Enough Already!

As of late, the interwebs and popular media have been awash with talk of the civil war within the Republican party.  Evidence offered: the early machinations of the invisible primary, particularly those I discussed earlier in the Iowa Senate race.  Silly as this is, along comes this gem, that takes the chatter to a new level of absurdity - the actual extinction of the Republican party.  We've seen talk like this before in the punditry, most recently the declarations of a Democratic realignment shortly after the 2008 election.  Pundits, it would seem, are a brilliant lot.  They've foretold at least ten of last zero Republican party collapses.  Quite frankly, one doesn't need a PhD in political science to see this as the rubbish it is.

The key from my perspective is that both political parties are doing well institutionally.  While their successes in past several election cycles have certainly had ebbs and flows, there is deep consensus amongst academics that parties are on as solid of institutional ground as they've had in decades.  Granted, the Republicans are doing some soul searching after the 2012 election, as losing parties are wont to do, but they are far from down and out.  Despite the discord, they remain strong in critical regards.

First, the simple fact that the GOP kept control the House of Representatives should should have dispelled this fatuous speculation.  While it is patent that underlying demography (namely dense settlement patterns of Democrats) and the fact we use single member districts, currently gives Republicans a bit of a structural advantage (see Oppenheimer and Abramowitz's separate works on this), gerrymandering was not responsible for them keeping their majority in 2012.  Simply put, Republicans remain electorally viable across the country despite their troubles at the top of the ticket.  Unless the fundamentals take an unexpected turn, they're in sound position to build on that majority and to come within striking distance of taking the Senate in 2014.  Moreover, Republicans continue to maintain a high degree of ideological cohesion, both within Congress and the electorate.  Though I will post more on this in coming weeks, the ideological space that we see these conflicts occurring in is rather small.  Given those slight differences, reaching an accord between the competing camps should prove to be easier than the pundits would have you believe.

Which brings us back to the invisible primary.  Be it for presidential or congressional candidates, there's no rule that says the invisible primary must be a civil conversation at all times.  You'd expect some heated discussion given the stakes and circumstances.  But to claim that this is a sign of inherent weakness or a harbinger of party collapse is ludicrous.  If anything, it's a sign that the party is alive, well, and engaged in a serious conversation about its future.

The Party Strikes Back

Though the focus of this blog is ostensibly on Presidential politics I can't help but comment on what's been brewing in the Republican party over the past few days.  Steven Law (and presumably Karl Rove) made something of a splash this weekend when he made it clear that American Crossroads and the Conservative Victory Project would be putting financial force to the "Buckley Rule."  The rule dates back to a 1967 interview with William F. Buckley where he threw down with Richard Nixon over Barry Goldwater for the purely pragmatic reason of Nixon's electability.  The Tea Party, in it's various incarnations, have clearly abandoned that advice in recent years with predictable consequences.  My point here is not to debate the propriety of Rove's actions, but place those actions within the framework of current political science.  In a word, it is predictable.  And it just so happens, my own backyard is ground zero.

Two of the many reasons I really dig this book is that Cohen and company broaden our understanding of what a political party is and that they are part of a growing group of researchers who are showing that parties are indeed viable organizations that can still play a defining role in choosing a presidential nominee.  While Cohen et al confine themselves to presidential nominations, there's no reason why we can't apply their basic framework to certain Congressional races.  Though it almost goes without saying, your average nomination fight for a US House or Senate seat is a snorer.  However, open seats are an entirely different animal.  Iowa is by every account a politically competitive state, with evenly divided House and Senate delegations and a habit of vacillating in Presidential elections.  Surprisingly enough, we're also rather representative of the nation at large on a wide variety factors (race excluded).  All this points to a competitive (and by that I mean fun) 2014 Senatorial election, now that Senator Tom Harkin has announced his retirement.  As Harkin called it quits with nearly the entire election cycle in front of us (thanks for that!), we've essentially kicked off our own little version of the invisible primary in which both parties will begin triangulating on candidates.  Within hours of Sen. Harkin's announcement Iowa's chattering class was abuzz with speculation on who'd take up the race.  And of course, we get some polling results to boot a few days later.  Surely every experienced politico that has either won a statewide constituency or has statewide name recognition immediately began running scenarios through their minds on a possible shot at this seat.

One such candidate is Rep. Steve King whose fourth district stretches from his home turf (and mine) in northwest Iowa to the central part of the state.  It's a new district created in the last apportionment.  King did an admirable job in adapting to the new ground in 2012; no easy task as there was a LOT of it.  The underlying partisan structure was quite different from his old district with a far greater proportion of Democrats brought in, albeit with slight Republican advantage.  Simply put, he had a real race on his hands, and he made a number of deft strategic maneuvers to deal with the new realities.  Though he won by over 8 points, the results probably understate his perceived vulnerability.  With a dw-nominate first dimension score of .752, it's safe to conclude he's about as conservative as they come.  King is also no stranger to controversy seen here expanding on Todd Akin's rape comments, which brought several WTF reactions nationwide, but were taken in stride back here in the district.  Truth be told, that's King's shtick, and he relishes the spotlight.

Enter Karl Rove.  Call Rove's group what you will (establishment, moderate, sell out, etc), it should come as no surprise that a number of voices will attempt to name (or pull) candidates into closer proximity to the median Republican voter than a more ideologically extreme candidate like King.  It's just that all the attention in the last two cycles has been paid to a group pulling the GOP to the right.  King is also a factional leader; and just as factional leaders rarely get the Presidential nomination (much less make for good general election candidates), King will face the same limitations statewide should he pursue the seat.  While his brand of religious nationalism is a clear boon in the northwest of the state and may well win him the nomination in the primary, it will likely marginalize him as he attempts to build statewide support in a general election.  This is no Democratic slam dunk however, and the PPP polling should be taken with several proverbial grains of salt.  But from Rove's perspective, a King candidacy is not worth the risk.  Rove and others would like to avoid a Sharon Angle or Christine O'Donnell situation playing out in a very winnable state.  This is largely the same dynamic we see at play as the national parties attempt to coordinate on nominees in the invisible primary, only it's scaled down to an Iowa sized conversation.  The twist is that the Iowa conversation is taking part with national players trying to influence the outcome.  I say that not to go nativist on you, but to highlight the dynamics at play: intense policy demanders actively conversing with one another about a pool of nominees with a variety of interests at stake.  

So from my perspective as a political scientist with an interest in political parties I say, "Have at it!"  Not that my normative baggage is in any one camp here, but both professionally and politically I rather like dynamic political parties as they increase responsiveness and responsibility of elected officials.  What I'm really eager to see is whether or not this mini-invisible primary will be successful in winnowing the field of both Republican and Democratic candidates.  If it does, we can surely say that the party has struck back.

The Bad

Apologies for the delayed second posting, but J-terms have a way of absorbing one's time and energy.  Additionally, the real action of the invisible primary isn't heating up just yet in ways that are easily seen.  That said, we'll make our best efforts to catch glimpses of the action when we can.

As part of this blog's central goal of throwing light on the invisible primary, we'll have to discuss the good coverage alongside the bad.  Speaking to the bad, I encountered this article over at the Huffington Post the other day which really typifies the way we shouldn't be covering the 2016 race at this point.  The literature is pretty clear that polling data at this stage is rather superfluous.  Though it is certainly possible that such polls could identify what Cohen et al dub "focal points" in the parties' triangulation on nominees, it's far from certain that those identified by the mass public at this point in the cycle will wind up being the major players when the primary campaigns begin in earnest in the coming year or so.   Recall, that at roughly this point in the 2000 election cycle George W. Bush was often confused for his father in polls and that he was a distant blip on the polling radar behind Colin Powell, Jack Kemp, and even Dan Quayle.  How Governor Bush made up for that "weakness" was a classic invisible primary campaign that focused on winning the support of Republican governors from coast to coast.

None of this is to suggest that the dozen or so candidates that registered in PPP survey won't wind up being players in 2016 - some undoubtedly will - but polling like this isn't the best way for us to predict who's going to make the strongest run in the coming nomination contests.

Inaugural post

As political scientists have reckoned over the past decade or so, the “invisible primary” is instrumental in determining the eventual nominee.  Shortly after election day, Jonathan Bernstein commented on the commencement of the nomination campaigns for both political parties.  He noted that “we can talk about it sensibly or not.”   This blog is an attempt at the former.  Moreover, as time wears on, we’ll probably not confine ourselves strictly to the invisible primary here, and consider other workings of our party system as the two are directly tied to one another.

I thought a good inaugural post would be one quick explanation as to why this invisible primary takes so bloody long.  If Bernstein is correct (and I certainly reckon that he is) the invisible primary for the 2016 Republican nomination began in September, as their 2012 prospects dimmed.  A European friend expressed a touch of haughty derision about our long presidential election seasons and asked why it takes this long to sort out party leadership and nominees as opposed to other nations with presidential systems.  My immediate reply was it is largely an artifact of our decentralized party structure, the lack of formal national leadership, and that in many respects the American system actually isn’t as different from his as it appears at first blush.

Shoring up the support of the rank-and-file in any party system is a full time pursuit.  Party leaders in European democracies are constantly attending to their membership and keeping their factions happy; they just have the advantage of clear party hierarchy and networks that gives order to the process outside of the electoral arena and an ever-present national leadership.

The Americans lack such formal hierarchical party structures, forcing potential nominees to delve into the informal networks of intense policy demanders (elected officials, state party officials, and opinion leaders) as these broadly defined party leaders attempt to arrive at a consensus in an extended electoral process.  It’s not that this consensus is any easier or harder to land upon in either system, it’s just that in Europe the consensus is usually clear at any given time between elections as the parties almost always have a clear standard bearer, and formal means to replace failed leadership should the need arise.  American parties have no such luck.  We don’t have or really need a national standard bearer outside of a sitting president.  Hence, both the party and presidential hopefuls are forced into the long conversation of the invisible primary as the party slowly decides whom the nominee will be.  Though it may certainly annoy some people that our campaigns are interminable, there are rational, structural reasons why this is so.