ABSTRACT
Political parties are continually faced with the problem of whether to create a national and relatively uniform policy image for campaigns or allow decentralized campaigns with congressional candidates creating a local image adapted to their race. A clear party image means that the party stakes out a position that contains little ambiguity as to where it stands on policy issues and what its concerns are (Brewer 2009). In 2010, for example, health care reform passed as a Democratic Party proposal and Republicans stood firmly against it. Voters would have little trouble telling which party was on what side of the issue. Democrats were defining themselves as concerned with those who were without insurance and with imposing more rules on insurance companies, and Republicans were defining themselves as against government intrusion and worried about the cost of new programs and deficits. To the extent that Democrats consistently support programs to provide benefits to various groups and Republicans oppose programs and the taxes to pay for them, the cumulative effect is to reinforce party images. Democrats become seen as liberal, or willing to use government to try to expand opportunity and to help those seen as less fortunate. Republicans become known as conservative, or more concerned with stressing individual responsibility and restraining government and taxes. If representatives of one party vote together and against the other party, and the media regularly report these divisions, this clarifies party positions. Each party acquires a fairly well-defined national policy image. These images will attract and mobilize some voters and alienate others. The issue of whether to seek to create a clear party image has become more salient in recent years. In the 1960s and 1970s each party had considerable diversity and even the prospect of trying to negotiate a national policy image created conflict within each party (Polsby 2005). The Democrats had numerous conservative Southerners and liberal Northerners. The Republicans had western anti-government conservatives and moderate Northeasterners who were much more comfortable with activist government. Since then considerable realignment has occurred (Brewer and Stonecash 2009). The South has become steadily more Republican (Black and Black 1987, 2002), removing
many conservatives from the Democratic Party. The Northeast has become much more Democratic (Ware 2006; Reiter and Stonecash 2011), removing many moderates from the Republican Party. In addition to this realignment, it also appears that geographical sorting is occurring. More and more Republicans live in areas dominated by Republicans and more and more Democrats live in areas dominated by Democrats (Bishop 2008). The result of all these changes is that each party within Congress now has much less internal diversity (Rohde 1991; Polsby 2005). With less internal diversity, the conditions seem ripe for parties to focus more on clarity and unity of image. More and more members of Congress are seen as winning by larger margins and as “safe” (Jacobson 2009: 303-5). With competition declining, members of each party have more freedom to focus on the concerns of their party. The electoral bases of the parties have become more defined and loyal. Attentive voters are increasingly divided along ideological lines (Abramowitz 2010) and loyal, with higher percentages of those who identify with a party voting for the candidates of that party (Bartels 2000). Given these changes, some argue that it now seems to make more sense for party members to focus on mobilizing their existing constituents than appealing to moderates. Indeed, the genius of a strategist like Karl Rove was presumably his ability to find and mobilize core supporters (Brownstein 2007: 288-9). As internal diversity has declined, the efforts within parties to push for unity of policy stances and unified support for different policies has increased (Sinclair 2006). In the 1994 House elections Newt Gingrich pushed for and got strong endorsement of a Contract with America that presented ten policy commitments. When President George W. Bush pushed tax cuts and the Patriot Act in the early 2000s the party sought to have complete unity in supporting his agenda. When President Barack Obama proposed a stimulus package and health care reform in 2009 he sought bipartisan support but was ultimately willing to push for just Democratic votes and the image that these were Democratic Party initiatives. The conditions for unity of action and clarity of image are now greater than 30-40 years ago. The issues addressed in this chapter are how we arrived at the current situation, just how much localism has declined as a relevant factor in party considerations, and to what extent it makes sense for either party to focus on presenting a uniform policy image to voters. While the current portrait of parties is that they are polarized and increasingly presenting a unified stance and image to voters, the question is how accurate that description is of the situation the political parties face. The first matter addressed is how realignment has changed internal unity over time. These changes provide the basis for greater party unity. The concern is the extent to which presidential and congressional electoral results now overlap. Next, the extent of competition in presidential and congressional elections will be examined to assess how much pressures to be sensitive
to swing districts and states have declined. Finally, the implications of these changes for creating unified party images for campaigns will be discussed.
