First off, I have to agree that there is a demeaning undertone to the article in that the author assumes peoples decision to vote a certain way foolish. People have their reasons to vote (hopefully), and will vote for the candidate/party who has appealed to them most based on that candidate’s/party’s policies and image put forth.
But anyways, my long winded (for me at least) response…
I was a Poli Sci major a few years ago in school, and to get out of writing a research paper I ended up working on a California State Assembly campaign for a Republican candidate in a VERY Republican district. This led to a summer job of registering Republican voters for the Governator’s campaign throughout Southern California. Besides illustrating how well run and executed Republican campaigns generally are, I came in contact with A LOT of Republican voters. I registered voters in both in poorer (though certainly no Southeast Los Angeles or anything like that), very wealthy, and most everything in between neighborhoods.
These voters tended to end up in two categories, ideological Republicans and economic Republicans. Of course there was cross over, but there were Republican voters who would clearly benefit more from Dem economic policy. I even heard a few campaign managers refer to lower income Republicans as “ideological supporters”. These people clearly respond to the Republican SOCIAL message, though. “Traditional values” are a huge concern to Republican voters who are primarily ideological in nature, something that has been exploited by both parties in Southern strategies (Clinton, Carter are examples of part of the Dem Southern Strategy). The Republicans just staked a lot more on it than the Dems. And let me be clear, there’s nothing wrong with supporting a candidate whose values are perceived to be in line with yours. And it worked quite well for the Republicans for a long while, when a large enough segment of America identified with the message. A huge chunk of this segment was the aging, tending towards conservative, baby boomer generation. Combined with a number of conservative rural Americans, the Republicans had a very reliable base that turned out to vote very consistently.
We may be in the beginning of a shift in American party politics because that Republican base is becoming outnumbered by the Democratic base. And that base is actually turning out to vote in higher numbers than the Republicans base for the first time in a long time. I don’t think the Republicans are going to be able to continue to do what they’ve done for the past 40+ years (in terms of campaign strategy) and continue to be as powerful a force as they have been.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/11/us...l?ref=politics
PD