Columnist William Kristol today ran with the view that it's A Good Time To Be a Conservative, by which he means a recent Gallup poll suggesting that about 40% of Americans identify themselves as conservatives. The question, I guess, is how meaningful that is; I'd suggest that the Republicans have shown so little aptitude for, or interest in, appealing to the center that their chances of turning that 40% into consistent electoral victories may be pretty slim. Kristol himself admits as much, concluding his piece by suggesting Republicans ought to stay right where they are (i.e., the Party of No) and not attempt to cater to those "liberal media elites" since (in his view) they only have to wait for the rising tide of conservatism to sweep them into office.
On the other hand, this still seems a risky strategy to me. As one of Kristol's more liberal colleagues, E.J. Dionne, points out, the 40% figure represents a shift of only a percentage point or two in recent years; and when given a chance to declare themselves "progressive" rather than "liberal," the left side of the electorate is considerably larger. And a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll found that only 20% of voters identify themselves as Republicans (though another 19% "lean" to the GOP). [Side note: the equivalent figures for Democrats were 33% identifying with the party and 20% "leaning."]
Long story short: Statistics can be made to "prove" almost anything. In fact, I'd guess that these changes are a bit like the up-and-down temperature fluctuations that cause some in the GOP still to deny "global warming." This is an off year, after an election in which a liberal Democrat won the Presidency in a huge way. It's completely predictable that the declared political loyalties of the voters will recede from that high tide, and that conservatism will show a relative gain. But I don't believe there's a conservative surge of major consequence afoot. That's not the real significance of these polling data, but I do have a few thoughts about making some sense of these numbers.
First, Mr. Kristol's hype about the surge to conservatism has a specific purpose: To try to lay the groundwork for spurious claims that next week's elections in Virginia and New Jersey are harbingers of a national trend, a new era of conservative rule. Sorry, that's just not so.
Second, it's interesting, in the Post/ABC poll, that only 20% of voters are willing to call themselves Republicans, when 19% more say they are "conservative." This suggests to me that the Republican party is not delivering for conservative voters, and that can't be a good thing for G.O.P. incumbents. (To be fair, Kristol makes this point too.)
But third, a corollary of point two is that voters just can't get excited by the likes of Mitch McConnell or John Boehner; they're looking for someone who can offer solutions to the country's problems rather than just standing on the sidelines refusing to take the field; and the thing that can excite them is a populist. Here's where we come back to Kristol, who predicts in that same article, that the Republican future will depend on "outsiders" like Huckabee, Limbaugh, and Palin, and that the theme will be "populist." I do think he's right on that point, but I wonder if the party or the nation can survive another Joe McCarthy.
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