Op-Ed: Emerging Republican Minority By PAUL KRUGMAN
Remember how the 2004 election was supposed to have demonstrated, once and for all, that conservatism was the future of American politics? I
do: early in 2005, some colleagues in the news media urged me, in
effect, to give up. “The election settled some things,” I was told.
But at this point 2004 looks like an aberration, an election won with
fear-and-smear tactics that have passed their sell-by date. Republicans
no longer have a perceived edge over Democrats on national security —
and without that edge, they stand revealed as ideologues out of step
with an increasingly liberal American public.
Right now the talk of the political chattering classes is a report from
the Pew Research Center showing a precipitous decline in Republican
support. In 2002 equal numbers of Americans identified themselves as
Republicans and Democrats, but since then the Democrats have opened up a 15-point advantage.
Part of the Republican collapse surely reflects public disgust with the
Bush administration. The gap between the parties will probably get even
wider when — not if — more and worse tales of corruption and abuse of
power emerge.
But polling data on the issues, from Pew and elsewhere, suggest that
the G.O.P.’s problems lie as much with its ideology as with one man’s
disastrous reign.
For the conservatives who run today’s Republican Party are devoted,
above all, to the proposition that government is always the problem,
never the solution. For a while the American people seemed to agree;
but lately they’ve concluded that sometimes government is the solution,
after all, and they’d like to see more of it.
Consider, for example, the question of whether the government should
provide fewer services in order to cut spending, or provide more
services even if this requires higher spending. According to the
American National Election Studies, in 1994, the year the Republicans
began their 12-year control of Congress, those who favored smaller
government had the edge, by 36 to 27. By 2004, however, those in favor
of bigger government had a 43-to-20 lead.
And public opinion seems to have taken a particularly strong turn in
favor of universal health care. Gallup reports that 69 percent of the
public believes that “it is the responsibility of the federal
government to make sure all Americans have health care coverage,” up
from 59 percent in 2000.
The main force driving this shift to the left is probably rising income
inequality. According to Pew, there has recently been a sharp increase
in the percentage of Americans who agree with the statement that “the
rich get richer while the poor get poorer.” Interestingly, the big
increase in disgruntlement over rising inequality has come among the
relatively well off — those making more than $75,000 a year.
Indeed, even the relatively well off have good reason to feel left
behind in today’s economy, because the big income gains have been going to a tiny, super-rich minority. It’s not surprising, under those
circumstances, that most people favor a stronger safety net — which
they might need — even at the expense of higher taxes, much of which
could be paid by the ever-richer elite.
And in the case of health care, there’s also the fact that the
traditional system of employer-based coverage is gradually
disintegrating. It’s no wonder, then, that a bit of socialized medicine
is looking good to most Americans.
So what does this say about the political outlook? It’s difficult to
make predictions, especially about the future. But at this point it
looks as if we’re seeing an emerging Republican minority.
After all, Democratic priorities — in particular, on health care, where
John Edwards has set the standard for all the candidates with a
specific proposal to finance universal coverage with higher taxes on
the rich — seem to be more or less in line with what the public wants.
Republicans, on the other hand, are still wallowing in nostalgia —
nostalgia for the days when people thought they were heroic terrorism-
fighters, nostalgia for the days when lots of Americans hated Big
Government.
Many Republicans still imagine that what their party needs is a return
to the conservative legacy of Ronald Reagan. It will probably take
quite a while in the political wilderness before they take on board the
message of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s comeback in California — which is that what they really need is a return to the moderate legacy of Dwight Eisenhower.>
The Beginning of the End.
13 years ago
