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Beinart: Sam’s Club Republicans Vs. the Tea Party
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/10/29/sam-s-club-republicans-vs-the-tea-party.htmlSince the government shutdown, the press has run endless stories with headlines like “Big Business Tries to Unseat the Tea Party” and “Wall Street Angry at Tea Party,” speculating that corporate America will lead the charge against Ted Cruz and company. The idea seems to be that the Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable can rouse an army of pragmatic, business-oriented Republicans against the fanatical Tea Party hordes.
The problem is that on the ground, there aren’t many pragmatic Republicans left. Two decades ago, moderate pro-business Republicans like Arlen Specter, Charles Mathias, Tom Kean, Jim Thompson, and Mark Hatfield flourished along the coasts and across the upper Midwest. Now the states they represented are dark blue. The GOP still contains lots of business people, but as the party has shifted south, it’s embraced the more stridently anti-government, anti-union business culture that thrives in Dixie. The decline of mainline Protestantism has also undermined this sort of prudent, empirically-minded Republicanism. Once upon a time, the GOP was populated by theologically moderate Episcopalians and Presbyterians. Now it’s dominated by theologically conservative evangelicals and Catholics. The profile of a business-oriented Republican today looks like more like George W. Bush than George H.W. Bush.
The Tea Party, in other words, isn’t the alternative to the GOP’s moderate, business wing. It’s the successor. Contrary to stereotype, Tea Partiers are fairly upscale. As the Pew Research Center noted earlier this month, Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents who identify with the Tea Party are eight percentage points more likely to have graduated college than those who don’t and six points more likely to earn above $75,000. When Pew divided Republicans into four categories in 2011, it found that the group most favorable to the Tea Party, “staunch conservatives,” was defined by its relative economic comfort.
At the grassroots, the key divide in today’s Republican Party isn’t between downscale Tea Partiers and affluent pro-business moderates. It’s between relatively affluent Tea Partiers, who want government radically downsized, and working-class conservatives who want government to help them get ahead, the people Ross Douhat and Reihan Salam called “Sam’s Club” Republicans. In the Obama era, these downscale whites have streamed into the GOP. In 2004, notes Pew, whites with a high school education or less leaned Republican by six points. By 2012, they leaned Republican by 16 points. In 2004, Democrats enjoyed a nine point advantage among whites who earned less than $30,000. By 2012, that margin was down to two points. You can see this shift in West Virginia, a low-education, low-income, historically Democratic state where Barack Obama in 2012 lost every single county.
The problem is that on the ground, there aren’t many pragmatic Republicans left. Two decades ago, moderate pro-business Republicans like Arlen Specter, Charles Mathias, Tom Kean, Jim Thompson, and Mark Hatfield flourished along the coasts and across the upper Midwest. Now the states they represented are dark blue. The GOP still contains lots of business people, but as the party has shifted south, it’s embraced the more stridently anti-government, anti-union business culture that thrives in Dixie. The decline of mainline Protestantism has also undermined this sort of prudent, empirically-minded Republicanism. Once upon a time, the GOP was populated by theologically moderate Episcopalians and Presbyterians. Now it’s dominated by theologically conservative evangelicals and Catholics. The profile of a business-oriented Republican today looks like more like George W. Bush than George H.W. Bush.
The Tea Party, in other words, isn’t the alternative to the GOP’s moderate, business wing. It’s the successor. Contrary to stereotype, Tea Partiers are fairly upscale. As the Pew Research Center noted earlier this month, Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents who identify with the Tea Party are eight percentage points more likely to have graduated college than those who don’t and six points more likely to earn above $75,000. When Pew divided Republicans into four categories in 2011, it found that the group most favorable to the Tea Party, “staunch conservatives,” was defined by its relative economic comfort.
At the grassroots, the key divide in today’s Republican Party isn’t between downscale Tea Partiers and affluent pro-business moderates. It’s between relatively affluent Tea Partiers, who want government radically downsized, and working-class conservatives who want government to help them get ahead, the people Ross Douhat and Reihan Salam called “Sam’s Club” Republicans. In the Obama era, these downscale whites have streamed into the GOP. In 2004, notes Pew, whites with a high school education or less leaned Republican by six points. By 2012, they leaned Republican by 16 points. In 2004, Democrats enjoyed a nine point advantage among whites who earned less than $30,000. By 2012, that margin was down to two points. You can see this shift in West Virginia, a low-education, low-income, historically Democratic state where Barack Obama in 2012 lost every single county.
