The Democratic Party is often painted as an amalgamation of discrete factions and diverse interests, a "big tent" holding together a circus of minorities, laborers, civil libertarians and foreign policy doves, among many others. The heterogeneity of its composition, goes the caricature, has produced a party unwieldy and unsustainable.
Since 1980, on the other hand, Republicans have translated disciplined uniformity into victory after electoral victory. Karl Rove, the GOP master-strategist, turned a failed businessman into a two-term president by perfecting the demagogic "wedge issues" - gay marriage, national security and gun control.
But now, with the Republican Party reeling from public rejection manifest in the recent election results, presidential approval ratings and primary turnout percentages, cracks are beginning to show in the house that Reagan built. In fact, Republicans have long been splintered into three or four loveless blocs, a coalition that would inevitably crumble at the first signs of defeat.
Republicans from Mark Souder to Mitt Romney have taken to defending the "three legs" that balance the stool of American conservatism: pro-business fiscal policy, fundamentalist social policy and Pentagon-run foreign policy. The odd alliance between Wall Street bankers, Bible-belt evangelicals and Washington intellectuals held fast against the anti-capitalist, anti-God communist threat. But recent policy dilemmas produced telling fissures.
Christian conservatives, it turns out, are eager to criticize abortion and gay rights and generally support military intervention abroad to aid Israel and promote democracy. But they increasingly frown on corporate welfare and tax cuts lathered on the rich. The rabidly anti-tax Club for Growth and other party big-wigs have excoriated Mike Huckabee, this faction's most recognizable face, for having the gumption to say things like "I am not interested in being the candidate of Wall Street but of Main Street. Wealthy CEOs get paid 500 times what the average worker does, but they are not necessarily 500 times smarter or harder working and that is wrong."
Peggy Noonan, Reagan speechwriter and Wall Street Journal columnist, isn't humored by the God talk "This is my 2008 slogan: Reasonable Person for President. ... Mike Huckabee gets enough demerits to fall into my not-reasonable column." Evangelicals were supposed to proffer up their votes every four years but never get uppity enough to run for the office themselves.
But Wall Street Republicans and neoconservatives can be just as heretical. The wealthy class has no interest in the instability and deep deficits caused by endless warmongering. And as comically proven by Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani, the respective candidates of these interests, social issues aren't worth a hoot to them. Both were actively and loudly pro-choice until they entered the presidential primary race.
Finally, the constituency that makes perhaps the most credible claim to conservative consistency is the most lambasted of them all. Self-described as paleo-conservatives, these libertarian Republicans oppose government spending and support traditional social attitudes. But their standard-bearer this cycle, Ron Paul, became a pariah in the race, generating animated denunciations from all of his opponents. His unapologetic isolationism, in the model of Pat Buchanan before him, won him only charges of treason from fellow party-members.
What does all of this mean? It helps explain why a New York Times/CBS News poll in December found that none of the Republican candidates were viewed favorably by even half of Republican voters. This demoralization reflects not a weak field of candidates but a weak party. The conservative ideology is splintered and broken. The Republican Party doesn't need new candidates. It needs new values.
Jacob Shelly is a junior in the School of Public Affairs and a liberal columnist for The Eagle.
