The Voting booth is no place for anger, Stephen Carter, Viewpoints, DMN 9-20
Stephen Carter’s essay is based on Emory University political scientists Alan Abramowitz and Steven Webster’s study of the role of anger in the 2012 election. What the scientists discovered was that voters were angry and that their anger drove them to vote more along partisan party lines motivated by the rejection of the other party and less as an affirmation of their own slate of candidates.
That makes perfect sense, if anger is a reflection of a loss of control. It is important to note that between 1972 and 2012 the percentage of people believing that a “significant difference” existed between the parties rose from 55% to 80%. In other words, 25% of voters determined that they could no longer vote for a member of the other party just because of their party label.
While the study seems to not attempt to identify which voters – Republican or Democratic – contributed the most to that change, a historical note here is important. Nina Easton, in her book “Gang of Five,” points to the rise of neo-conservatism: led by such voices as Willian Kristol, Leo Straus, Milton Friedman and William F. Buckley, Jr. and characterized by a virulent form of the anarchism. That faction was as antagonistic of the “squishy” Republican establishment of that day they were of New Deal Democrats.
It was also in the early ‘70s that Lewis Powell delivered his pivotal “Memorandum on the danger free enterprise capitalism faced” to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which motivated them to fund such groups as the College Republicans, the Heritage Foundation and other efforts to push back against high marginal taxes, environmental regulations and government spending, which was very much a part of the platform of both political parties.
It is to this pre-1970 decade that the findings of the American National Election Studies refers: that 2012 saw the highest level of straight-party voting since 1952 and why Abramowitz and Webster’s observation that “Once upon a time, it was not uncommon for republicans to vote Democratic and vice-versa” is to be believed.
Neo-conservatism is finding its most recent manifestations in the tea-party coalition. With FOX News, talk radio, and the Norquist pledge, that faction has been able to take over the Republican Party. But, because its goals – essentially to undo the New Deal, end taxation of the top 1%, and privatize all government activities – are so radical and its control of Congress so limited, the most the tea party coalition can do is sporadically shut down the government.
And this is where I suspect the anger comes from. Main stream Republicans have no main stream choice on Election Day. They can vote for a radical dead-ender willing to vote for the impossible because his job is insured by an equally irrational billionaire patron; or risk the wrath of the leadership of their party by voting for a Democrat, who might better reflect their truer values. Who would not be angry in that situation? Which brings us to this question: When the population gives Congress low polling marks, is it because Democrats are unwilling to abolish Social Security, the I.R.S., F.D.A, S.E.C., F.D. I.C. and Veterans Administration or because their Republican Members of Congress is anti-science, anti-women and anti-government and would take the nation back to the 19th Century in a heart-beat?
But, what if a Democratic candidate, were to offer an olive branch to Republican voters. What if, instead of framing the 2016 election as another “us-against-them” election, we framed it as a “let’s-recapture-a-time-when-we-worked-together” election? What if we gave Republicans, not alternatives of capitulation to an “enemy’ or frustrating anger but a chance to move the country forward with a colleague who is as respectful of his party’s contribution to the life of the country as his own? How about if we turned the clock back to the 1952 and the Eisenhower administration and recaptured the values of that era, when patriotism, not partisanism, was the prevailing public value? Would we have to sacrifice one of our sacred cows to do that, or would we all be better off trying to get our minds around Republican-think to find out where it overlapped Democratic-think, so that down the road we might better comprehend and be guided by American-think?
