This is not to say that the Republican party should abandon its principles and simply place itself center-mass within the electorate. No, that would be ridiculous. It is, however, possible for the Republicans to remain true to their principles while selecting more viable candidates and educating the public on conservative principles. Their approach should be two-fold: statistical decision- making and long-term marketing strategies. First, in terms of data-driven decision making, the Republicans need to figure out who always votes for them, who sometimes votes for them, who rarely votes for them, and who might vote for them in the future. They need to nominate candidates who will garner the sure votes and sometimes votes, but also nominate candidates capable of attracting the rare and potential votes. Second, the Republicans need to develop a long-term strategic plan for marketing their positions on certain key issues. For example, how do they sell themselves as more than just Country Club Republicans? How do they convince the voting public that conservative economics benefit, not just the rich, but everyone? In modern terms, the Republican party is a brand, but it's also a brand that is losing market share. Winning back those voters is a daunting task that will take a long-term and deliberate strategy.
In terms of statistical-decision making, I am thinking about a Republican National Committee that runs something like the Oakland A's in the movie, Moneyball. If you haven't seen the movie, it's based on a true story of the 2002 Oakland A's, a down-and-out low-budget baseball team, that hired an economist and statistician to consult on the scouting process. My favorite scene in the movie was when Jonah Hill's character, the Yale Educated Economist/Statistician, answers the hostile questions of seasoned baseball scouts. In my recollection, there was a lot of chewing tobacco and a lot of inside-the-box thinking from the baseball scouts. I can envision a similar confrontation taking place between a statistician and the Republican National Committee. In my mind, the only difference is that the Republicans smoke cigars and wear suits. The closed-minded hubris is the same. Without critical self-analysis, the Republican party is a few elections away from irrelevance. The Republicans are rapidly losing demographics and voter base. They need to accomplish more with less resources. So, not only hiring good polling companies, but actually utilizing their results will be essential for the Republicans moving forward.
I've mentioned similar thoughts to friends before about Moneyball and Republican politics, and they have responded, "They already do that!" With all due respect, I think my friends are wrong, Again, I return to the movie, Moneyball. Until the Oakland A's tried their statistical experiment in 2002, decisions in baseball were made on experience, gut instincts, and the old-boy network. My over-riding thought while watching the movie was this: "You mean it took until 2002 for baseball--a sport chock-full of statistics--to make statistically-driven decisions?" I was shocked, at first, but then I know people. People, especially people in positions of authority, are infatuated with their own experience, instincts, and relationships. If given a choice between numbers and intuition, most people will invariably choose their own intuitions--even if their instincts are no more valid than a coin toss. As further evidence of this tendency in the Republican party, please recall the rampant skepticism about the polls leading up to the recent election. It seemed to me that a majority of Republican friends, blogs, and radio personalities demonstrated an optimism completely divorced from the polling data.
It also seems to me that the Democrats, especially since President Clinton, have been playing Moneyball since the early 1990's. I recall listening to Clinton's speeches during his presidency. At times, his speeches seemed rather choppy, as though he were giving ten different speeches to ten different constituencies. And he was. He invariably addressed feminists, blacks, Hispanics, labor unions, gays, progressives and several other groups in each of his speeches. Then he tied it all together in a populist rhetoric of Equality and progress. Clinton knew exactly what he was doing. There was something in each of his speeches for each of his constituencies. The only difference was that, rather than a three-legged stool, Clinton and the Democrats had a stool with about ten different legs. And Clinton never failed to recognize each of these constituencies individually.
According to Reagan, the Republicans have three main constituencies--fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, and defense hawks. Reagan knew the importance of courting each of these constituencies. So did George W. Bush. And they both won two elections. But H.W. Bush, Dole, McCain, and Romney did not court all three constituencies, especially social conservatives. Bush the elder won one election on the coat-tails of Reagan, but not a second term. The other three lost on their only runs at the general election. If Reagan's wisdom about the three-legged stool still holds, any successful Republican candidate must not only garner the support of these three constituencies, but also create enough enthusiasm to bring out the vote in each of these groups. Of course, Reagan was first elected over 30 years ago, and the demographics may have changed. To know for sure would require some real polling data.
As a mental health therapist, I conceive of political polling as something similar to psychological testing, and the gold standard of psychological tests is the MMPI. But I've not found anything relating to political profiles even close to the sophistication of the MMPI. There are some tests online, but they tend to give results in bipolar indices and simple categories. Nor do these measures have validity scales to know whether the person's responses should be interpreted or not. Actually, I strongly suspect that there are such valid tests, but I wonder if they are under the sole proprietorship of the Democrats. Or if, unlike the Oakland A's who became victims of their own success, the Democrats have kept their use of metrics under rap.
It's difficult to explain briefly about the MMPI and how a political test could be used in a similar way, but let me give it a try. There are ten main scales on the MMPI; a few examples are scales for Depression, Schizophrenia, Mania, and Social Introversion. Each person taking the test gets a score on each of these ten scales. Now, here's where the thinking gets rather abstract. Image the MMPI as a ten-dimensional matrix describing personalities. Each person's score on each of these scales can be cross-sectioned with their scores on each of the other scales, and that person's score could then be mapped as single dot on a 10-dimensional grid. If you administered 10,000 MMPIs, each of those individual's scores would be represented by a different dot on that 10-dimensional grid. Now, here's where it gets interesting. Personality is not evenly distributed across all ten of these scales. So, if you looked at these dots as stars in a ten-dimensional sky, the dots would form patterns or constellations. Clinically, on the MMPI, these constellations of symptoms are what we call descriptive diagnoses. From the MMPI we know for sure that there are groups of people who tend to exhibit certain clusters of symptoms.
Now, if we could create a political test with the same sophistication of measurement as the MMPI, then we would also likely see groups of voters who cluster around certain sets of issues. On a political test, the ten scales might range from views about for example abortion, gay marriage, immigration, welfare spending, labor unions, defense spending, and so forth. Each person's score could then be represented as a single dot on a ten-dimensional matrix. And after administering 10,000 or so tests, randomly sampled, one might get some idea how the population is distributed across various political issues. Again, patterns would inevitably develop. I suspect that a well-designed measure would flush out the ten smaller constituencies that Clinton addressed in each of his speeches. I also suspect that Reagan's three-legged stool of fiscal, social, and defense conservatives would stand out as clusters on such a measure.
Now, all of this sounds very abstract, but what does it have to do with actual votes? Well, suppose you counted the dots that, I'm assuming, might form three clusters on the conservative side of politics. And what if the total number of dots from that area of the sky didn't add up to at least 5000 out of 10,000? Well, then the Republicans would be in serious trouble. They might have to re-think their positions on some issues, and they might have to pick some candidates and platforms that would be able to garner more support. Essentially, without the reference to matrices and statistics, this is what some in the Republican party are saying. They feel that conservative positions on social issues such as abortion and gay marriage have alienated them from women and gays. They feel that the conservative position on immigration has alienated them from Hispanic voters. And they feel a hard-line on welfare has labeled them as racists among minorities. And, as I said earlier, these critics from within the Republican ranks may be right. But I want to see the data first.
Another troubling aspect of this critique is that it seems to give-in to liberal categories of thinking. To modern liberals, they see everything under the rubric of four factors: race, ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status. As such, their politics becomes not about principles, but about identity. Their political goal is to attract blacks, Hispanics, women, poor people, and anyone else who might feel marginalized. The Democratic party is not a party of principle, but the party of "who you are."
On the other side of the aisle, the current Republicans, such as Graham and McCain, talking about courting black, Hispanic, women, and poor voters seem to have given up on conservative principles. The panicking Republican critics have bought into identity politics. But when it comes to actual data, I suspect the numbers may not be as skewed as some might suspect. There are conservative blacks, Hispanics, women, and poor people. It's just that Republicans have assumed they couldn't go after these voters. Targeting these voters specifically, without compromising conservative principles, in other words as an issue of Liberty, would be the best way to cross the cultural divide. While it might be useful to be aware of how identity seems to play a role in politics, I think it would be a mistake for Republicans to compromise principles. As soon as Republicans stoop to identity politics, they will have ceded victory to the Democrats.
The task over the next decade or two for the Republicans is daunting, perhaps even Apocalyptic. But I have to believe that a turn-around is possible. As a social conservative, I am hopeful that this election will awaken Republicans to the importance of social conservative issues. I look back to this last primary season. The number two candidate was Rick Santorum, a social conservative, who consistently garnered about 25-30% of primary voters. And yet, did Senator Santorum speak at the Republican National Convention? Of course not. The same could be said for Ron Paul, who had an enthusiastic 10% of supporters. Did Congressman Paul speak at the Convention? I can't recall. Now, it seems to me that, between Santorum and Paul supporters, that accounts for almost 40% of the Republican base. And I wonder how many Santorum or Paul supporters actually voted for Romney in the general election, how many stayed home, and how many voted for a third party candidate. Or, to put it more succinctly, I wonder how the election would have turned out if the Republicans had presented a genuine fiscal conservative, with legitimate social conservative credibility, who was beyond the outdated politics of the military-industrial complex. Such a candidate might have beaten Obama.
Perhaps. But the point is that conservatives not only lost the election, but are losing the culture. I'd love to be able to design an implement a study of the kind of data I'm talking about here. Perhaps I will, on a small scale of my own. It seems to me that the data could lead in one of two directions. One would be the John McCain stance on social issues, that essentially all is lost. The other would be that the conservative reliance of social conservatives is still essential for victory and, thus, not just a constituency that Republicans can take for granted. If the latter is the case, then there would be lots of work to be done.
Ironically, for an example of how social conservatives might proceed, I highly recommend an article by Marshall K. Kirk and Hunter Madsen, "The Overhauling of Straight America," These Harvard-educated marketing experts developed a strategy that was highly influential in the gay community. Homosexual activists were able to implement Kirk and Madsen's plan almost verbatim. And you can't argue with their success. In my brief lifetime, I have seen a massive paradigm shift in the attitudes toward homosexuality. This past election actually marked the first time that voters--not legislatures or judges, but voters--passed measures supporting gay marriage. Essentially, by implementing a patient and deliberate marketing strategy, the homosexual community has won over the culture.
Does this mean the culture is lost forever? Not necessarily. But to win back the culture, conservatives will need to do more than win a few elections. We will need not only numbers-driven and highly technical decision-making rubrics, but we will also need a long-term marketing plan that, bit-by-bit, wins back the culture.
--Steve
P.S.
I wrote this essay several weeks ago. Since then, I have been working hard on a political test like the one I described here. It turns out it is quite a bit shorter than an MMPI, 120 questions. And it looks a bit more like a PAI (Personality Assessment Inventory), a measure that I administer often. Of course, I am still in the rough draft stage, and I have no normative data. Nonetheless, if you would like to take the test yourself, I would be happy to oblige. Please e-mail me at swillmot62@gmail.com to request a copy of the test. Any score provided will not be normative but based solely on my a priori categories. I would be interested in your cogent and constructive criticisms regarding questions, important topics, and so forth.
Of course, the results are yours, but test questionaire and materials are the sole intellectual property of Stephen Willmot. Any other use or dissemination would be a violation of my copyright pending.
