As the new Republican House majority settles in and tries to figure out exactly which issues and positions to take, a new poll from Gallup highlights just how difficult it will be to keep the coalition of swing independents, old-fashioned Republicans, and tea partiers together.
The problem, in short, is this: Both Republicans and Independents prefer Tea Party-backed Republicans to old-fashioned Republican leaders in Congress. But at the same time, by a 51-to-39 percent margin, Independents are concerned that Republicans will go too far in trying to reverse the Democrats’ policies. In other words, good luck, Speaker Boehner: If you aren’t aggressive enough, you will lose the mad-as-hell Tea Party voters. But if you are too aggressive, you will lose the majority of independents who are worried you are going too far. And you’ll need to please both to keep your majority.
As we know, Independents broke 56-to-38 percent for Republicans in the Mid-Term Election after breaking strongly for Democrats in the prior two elections, giving Republicans the keys to the House and tightening the balance in the Senate. Looking at the Independents’ preferences for who they say they want as the key policy player, we can see that those who voted Republican prefer Tea Party-backed Republicans by a 32-23 margin, an even more sizable balance than registered Republicans. (I’m admittedly interpolating here a bit, assuming (safely, I think) that those who voted Republican want Republicans to be in charge)
However, things get a little more complicated when we consider the next result of the poll: Independents, by a sizeable majority (51-to-39) are more worried that Republicans will go too far in reversing Democrats’ policies than that they will not go far enough. In other words, the majority of Independents are not radicals, even if the plurality supports the Tea Party.
At first this seems like a bit of a puzzle. One possibility is that the except for the third of Independents who want the Tea Party to be in charge, almost all the rest are worried about Republicans going to far.
But here’s what I see as the more likely explanation: swing Independents are frustrated with the state of the economy, and see Washington politics-as-usual as a reasonable culprit. The Tea Party brand has tapped into that frustration. But swing Independents, who abandoned Republicans in 2006 and 2008, are not exactly running back to the Republican Party with open, loving arms. To them, the Tea Party taps into the “we don’t like either party, but we’re not happy, so we’ll vote out the incumbent” rationale.
As a recent Pew poll demonstrated, only 48 percent of respondents felt happy about the Republicans’ victory the day after the election, and only 41 percent of respondents approved of the Republican’s policies and plans for the future – significantly lower numbers than both 1994 Republican victory or the 2006 Democratic victory.
I see a mixed message from the angry swing vote: we’re mad as hell, but we’re also kind of moderate. We’re not happy with the way things are going, but we’re not sure we want a dramatic change either. We want to send a message, but we hope you don’t take that message too seriously.
Just as Democrats found these voters impossible to satisfy after winning their support in 2006/2008, my prediction is that Republicans will find them equally difficult to satisfy. Once Republican leadership has to make choices and register votes, they will learn that you can’t please all the people all the time, and these days, it’s increasingly hard to even please some of the people, some of the time.
