Victory in the Culture Wars: the Hidden Meaning of Polls Favoring “Conservatism”

Crazy liberal. Get a job, hippie!

Republicans – like Karl Rove – are positively aglow with the latest poll from Gallup, revealing that more Americans identify themselves as “conservative” than as “liberal,” or even “moderate.” Not so fast. First, this isn’t a new trend. The same poll shows American identification with liberalism, generally, as vacillating between a low of 17% and a high of 22%. In other words, the same percentages elected Barack Obama, and sent Bill Clinton to the White House, twice. And second, when considering this ideological identification in context with other information, the future looks bleak, not rosy, for the Republican Party.

Looking farther down the page of the very same poll, Gallup goes on to give a rather distressing picture of the Republican Party’s appeal: 74% of Republicans identify as “conservative,” with a paltry 24% identifying as moderates, and 3% as “liberals” (huh?); the Democratic Party, by comparison, is more robust, nearly split between moderates and liberals. If conservatives can brag, then, about some meta-victory on the ethereal plane of ideals, they won’t be able to leverage that into results, because of this simple truth: no pure ideology party wins elections in America. Elections are won in the middle, and in the real world, the shadows of Gallup’s Platonic form of “conservatism” – e.g., the Republicans – are facing round, undiluted defeat.

For confirmation, one need look no farther than other Gallup polls, e.g.;

1. Obama approval: 57%;
2. Trusted healthcare reform leaders: Obama 58%, Congressional Democrats 42%, Congressional Republicans 34% (a gap of 24% or 8%, depending on how you look at it);
3. Confirm Sotomayor: 54%
4. Gay rights: shifting positive, depending on issue (non-Gallup)

So why the gap? Why is America still overwhelmingly conservative, but suddenly overwhelmingly Democratic? Well, there are two answer. The first is branding. Over the course of several decades, conservatives have managed to tie the “liberal” label to a truly remarkable number of distasteful straw men, with the predictable results that liberals are unpopular. This narrative attributes recent Democratic victories to the party’s success in breaking free of the “liberal” label.

This, I think, is unequivocally true, but there may be a deeper story. I think the argument is to be made that, contrary to Rove’s wildest dreams, these numbers don’t indicate that conservatism is bound for a climactic resurgence. At least, not as we knew it. Rather, they indicate that historically liberal positions – progressive jurists, gay marriage, etc. – are becoming “moderate” rather than “liberal” in the public eye. This is what we’d expect to happen over time – after all, abolition, civil rights, and even the very idea of constitutionalism all were once “radical” or “liberal” positions – but I honestly didn’t expect the shift to happen yet. If support remains high for Democratic positions (and don’t trust Rasmussen for that, or Rove’s analsysis thereof (pdf)), while “conservative” identification remains constant, you’ll know this prediction has teeth.

Perhaps the lesson is this: parties built on narrow, divisive, backwards culture war issues will reap what they sow. History has a fantastic sense of karma.