Saul Anuzis to GOP Economic Populists: "This is not your average Republican twitter page!"

ElectionDissection strolled down to the offices of Americans for Tax Reform for the latest in the series of Newsmaker Breakfasts hosted by the American Spectator.  The “newsmaker” on hand was Saul Anuzis, the Michigan Republican Party chairman who earned the Paultards’ enduring animus by calling for Ron Paul’s exclusion from Republican presidential primary season debates after his symbiotically beneficial contretemps over 9/11 blowback with fmr. NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani in South Carolina.

Despite the fact that its Congressional delegation has been shrinking in recent rounds of redistricting and expects to at the next census, Michigan’s noteworthy political legacy is even more salient as potential bailouts for the Big Three dominate the headlines.  It’s clear that Anuzis’ decades of experience in the trenches of Wolverine State politics do color his vision for a revivified GOP as he vies for RNC Chair.

Anuzis highlighted his vision for harnessing new media to facilitate disseminating the GOP’s message.  (Best line: “This is not your average Republican twitter page!” Oxymoron of the week: “Republican twitter page!”)  And he repeatedly harkened back to the fabled “Reagan Democrat,” citing appealing to this once-decisive voting bloc as the key to a Republican resurgence.  Suburban Detroit’s Macomb County boomed in the 1950s and 60s with auto workers as White Flight emptied the white working class neighborhoods of Detroit’s Wayne County.  Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg identified Macomb as the spiritual home of this famously crucial electoral demographic.  (It’s interesting to note that Greenberg, post-2008, agrees that this political dinosaur is, in fact, extinct.)   

“Reagan Democrats,” of course were those Northern, often-ethnic and heavily Catholic, white working class voters who were lured away from their ancestral Democratic moorings by GOP appeals to their conservative opinions on moral issues, busing and crime and Cold War hawkishness.  But many of these voters were proud union men (and women) who couldn’t swallow even Ronald Reagan’s free trade agenda.  This was especially acute in Macomb Co., Michigan in the 1980’s as competition from Japanese imports rattled Detroit’s long-term game plan.

While social conservatism can be found in Michigan politicians of both parties – Reps. Dale Kildee, Bart Stupak and John Dingell count themselves as either pro-life, pro-gun or both – so, too, does the state’s formidable strain of economic populism infect voters on both sides of the aisle. 

Alabama’s segregationist governor George Wallace first identified this political animal instinctively, scoring above his national average in Macomb in his 1968 indie bid, and capturing a majority in the 1972 Democratic presidential primary statewide.  Twenty years later, Pat Buchanan barnstormed the state denouncing imports and racked up his best score this side of the Granite State in his challenge to George H.W. Bush’s renomination.  Four years later, he fared even better, denouncing NAFTA at every stop. 

Only an underwhelming performance in Detroit dragged Ross Perot’s percentage statewide back to his national average in 1992.  In over half of Michigan’s counties, his call to heed that “giant sucking sound” supposedly sending manufacturing jobs to Mexico pulled in over a quarter to 30% of the vote.

And in this year’s Republican presidential primary, Mike Huckabee scored well in Dutch-settled southwestern Michigan where his social conservatism no doubt resonated with the Calvinist Dutch Reformed Church-goers.  But, his economic populism seems to have struck a cord here, too.  The area’s Dutch-American U.S. Rep. Peter Hoekstra was the only Michigander Republican to oppose NAFTA back in ’93.  Huckabee’s populist notes also played among Yoopers, too, in the Upper Peninsula’s mining and timber towns. 

But Michigan’s stunted population growth has frozen the smaller, broken rust belt cities like Saginaw, Flint, Muskegon and Bay City, where Wallace, Buchanan and Perot exploited white working class anxiety, as well as both the U.P. and the Dutch southwest where Huckabee found a base far above the Mason-Dixon Line. 

Macomb is growing, but still totals far behind Oakland’s population.  (Besides, Obama captured the county comfortably, flipping the narrow win G.W. eked out in 2004.)  Contrast Macomb to its fellow Detroit suburb, Oakland County.  Once home to Midwestern, Michigan, Gerald Ford-style regular Republicans, as this affluent and educated enclave population expands, it threatens to surpass Detroit’s Wayne County, which still continues to hemmorage residents, as the state’s largest jurisdiction.  Oakland’s Democratic trend is relentless as Obama scored the best Dem numbers since LBJ, beating FDR, even!  McCain’s percentage dipped to near Goldwater and Alf Landon lows.  Once safe GOP Rep. Joe Knollenberg also succumbed to Oakland's Democratic wave in '08, after what shouldn't have been a surprisingly close race in '06, given the county's trends were then becoming evident.  (Note, too, the strong showing by North Dakota Rep. William Lemke’s third party bid here in 1936, whose message melding social conservatism and economic populism was amplified by on air harangues from Father Coughlin, the anti-Semitic radio priest whose Shrine of the Little Flower sits in now-trendy Royal Oak, a leading indicator of Oakland’s partisan progression.  Royal Oak gave Gore a 51-45 win over Bush in 2000.  By 2008, Obama’s margin here had grown to a lopsided 61-37.)

Building on a question from Economist.com blogger Dave Weigel suggesting the GOP's appeals to socially conservative voters and anti-immigrant demagoguing had aliented electorates in similar suburban counties nationwide, ElectionDissection questioned Anuzis about whether his strategy for staving off further losses in Oakland included toning down the economic populism that hasn't been a vote-winner there – especially in light of a Big Three bailout that may play well in his state, but not among the Southern-anchored grassroots of the party he wants lead - his answer focused more on this blog’s analysis of Michigan’s political geography than his thoughts on recasting the Republican message.  But Anuzis did offer some interesting off-the-cuff insight into shifting intra-state demographics – UAW retirees, for instance, migrating up north to retire and the increasingly racially diverse make-up of Oakland Co.’s electorate – which offer fodder for future posts.  

Do Contentious Nominations Put Parties in Trouble or Do Parties in Trouble Have Contentious Nominations???

As the debate continues about the state of the Obama/Clinton contest and how it will affect the Democratic nominee’s chances in November, I thought it might be helpful to take a bit of a historical look at this issue. With all sorts of pundits, journalists, and Democratic activists in a tizzy over this question, taking a step back is clearly in order.

As I mentioned in my post on realignment, Walter Dean Burnham identified a process, rapidly unfolding by the 1960’s, of party “decomposition.” What he meant by this was that the party, as organization, was able to exert less and less control over the process by which party nominees were chosen. With the advent of the primary system the nomination process, while “democratized,” was also more subject to unpredictable and uncontrollable twists and turns. Candidates themselves became increasingly in control of the process and decisions about when to enter and when to exit the race were largely theirs to make. We see the manifestation of this today in the Democratic race.

This got me thinking about those nomination fights, for both parties, that have been the most contentious in the years since Burnham identified this process. Did these contentious nomination processes doom the nominee in the fall? Might there be other explanations for that party’s failure to capture the presidency?

While all nomination fights have some degree of conflict—indeed that’s what a nomination process is premised on—some have been more contentious and drawn out than others. I’ve identified four that seem to be the most cited as damaging to their party:

1968 Democrats. Here we have the classic example of a party in chaos and disarray. After President Johnson is embarrassed in the New Hampshire primary by Senator Eugene McCarthy, LBJ decides not to seek re-election. We see McCarthy continue, soon joined by Bobby Kennedy and the incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey. After the assassination of RFK, the party limps to the disastrous Chicago convention and awards the nomination to Humphrey.

1976 Republicans. President Ford, never elected Vice President or President due to the resignations of both Spiro Agnew and Richard Nixon, is seeking election in his own right. In the process he is challenged from the right by former California Governor Ronald Reagan. Reagan wins some primaries but drops out at the party convention in Kansas City.

1980 Democrats. President Jimmy Carter, in the midst of the Iranian hostage crisis, is challenged by Senator Edward Kennedy. Carter, despite capturing the White House for the Democrats in the wake of Watergate, is unpopular nationwide and within the Democratic Congress. Sensing the last chance at restoring Camelot, Kennedy jumps in the race and manages to win some contests but doesn’t come close to winning the nomination. Nonetheless, he doesn’t formally drop out until the convention in New York.

1992 Republicans. This case was probably the least contentious but still produced some surprises. Coming out of the Gulf War, George Bush’s popularity skyrockets, forcing many prominent Democrats to opt out of challenging him. As the economy begins to sour, commentator and former Nixon speechwriter Pat Buchanan mounts a populist challenge to Bush for the Republican nomination. While the outcome of the nomination was never really in doubt, Buchanan’s challenge did signal difficulties ahead, both at the disastrous convention in New Orleans, and afterwards.

So what can we say about these cases? The first thing that we would note is that in all four cases the nominee eventually lost the general election in November. The 1968 and 1976 general elections were extremely close, 1980 and 1992 less so. Thus, a fractious nominating process would seem to bring bad tidings on a party.

But wait. Might we have the arrow of causality backwards? Rather than a party being weakened by a tough nomination fight, might that fight be the consequence of an already weakened party? Here, there seems to be compelling evidence.

One thing we would note about these contentious fights is that in all four cases it was the party in power that went through the wrenching nomination. As presidents’ terms progress, we tend to see a decline in their popularity, the fracturing of their original electoral coalition, and their tendency to be captured by events. With Humphrey in ’68, his inability to disassociate himself with LBJ’s Vietnam policy was an albatross he couldn’t shake. Ford in ’76 found himself bearing the brunt of voters’ Watergate rage, surely compounded by his pardon of Nixon. Carter in 1980, as mentioned, had the Iran hostage crisis, plus the general “malaise” of inflation to grapple with. Finally, Bush in ’92 had declining economic fortunes on his watch. Thus, while we normally think of incumbents as having tremendous advantages, a faltering presidency can be deadly, whether the incumbent is on the ticket in November or not.

A second thing to note about these election years is that in three of them—’68, ’80, and ’92 you had a credible third party candidate enter the race and perform well in November. George Wallace captured 13% of the vote, and five states, in 1968. Republican House member, turned independent candidate, John Anderson received 7% of the vote in 1980. Ross Perot in 1992 got 19%. Furthermore, in looking at the origins of these candidacies and the source of their support, we can see them essentially as spin-offs or breakaways from one of the major parties. Wallace had been elected as a Democrat, had sought the Democratic nomination before and would seek it again in the future. Anderson, as mentioned, was a Republican House member and seemed to tap into the liberal wing of the Republican electorate scared off by Reagan’s conservatism. Some of these voters may have flocked to Carter (although they wouldn't have been enough to save Carter's presidency). Finally, while never a Republican office holder, an examination of the Perot vote suggests he took more from the normal Republican electorate than from the Democratic side.

So, rather than dooming a party to failure, might a contentious nomination fight be a symptom of a much larger problem?

Looking at this year, then, what can we say? The first thing I would say is that it’s not at all clear that the Obama/Clinton contest has reached to level of rancor that these other races did. We’ll have to see how the next few months play out. Second, one thing working in the Democratic nominee’s favor, whoever it is, is that they are the party out of power right now. It is John McCain who will be occupying the role of Hubert Humphrey, to use the Vietnam/Iraq parallel as an example. Neither Obama nor Clinton has to defend the current administration. There will inevitably be a rallying behind the Democratic nominee—it’s easier, perhaps, to storm the castle than defend it. Finally, we don’t have a credible third party candidate this year to siphon off votes from the left. That will work to the Democratic nominee’s advantage. If we look at the fundamentals—Bush’s approval rating, perception of the economy, opinion of the war in Iraq, Democrats’ performance in the ’06 midterms, etc.—things seem to look good for the Dems.

So for those worrying about whether Clinton voters will support Obama or whether Obama voters will support Clinton, you need to settle down.