The Emerging Conservative Minority

utAmerican politics really is about finding the happy middle on the ideological spectrum. Candidates of both parties are forced to compete for the great mass of moderate voters who reside along the median point of the political continuum.

In 5 of the last 7 presidential elections, the Republican Party's been best able to capture this "vital center" of the American political universe. In the process, the GOP has forged a historic voting coalition unifying conservatives of various stripes - from social traditionalists to no-tax absolutists to national security neocons.

This year's primary season, as everyone knows, has split the Republicans like no other time in recent decades. Consequently, we're seeing more talk among both rank-and-file conservatives and political pundits on the emergence of a conservative minority in the U.S.

Some evidence of this can be found, informally, with an afternoon's surf around the conservative blogosphere (for a couple of top examples, see here and here).

But I think this comment over at Bloviating Zeppelin is a thoughful perspective on the minority status of deep conservatives in election '08:

I believe we [conservatives] all need to realize up front that, though we'd care to think we are, we are not representative of the general population or even the bulk of the Republican party, if that is your association. And by "we," who do I mean?

I mean you, me, any of my dedicated readers or anyone just dropping by. I mean those who listen to Conservative talk radio, who hit the internet for news stories, who will choose something for a particular political reason, who purposely choose certain venues of communication and media.

I believe it is we who are out of the mainstream - of the bulk of people comprising the Republican Party.

Bloviating Zeppelin offer these comments in justifying conservative defiance against GOP frontrunner John McCain. It's a compelling read.

A social science perspective on the emerging conservative majority can be found in James Joyner's piece at Outside the Beltway:

Perhaps “conservatives” are now a minority, even among Republican primary voters? If so, given that there are virtually no conservatives remaining in the Democratic Party these days and that voters who aren’t aligned with either party are almost by definition non-ideological, that would mean that conservatives are a small minority, indeed, among the American electorate.

Alternatively, perhaps the definition of “conservative” has become so narrow and esoteric that it’s become virtually meaningless?

When Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980 and again in 1984, he did it by putting together a coalition of small government conservatives, social conservatives, and anti-communists. He famously engendered the support of blue collar folks who were dubbed “Reagan Democrats.” Most of that group simply became Reagan Republicans.

Has the country gotten that much less conservative since then?

In some ways, yes. We’re much more tolerant on lifestyle issues, notably the role of women and acceptance of homosexuality, than we were a generation ago. Abortion has now been legal for 35 years, not a mere seven. We’re also much further removed from the days of the military draft, which means fewer of our menfolk have served.

But, fundamentally, we’re the same country we were in 1980. We’re still the most religious country in the developed world and probably the most patriotic. We’re more citified and more homogenized than we were but we still cling to the John Wayne rugged individualist mythos to a large degree.

The conservative majority has become a Conservative minority.

The Conservative Movement has morphed from a handful of intellectual true believers trying to shape the debate into something approaching a civil religion with loyalty tests and a clericy that has the power to excommunicate.

Read the whole thing.

Joyner looks at the opinion data, which is fairly compelling on the facts of conservative minority status.

Yet it's important to remember - as I suggested a bit in the introduction - that Americans historically are moderate in their political orientations. We've always had, even among those on the left, general consensus on enduring principles of individualism, liberty, and markets. (We've never, on the other hand, had mass popular support for extreme parties of the left, a case more characteristic of the European continental democracies in the 20th century.)

The schism we're seeing today, as I have argued, may have long-term consequences for the party system.

It could be that the intense political polarization that has become a buzz phrase of recent years is genuinely erupting to create irreparable fissures in the GOP coalition.

If the conservative base becomes fundamentally irreconciled to a Republican Party seen as disastrously liberal on social policy, immigration, and so forth, the far-right constituency of the party may bolt the coalition never to return.

This is the biggest story of election '08 so far. If Barack Obama wins the nomination on the Democratic side, we'll see some of the most funamental change in the overall party system since the 1960s.

For now though, the best bet for radical ideological change is on the right side of the dial. The implications of the great conserative debate of '08 will have far reaching consequences.