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You can only do two things with a base. You can sit on it and watch the world go by, or you can build on the base. And I believe we should build on the base because the nation needs two parties.Unlike that of many conservative Republicans, Powell's position is not only that if the GOP does not build the base, the nation would be left with a one-party, or one-and-a-half-party state, but also that the door would be open for independents to challenge the hegemony of the duopoly parties over the political center. Powell asks:
Are we simply moving further to the right, and by so doing opening up the right-of-center and the center to be taken over by independents and to be taken over by Democrats?As I mentioned at the Maine View, this is a significant admission, revealing a fear of politically independent voters and the rise of an independent majority in the context of the two-party state. Conservatives counter, however, that if the GOP returns to its core values, conservative-leaning independents would return to party's fold.
In a post attempting to disentangle a number of dynamics underlying this tension between moderate and conservative Republicans, and, on a more abstract level, between pragmatism and principle, the Right Night suggests that such dilemmas are themselves symptomatic of the duopoly system of political representation, and points to a 2006 study on 'The Spatial Structure of Party Competition' showing that:
the multi-party system, whether involving proportional representation or by district, tends to produce more ideological variance among the parties, whereas the parties in a two-party system are hardly answerable to ideologies of the electorate.In other words, if conservative Republicans (and liberal Democrats, for that matter) seek greater ideological divergence between the duopoly parties, the structural forces of the two-party system will undermine their efforts at every turn. On the other hand, if successful, such efforts may undermine the basic dynamics of the two-party system, for instance, if political polarization eventually turns off moderates to such an extent that they begin to seek out third party and independent candidates who more closely represent their views and interests. Thus, it may appear counter-intuitive to the partisan base on both sides of the duopoly divide, but it is likely in their interests to foster the development of a multi-party system in which both duopoly parties are faced with significant opposition from both the left and the right.
4 comments:
The concept of the "base" is problematic. In either major party, the base is seen as something distinct from registered party members as a whole, yet also as the entity that defines each party. At the same time, the dissatisfaction of the base with the centrist tendencies of candidates is a proof of the inability of the current party system to represent the "base" views of each party's most dogged supporters. But because people of the base view themselves as "the base," they seem reluctant to abandon the parties they consider to be theirs, preferring to purge ideological deviants. I suspect that self-consciously "moderate" independents want to appeal to potential voters who don't see themselves as part of any "base," but a multi-party system is likely to mean a multiplication of "bases" so long as parties justify their existence ideologically, and a replication of tensions between bases and general-election candidates. In opposing the Bipolarchy or Duopoly, should our ideal be a range of parties so that every voter is part of a "base," or to discourage inflexible bases from coming into being?
That's a good point and a difficult question. 'The base' is a nebulous notion. It seems to signify core activist supporters, as well as the wider set of voters in reliably loyal demographics, and the coalitions of such groups that comprise voting blocs sympathetic to the given party's platform and positions. The situation becomes even more complex when you take into account the fact that many voters may be considered a part of one party's base for federal offices and a part of the other party's base in state and local elections. In this context, only swing voters, independents and third party supporters (who, together, amount to more than a third of the electorate) would not be considered part of either party's base in some sense, the political homeless. There is, imo, serious potential to build insurgent political campaigns on 'the base' of this group.
I wonder whether your hopes are, if you'll pardon the term, baseless because the groups you describe have to date failed to display the characteristics of a reliable "base," i.e. ideological commitment and personal identification with a political party. But they might yet form the base of an insurgency that is itself based less on ideology than on more democratic and pragmatic procedures for candidate selection and platform building.
heh. It wouldn't be the first time I was disappointed by millions of people I don't know. If they may be considered a base, they certainly lack a superstructure, to borrow the old Marxist term. The number of local and state level independent and third party campaigns as well as the rising number of proclaimed independents may be signs of a new consciousness among the group.
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