Self-described “moderate-conservative” Geoffrey Kabaservice recently warned that Republicans in Congress are too radical: he compared the circumstances surrounding the 114th Congress to those of the Barry Goldwater era, when the GOP presidential candidate and his supporters intransigently refused to give in to Democrats’ demands.
Similarly, former President Clinton strategist Paul Begala recently lamented the radicalization of the Republican Party in Congress, and longed for the good old days when moderate legislators like Senator Bob Dole were around.
How radical is the current GOP-controlled Congress? Let’s see: the House failed to use its power of the purse to defund Obamacare, the Senate failed to exercise its treaty powers to stop President Obama’s deal with Iran, and Congress failed to defund Planned Parenthood over fear of a government shutdown. That shows you how much Republican Congressmen are voting in lockstep on the major issues of the day.
As Nate Silver shows, the ideological gap among Republican members is historically high; the only unity they share is opposition to their Democratic opponents.
Consider the structure of the two parties in Congress. Of the three major Republican caucuses, the libertarian House Liberty Caucus has 36 members, the center-right Republican Main Street Caucus has 69 members, and the conservative Republican Study Committee has 170 members.
In contrast, of the three major Democratic caucuses, the far-left Congressional Progressive Caucus has 69 members, the center-left New Democrat Coalition has 51, and the conservative Blue Dog Coalition has… 14.
Or consider: The Heritage Foundation publishes an annual scorecard in which they rate individual Congressmen’s scores on the Foundation’s “freedom index.” In the most recent edition, they rated the 235 Democrats’ mean freedom index as 13.5% (out of 100%), and the 302 Republicans’ mean as 67%.
More important for the question of ideological diversity is the standard deviation of the two scores—the extent to which party members vary around those means. The standard deviation for Democrats was 5.5%—meaning that 95% of the party’s members were between 8% and 19% on the index. In contrast, the standard deviation for Republicans was more than three times as large—19%—meaning that 95% of the party’s members were between 49% and 86%.
The parties’ ranges reveal a similar pattern: Democratic Congressmen’s scores ranged from 0% (e.g., Patty Murray, Eleanor Norton, Mark Begich) to 43% (Collin Peterson). And Democrats’ highest scorer was 14% points above the next-highest scorer, which means that all but one Democrat was between 0% and 29% on the index. In contrast, Republicans’ scores ranged from 0% (Mike Grimm and Alan Nunnelee) to 100% (Ken Buck, Ted Cruz, and Mike Lee).
Similarly, The Lugar Center publishes a Bipartisan Index for the House and Senate that scores Congressmen on the degree of bipartisanship in their legislative records. Contrary to what you hear from the media, Republicans score slightly higher on bipartisanship than Democrats, and have more members in the very upper range of the index. Normalizing the Index’s z-scores, Republicans average 38% to Democrats’ 36%; and whereas Democrats’ highest-scoring member tops out at 81%, Republicans’ highest scorer is at 100%.
Political commentators’ charge that Republicans are unified in their radical conservatism is belied by these same commentators’ constant eruptions over the Republican Congress’s factions and divides, recently ousted Speaker, and lack of unity. These pundits also contradict the notion that Republicans are cohesive when they bemoan the fragmentation and chaos of the 2016 GOP presidential field, with its 15 sets of positions and campaign approaches, squabbles among candidates, and circus-like atmosphere.
It’s the Democratic Party that’s proceeding in ideological lockstep, with its far-left gaggle of Congressmen devoid of moderates and Southerners and its malnourished presidential field consisting of two stale senior-citizen economic liberals.
Three years ago I defended the Romney-Ryan ticket on a community center stage in Chelsea, Manhattan in front of a group of undecided voters. My opponents on the panel belonged to the following wide swath of political parties: a Democrat, a Green Party member, a Socialist Party member, a Working Families Party member, and a Republican-bashing Libertarian who obsessed over drug legalization.
That’s liberals’ idea of intellectual diversity—five parties with various degrees of leftist views vs. one token Republican called in so the forum would look balanced.
Republicans may be lacking on the unity front in Congress and in their presidential field a year before the election. I’m not thrilled that we have so many squishy moderates who are afraid to take the fight to Democrats and are squandering the Republicans’ 2010 and 2014 Congressional blowouts. But any commentator who argues that the Republicans are the party of radical extremism and Democrats are the diverse, big-tent party of reasonable centrism needs his head checked.
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