Rauch's Arithmetic

Hugh Hewitt has now posted the full text of Jonathon Rauch's article in Atlantic Monthly on the divisions in American political and social life. He's also posted Mr. Rauch's confession that some of his language in associating religious conservatism with violent behavior was, uh, intemporate. Kudo's to Mr. Rauch for admitting that, and doing so quickly.

I don't think his sorta mea culpa is adequate to explain his presentation, however, and in the quote below, I think he digs his hole a little deeper.

Mr. Rauch's article attempts to make the point that America is less divided than it seems, and that the two main political parties are more centrist than they seem at times, while remaining capable of absorbing those with more extreme views at election time.

Mr. Rauch makes some interesting points. Much of his position seems to be based on simply using different polls than are used by those who assert the deep division hypothesis, and by interpreting some of the same polls from a different perspective. Some of his points come from "focus group" studies that he thinks are superior to polls, at least some of the time. As always, what passes for the peculiar art of "qualitative research" is up for grabs... but Mr. Rauch seems to me to be cherry picking the data that fits his notion.

Everyone knows that polls are virtually never done in an ideological vacuum. With any polling question, it is possible to make some good guesses about assumptions that underly the question that the pollster is ostensibly asking. The biggest weaknesses of polls are that they have poor mechanisms for measuring how *strongly* a participant feels about an issue, and polls usually make little attempt to measure what a participant actually knows about the issue before eliciting an opinion.

Similarly, who ran the focus groups? What was their orientation politically/socially? Were two sets of focus groups run in parallel on the same topics, by people of oppositie perspectives? Were contrasting results tossed out? As a university professor who is exposed to all sorts of things that are called "research", I remain skeptical about all of the above.

It is possible, however, to infer some things from the polls that really matter, the elections, and from some pieces of data that no one disputes on either side of the political fence.

1) African-Americans vote overwhelmingly Democratic, regardless of what individual answers they give on single topic polls. So do certain other ethnic groups, though the divide may be smaller.

2) Church goers (and those who identify strongly with religious traditions, even when their participation isn't perfect) vote two-to-one for Republicans.

3) The reverse (two-to-one non-church goers for Democrats) is also approximately correct.


Mr. Rauch says:

"The Republican Party has acquired its distinctively tart right-wing flavor largely because it has absorbed (in fact, to a significant extent has organizationally merged with) the religious right. As Hanna Rosin reports elsewhere in this package [elsewhere in the same Atlantic Monthly issue], religious conservatives are becoming more uniformly Republican even as their faiths and backgrounds grow more diverse."

Mr. Rauch seems to be trying to have it two ways. On the one hand, he wants to identify the "religious right" as occupying an "extremist" position in the Republican party, somewhat analogous to what he wants us to think of leftists like Michael Moore in the Democratic party. (This seems to exclude members of the religious right from consideration as "centrists", or, as Hugh likes to say, members of the "center right".) On the other hand, he seems to undercut his own position (fatally, I think) by acknowledging that what he calls the "religious right" has unprecedented power in the modern Republican party, and is indeed now the ideological center of that party... as Democrats keep pointing out (in their confusion, thinking it benefits them).

Where is Mr. Rauch's observation that "the Democratic party has acquired its distinctively tart left-wing flavor largely because it has absorbed (in fact, to a significant extent has organizationally merged with) the secular left"? Well... he didn't make it. But I just did... using his words from the quote above.

Mr. Rauch does not mention a single example from the left of a "fringe group" being welcomed into the Democratic party and becoming its new center. That's because no such example exists. It is difficult to *name* an ideological center to the party, other than the phrase "secular left", which is rejected by party mavens as pejorative. All that is necessary is to note the willingness of the "religious right" to accept *that* label, and the identity crisis of the left is made clear.

Underlying all of this is a significant problem for Democrats, namely that there is no true ideological center that unites its various factions. It frequently appears to be a coalition of single issue voters, each with a particular complaint against the traditional American status quo, whose single issues are not related in any obvious way. There seems very much to be an attitude of "I'll cheer for your single issue if you'll cheer for mine".

What will happen in modern electoral politics if even one third to one half of *church going* African-Amercians begin to vote with their natural ideological allies, namely the modern Republican party? Or if religious Hispanics do the same?

The MSM has done a fabulous job of controlling the information received by these groups up to now... but that dominance of communication channels is fading, and as these "minority groups" come to realize that Republicans offer school choice and other education reforms, real economic opportunity, strong family policies and life affirming attitudes, some in these groups can (and I think will) change their voting patterns.

I'll be interested to read Mr. Rauch's response to that change... in about 10-20 years. Who will be the "moderates" then?

I'd be fascinated to see Mr. Rauch rewrite his article (if he really believes his thesis) in the way I rewrote his quote above... just reversing all the language referring to parties and left/right labels, and see if he can find examples that make it all make as much sense to him as those he used. If he can't do that.... well, maybe the differences are as real between the "centers" of each party as it seems to some of us. The fact that he didn't do it that way in the first place, regardless of his protestations of human frailty now, is telling.