Ron Brownstein has some interesting statistics that bear on what is happening to the Republican Party. The emphasis is mine.
In the Senate, for instance, Democrats hold 22 of the 58 seats representing the 29 states that twice voted for George W. Bush. And just 40 percent of self-identified Democrats consider themselves liberals, according to Gallup polling; the rest identify as moderate or conservative.
By contrast, the GOP is becoming an increasingly monochromatic party, dominated by the most conservative voters and regions. This process enormously accelerated under Bush and Karl Rove, who built their governing strategy on energizing the Republican base rather than on expanding it by courting swing voters. Today, Democrats hold their largest advantage in party identification over Republicans since President Reagan’s first term, and 70 percent of the shrunken GOP core identifies as conservative. After Specter’s leap, Republicans hold just two of the 36 Senate seats in the 18 mostly affluent and secular “blue-wall” states that twice voted against Bush — and that have now voted Democratic in each of the past five presidential elections.
It’s not really possible to know quite what people mean by the term ‘conservative’. What’s problematic is that the term evolves over time. In the broadest possible sense, conservatives are interested in preserving (or in some cases, restoring) traditional elements of American society. That could mean retaining or strengthening a belief in Christianity and God. It could mean maintaining America’s preeminent role as a superpower. It could mean restoring cultural attitudes about human sexuality, reproduction, and marriage. It could mean going back to a time when the federal government had less power relative to the states. It could mean maintaining the basic racial makeup of the country. It could mean maintaining a private/business-provided health care system.
We’ve recently seen Republicans emphasize a strong national defense, limited government (low taxes), and personal liberty as the three core issues that both conservatives and moderates can rally around. Here’s how Olympia Snowe put it:
It is for this reason that we should heed the words of President Ronald Reagan, who urged, “We should emphasize the things that unite us and make these the only ‘litmus test’ of what constitutes a Republican: our belief in restraining government spending, pro-growth policies, tax reduction, sound national defense, and maximum individual liberty.” He continued, “As to the other issues that draw on the deep springs of morality and emotion, let us decide that we can disagree among ourselves as Republicans and tolerate the disagreement.”
Unfortunately, the Republican Party is now dominated by people who are uncompromising on other issues. They want to keep the country white and Christian-dominated and they want to roll-back sexual and reproductive ethics and mores to where they were prior to the 1960’s. That’s bad enough, but even within Snowe and Reagan’s confines, they are so rigid that they oppose any expansion of government spending even in the midst of deep recession.
So, you have two problems. The first is that the GOP is no longer representing the economic conservative. The second is that even the message of economic conservatives is being applied too dogmatically. Taken in combination, you have a party in deep disarray that cannot be taken seriously by anyone with a shred of decency or an iota of responsibility for setting government policy.
Just going back to Reagan’s Big Tent isn’t enough because his ideas have been so discredited. But the GOP is incapable of going back even that far. The country has simply moved on and left them behind. It would be simpler and more pragmatic for moderates to form a new party in most of the country than to try to come back using the GOP’s increasingly toxic brand. For the foreseeable future, the GOP is only going to get more White, more Christian, more anti-immigrant, more anti-gay, and more economically doctrinaire. We need an opposition party, but the country cannot afford for it to be the Republican Party.