Failure To Communicate
Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin in Politico today:
Notice deeper in the poll that Republican party identification has dropped to 21% - about the lowest figure since Watergate, if I remember right. There’s some comfort that 35% of Americans still identify as “conservatives.” But that bigger number implies that at least half of American conservatives do not “strongly disapprove” of the Obama administration!
Maybe the point of events like the tea parties is to mobilize 100% of conservative America against President Obama. If Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and Mark Levin keep insisting that Obama is a pro-pirate fascist Marxist, perhaps they can push that “strongly disapprove” number up to 30% or 35%. But that strategy does seem to concede the president all of moderate and independent America – and a clear path to re-election in 2012.
Here’s a question to consider. Think of the past 5 or 10 election cycles: Obama v McCain, Bush v Kerry, Bush v Gore, Clinton v Dole and all the way back to World War II. Except for Harry Truman in 1948, can you name a single one where the angrier candidate won? Could there possibly be a lesson in that record?
Rank-and-file Republicans remain, by all indications, staunchly conservative, and they appear to have no desire to moderate their views. GOP activists and operatives say they hear intense anger at the White House and at the party’s own leaders on familiar issues – taxes, homosexuality, and immigration. Within the party, conservative groups have grown stronger absent the emergence of any organized moderate faction. There is little appetite for compromise on what many see as core issues, and the road to the presidential nomination lies – as always – through a series of states where the conservative base holds sway, and where the anger appears to be, if anything, particularly intense. "There is a sense of rebellion brewing," said Katon Dawson, the outgoing South Carolina Republican Party chairman, who cited unexpectedly high attendance at anti-tax “tea parties” last week.That’s for sure right. We are a very angry party these days: I hear that whenever I talk to Republican groups.
The problem is that we are also a very small party these days. The WashingtonPost/ABC News poll released this weekend contains some very ominous news for those who imagine that anti-Obama anger will float conservatives back into political power.
It's not just the 69% approval rating for the president or the 50% "right track" number (the highest since the liberation of Baghdad in April 2003). It's the other side of the ledger.
Only 18% of Americans “strongly disapprove” of the policies of the Obama administration. Another 8% “disapprove somewhat.”
A political strategy aimed at riling up the angriest 18% can certainly bring hundreds of thousands into the streets. But such a strategy carries an attendant risk of alienating people conservatives need to woo.Notice deeper in the poll that Republican party identification has dropped to 21% - about the lowest figure since Watergate, if I remember right. There’s some comfort that 35% of Americans still identify as “conservatives.” But that bigger number implies that at least half of American conservatives do not “strongly disapprove” of the Obama administration!
Maybe the point of events like the tea parties is to mobilize 100% of conservative America against President Obama. If Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and Mark Levin keep insisting that Obama is a pro-pirate fascist Marxist, perhaps they can push that “strongly disapprove” number up to 30% or 35%. But that strategy does seem to concede the president all of moderate and independent America – and a clear path to re-election in 2012.
Here’s a question to consider. Think of the past 5 or 10 election cycles: Obama v McCain, Bush v Kerry, Bush v Gore, Clinton v Dole and all the way back to World War II. Except for Harry Truman in 1948, can you name a single one where the angrier candidate won? Could there possibly be a lesson in that record?