with names similar to other people have not.
And the Dems attempted to paint Hogan as favoring massive tax breaks for big corporations, which they said was at the expense of universal pre-K. Hogan spun this as wanting to repeal excessive taxes on all businesses, especially hard put-upon small businesses. Apparently, Marylanders understand that jobs come from businesses. The universal pre-K argument may have been wasted on voters, who probably think they did OK in spite of not having this particular benefit.
What Hogan did was point out Maryland's abysmal economic performance, cite surveys showing how many Marylanders would leave the state if they could, obtain video of ordinary Democrats who had decided to vote for Hogan based on high taxes, list the taxes the previous administration had imposed (including, no kidding, a tax on rain), and tie Brown to his role in developing the Maryland health care exchange, a job so badly botched that it was entirely abandoned. He managed to appear friendly, moderate, and reasonable, genuinely interested in the success of his state.
The arguments held sway. Obama was not the main target, but economics were.
It is the federal laws that are the line in the sand for me. No where to go when it is federal. For example, I look at state taxes and that is a major factor in determining where I can afford to live. However if the problem is federal, there is nowhere to go to escape it. Repubs need to relegate the social controversies to the state level, get the social laws, the social conservatism removed from the national platform. Face it, the more conservative social planks in the national platform, the more voters are excluded.
The point is, you want to live in a state with prohibition, fine. Or a state without prohibition, fine. Give me a place where I can move to. In the end the smart choice will become clear. Perhaps the Repubs are figuring that out and maybe I can get the clothes pin back in the laundry basket where it came from.
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.