Republicans Test the Limits of Polarization

Republicans may lose an important judicial election in Wisconsin because their candidate is far enough outside the mainstream that the local Realtors Association has rescinded its endorsement of him:

At issue was Republican candidate Brian Hagedorn’s opposition to same-sex marriage. I don’t know whether the realtors objected on principle or were just worried about the bottom line – after all, same-sex couples buy houses too. But the episode recalls transgender “bathroom bills” and other social issues (such as support for Confederate symbols) that have pitted Main Street businesses against their traditional Republican allies.

We don’t know yet how the defection of realtors will affect Wisconsin’s state Supreme Court race. But the episode raises an interesting question: As partisan polarization has increased, just how much leeway do candidates have when taking controversial policy positions?

Political scientist Alan Abramowitz discussed the question with the Plum Line’s Paul Waldman in an excellent item this week. Evidence increasingly suggests that individual candidates – and their relevant attributes, such as perceived ideology or incumbency – have mattered far less in recent election cycles than they did two or three decades ago. That’s certainly what would happen if voters starting perceiving all politicians of a given party as basically alike and voting accordingly. And it suggests that candidates should have a lot of latitude when adopting policy views.

But the Wisconsin case and other similar examples suggest that this phenomenon may have limits. If parties move so far out of the mainstream on a certain issue that they have difficulty keeping their coalitions together – in Wisconsin, only 28 percent of voters oppose same-sex marriage – they risk not only the resources that party-aligned organized groups offer but also their ability to present a unified message to voters.

My examples so far have involved Republicans. But Democrats could flirt with similar risks if they take positions too far from the mainstream. Could a party today be punished for extremism the way Republicans probably were after they nominated Barry Goldwater in 1964? Or as the Democrats were after they ran George McGovern in 1972? Whether incremental changes in perceived liberalism (or conservatism) affect a candidate’s performance might be less important than the extreme cases, such as the defeat of Tea Party Senate candidates Christine O’Donnell (in Delaware in 2010) and Todd Akin (in Missouri in 2012).

That said: I think we have more questions here than answers. What does it take for major portions of a party coalition to defect these days? What signal will such defections send to voters, and how will they respond?

1. Patricia M. Kim at the Monkey Cage on the U.S.-North Korea summit.

2. Good Lee Drutman item on congressional reform. I’d like to see a little more emphasis on party asymmetry here, but it’s a nice big-picture look at what’s wrong with Congress and what’s easily – and not so easily – fixable.

3. Dan Drezner on Donald Trump’s administration and Venezuela.

4. David E. Campbell and Christina Wolbrecht on how the 2016 campaign affected young people.

5. My Bloomberg Opinion colleague Michael Schuman on what looks like another typical Trump “win” – this time on trade with China.

6. I think Greg Sargent is correct that Democrats face a false choice on whether to focus on the Upper Midwest.

7. And Nate Silver’s suggestion on how to fix the strikeout crisis in baseball seems worthy of further discussion.

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