The Republican primary season is certainly going to be interesting, if the preceding months are any indication. However, most people are going to draw the wrong lessons from it. It is true that the polls have fluctuated because there is no clear frontrunner. But the conclusion most draw from this—that there is no frontrunner because the field is weak—is almost certainly wrong. On the contrary, the Republican base’s problem is that its candidates are too strong.
The conventional wisdom tells a nice story about hubris and extremism. For whatever reason, the Republican party—both its voters and its representatives—have coalesced around one goal: defeating President Barak Obama. As we may expect, the party has found clarity in opposition—everything that Obama supports, Republicans oppose. So the story goes, this is a tragic mistake—a wiser Republican party would put forth its own positive, moderate agenda, because a radical, negative conservative could never win.
But the Republicans have done this anyway, and their newfound taste for purity has allowed many candidates who would previously have been ignored to have a reasonable chance of winning. So it goes, none of these candidates are strong enough to beat Obama in 2012, and the pre-primary hysterics have been an extended look at Republican voters realizing this. Doomed by their arrogance to fail when it should be impossible to lose—if you think about it, it really is a nice story. A nice, clear and simple story—which also happens to be wrong.
Republican primary voters are basically divided into three camps. Two of them are small groups supporting specific candidates—former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Texas Congressman Ron Paul, to be precise. The rest of the primary base (which happens to still be a majority of it) hasn’t consistently backed any one candidate—after partially backing MicheleBachmann, it has gone for Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Herman Cain and now for former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. The size of this section of the base is roughly constant, so any gains for these candidates comes at the expense of the others. All of these candidates are in broad agreement over policy—in more technical terms, we could call them perfect substitutes.
This is where the conventional wisdom breaks down. According to it, the candidates are roughly equal because they’re equally bad. But this isn’t what Republicans would tell you—in fact, all of these candidates are in broad agreement with Republican voters, if the polls are to be believed. The primary goal of the Republican party is to enact Republican policies, and any of these candidates would be an effective counter to Obama. This means that Republicans get to be picky on the little things—but no matter who ends up winning the primary, Republicans are going to get the policies they want.
Of course, these are just Republican voters—whoever wins the nomination must appeal to the general public. Many would call this primary a failure because the candidates seem unlikely to appeal to the general public, but let’s think about this. For one, economic conditions strongly favor Republicans at the moment—if there was ever a time to nominate a radical conservative, it would be now.
But there’s something else wrong with this story. The Republican Party should try to appeal to a broad section of voters—the broader the better. But this is a terrible strategy. Republicans shouldn’t nominate a moderate and try to win as many votes as possible, they should nominate someone much more conservative and try to win by as little as possible. After all, winning is winning, and there’s no reason to waste an opportunity to get someone more conservative in office in order to win worthless votes. On top of this, remember that the Republican Party wants to be as opposed to President Obama as it can be. In other words, even if it nominates a moderate candidate and win the election, they still lose. For the Republican Party, the only way to win is to go all in.
Many will see this primary season as a harbinger of doom for Republicans, a temporary aberration on the course to modernity. However, a better way to see this primary is as a future model for primaries to come. Long-term trends in the electorate have gone toward increased polarization between Republicans and Democrats. This has led to the parties becoming much more ideologically coherent—especially the Republican party, which is now almost uniformly ideologically conservative. If this continues, then primary elections will no longer be times of ideological in-fights, but times where broadly-similar candidates are exposed to scrutiny, waiting for their transgressions to come to light. Fittingly, this primary is a lot like a market—a market for Republicans. The only thing we don’t know is whether the party will embrace it.
Zach Thomae is a freshman majoring in computer science. Disagree with Zach? Please send all feedback to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
