Not Conservative Enough? An Inquiry

One of the principal objections among CPAC attendees is that the Republicans lost because they weren’t “conservative enough.” If Republicans had been more solidly conservative or espoused more conservative views, the argument runs, they would have done better last fall. At the risk of seriously over-generalizing, I’ll call this the “CPAC attendees” point of view. The principal point in CPAC attendees’ favor is the “bailout” from last October, officially known as the Toxic Asset Relief Program (TARP). It passed with Republican votes, and it fueled many Republican voters’ anger. (Full disclosure: I favored the TARP at the time, thinking that it would be, well, a toxic asset relief program instead of the ad hocery that the first $350 billion portion eventually became.) Similarly, on spending, it’s hard to find a Republican of any stripe who doesn’t wish that President Bush had vetoed a spending bill at some point when the Republicans ran Congress. We threw away what should have been a natural Republican issue. On Iraq, there should be no disagreement, except among paleoconservatives and some libertarians who opposed the war. Otherwise, full agreement with a policy of victory, led by the surge. But let’s look at some other issues: Financial deregulation: When the crisis hit, did it help or hurt Republicans to have been identified with a policy of financial deregulation, which left the country with, for instance, an essentially unregulated $55 trillion market in credit default swaps that led to the collapse of AIG? Again, I’m not talking about the fairness of the argument here (please, I’ve heard all the arguments about why the Community Reinvestment Act supposedly “caused” a global meltdown), but how Republicans are perceived. (If we were so concerned about CRA, why was there no real push towards greater regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Remember, we held Congress until 2006. So whatever proposals Secretary Snow would have favored were not enacted – by us!) And I know that the Democrats are the party of Goldman Sachs as measured by contributions. But then why were Republicans seen as supporting excessive deregulation, and did it help? (Catching Bernie Madoff might have helped.) Immigration: Few issues dominated the Republican primaries as much as immigration. Many conservatives were vocal in their opposition to comprehensive immigration reform. And the result was a sharp dropoff in support among Hispanics.  The voice of the Republican Party on immigration was seen to be Tom Tancredo – not President Bush and certainly not our actual nominee, John McCain. Did this help or hurt? Would we have gained more votes from a harsh policy towards illegal immigrants? If so, in which states? Are there data on this showing that an upsurge in single-issue immigration voting would have offset a decline in support among Hispanics? Climate change/environment: Rightly or wrongly, Republicans were seen as opposing climate change legislation and strong measures for environmental protection – or else criticized, as McCain and others were, for supporting it. In the election, did we get the benefit of this opposition for preserving jobs at a time of economic distress? Or did it turn off younger voters and some suburbanites The elections of 2008 were far more than the Presidential contest. To make the case that the Republicans lost because they were not conservative enough, those who favor the CPAC attendees point of view should point to particular races that were lost from a deficit of conservatism, with numbers (such as changes in turnout) making the case. John Sununu was an ideal Senator – an intelligent and principled conservative who represented his state well. Sadly, he lost. On what issues should he have been more conservative? I think it is simply the changing demographics of that state that determined the result. In Virginia, Jim Gilmore ran a solidly conservative campaign – and barely over a third of the vote.  Can one make an electoral case that Delegate Bob Marshall, the “more conservative” of the two candidates, who nearly knocked Gilmore off at the state convention, would have had a larger share of the vote? In Colorado, a strong conservative candidate, Bob Schaffer, lost to a Congressman who represented liberal Boulder (Mark Udall). What about Elizabeth Dole or Gordon Smith? (I wasn’t happy about Smith’s sharp change of views on Iraq, but I don’t think that even that cost him the election. And it’s hard to see how being more conservative could have helped on the Pacific coast.) “Bush fatigue” and the general state of the economy undoubtedly contributed to these and other results. But given the lousy results at all levels last fall, the CPAC attendees’ point of view must make the case that with their favored policies, more people would have come to the polls and more of them would have voted Republican. I don’t think they can do it. At any rate, I have not seen hard evidence. So: which races, which issues, what level of turnout? That’s the basis on which the debate should proceed.