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THE WRONG HETERODOXIES. This, from Ross Douthat, is a very smart analysis of the current trends on the Republican side of the aisle:
the party needs someone who's solidly right-wing on issues like immigration or gun control or campaign-finance reform - issues that matter more to the base than to swing voters - and who can use this credibility to be more ideologically innovative on, say, taxes or health care or even foreign policy. Instead, it has a collection of candidates who are heterodox on immigration and gun control and campaign finance reform, and who are therefore rushing to embrace the party line on taxes and the Iraq War in an effort to gain cover for their deviations elsewhere. It needs someone whose pro-life convictions are a given, and who is therefore free to distance himself from the Jerry Falwells in the party without forfeiting the support of most social conservatives. Instead, it has candidates with dubious pro-life convictions who are rushing to embrace the Falwells of the world to cover over their weaknesses on that front. And so on.The major contenders, in other words, have a worst-of-both-worlds problem. Their ideological untrustworthiness will give them fits in the primary season without winning them many swing voters come the general election. (John McCain, should he get the nomination, isn't going to pick up blue-collar voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania because he broke with his party to champion campaign-finance restrictions. Rudy Giuliani isn't going to win over any of the Montanans who went for Jon Tester or the Virginians who went for Jim Webb because he split the national GOP on gun control or welfare reform.) And because they're considered ideologically untrustworthy, they're vulnerable to a dark horse challenge not from the kind of creative reform conservative that the party desperately needs, but from a candidate whose principle qualification is a solid record of party-line votes, and not much else. Someone like, say, Fred Thompson.Moreover, most polls show and most surveys indicate a widening gap between the Republican base and the rest of the electorate, not only in attitudes towards Bush, but on basic factual questions and policy evaluations. This will make coalition creation much-harder, as the distance between the policies diehard Republicans want validated and implemented and the demands of all other voters is becoming unbridgeable in a single candidate. Further, the current siege mentality on the right will probably make the base more, rather than less, determined, to extract commitments and promises from their candidates. As they know the current crop of candidates sees political gain in betraying them, they'll be more intent on guarding against heterodoxy. That'll be a problem for the Republican presidential aspirants. This is the sort of political moment when the GOP really needs to be content with dog whistle politics, but my sense is that their mood will demand something more voluble, and thus more problematic for the middle. --Ezra Klein
