NPR: "Political Scientist: Republicans Most Conservative They've Been in 100 Years"
I'm inclined to agree with - or at least give the benefit of the doubt to - NPR on this one. The political scientist whom NPR mentions is Keith Poole. Poole is a good friend, and he, like me, is one of the few political science professors to proclaim publicly that he is a conservative (although I think he considers himself more libertarian than conservative). Also, as I discuss in my book and in an old Ricochet post, Poole is a brilliant guy and the producer of perhaps the greatest research achievement ever in political science.
That achievement, Nominate scores, shows that the average Nominate score of congressional Republican is the highest it has been in a century. (Nevertheless, I might have a few quibbles with the claim. E.g., before the early 1930s, I'm not sure that Nominate really measures what we nowadays call conservatism and liberalism.) Be sure to read the entire article, including perusing the graph. The latter shows a steep rise, and it shows that the trend is more than just a recent phenomenon. Congressional Republicans, it suggests, were becoming more conservative before the Tea Party movement and the election of Obama.
- Comment (14)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (1)
Comments:
Aug '10
Re: NPR: "Political Scientist: Republicans Most Conservative They've Been in 100 Years"
Ok, so the Repubicans are the most conservative in 100 years... and the Democrats are about as liberal now as they were when eugenics and Prohibition were considered good ideas.
One of these partisan levels is cause for concern, and it ain't the one that advocates lower taxes and an oil pipeline from Canada.
Re: NPR: "Political Scientist: Republicans Most Conservative They've Been in 100 Years"
Tim, how does this kind of scoring grapple with the social issues? As recently as the presidency of John Kennedy, the social issues--abortion, illegitimacy, gay marriage--really didn't even exist.
Dec '11
Re: NPR: "Political Scientist: Republicans Most Conservative They've Been in 100 Years"
I was wondering in a thread over in the member feed, whether or not this is a misnomer? By this I mean, the republican platform has contained pretty much everything that the most 'extreme' in our party has been running on for longer than I have been alive.
I would agree that the ideological breadth is narrowing in the republican party as it is in the democratic party, but is it possible that the left is narrowing in breadth whilst at the same point its center is shifting left?
May '10
Re: NPR: "Political Scientist: Republicans Most Conservative They've Been in 100 Years"
The article provides zero details on what it means to be more conservative than before. The Nominate score is put forward as "objective" but it is not explained.
Professor, can you fill in some of the gaps here?
Jun '10
Re: NPR: "Political Scientist: Republicans Most Conservative They've Been in 100 Years"
So the graph shows the Democrat line moving sharply up (less liberal, more moderate) from the last 20's through the 40's i.e. during FDR and the New Deal. How is that possible?
Re: NPR: "Political Scientist: Republicans Most Conservative They've Been in 100 Years"
Mark Wilson: The article provides zero details on what itmeans to be more conservative than before. The Nominate score is put forward as "objective" but it is not explained.
Professor, can you fill in some of the gaps here? · 5 hours ago
Excellent question. In the next few comments, I'll try to explain how Nominate defines conservatism and liberalism, and perhaps some caveats we should apply to the NPR claim.
First, Nominate does not use the substance of bills to define conservatism and liberalism. The data is just a bunch of 1's a 0's, indicating whether members of Congress voted yea or nay. To construct the scores, the authors do not even read the text of the legislation.
Nominate constructs a line segment - where every legislator is represented by a point on the line. Also, every issue -- i.e. every yea and nay alternative that was ever considered in Congress -- is also represented by a point on the line. Every legislator is assumed to vote for the issue (i.e. point on the line) that is closest to the point that represents himself. The Nominate computer program chooses points on the line to best predict votes.
Re: NPR: "Political Scientist: Republicans Most Conservative They've Been in 100 Years"
Mark Wilson: The article provides zero details on what itmeans to be more conservative than before.
Professor, can you fill in some of the gaps here? · 5 hours ago
After the Nominate computer program estimates all the points on the line, the authors notice that people we usually call very conservative -- e.g. Michelle Bachmann and Jim DeMint -- are on one end of the line segment, and people we usually call very liberal -- e.g. Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank -- are on the other end of the line segment. Seeing this, the authors reasonably conclude that Nominate has estimated how liberal or conservative legislators are.
So, a shorthand way of saying what "conservative" and "liberal" mean with Nominate is simply, "they are just clumps of legislators that tend to vote similarly." Although that definition sounds artificial, it does correlate very strongly to what pundits say when they call legislators "conservative" or "liberal." Also, for what it's worth, Nominate scores are very highly correlated with the "Political Quotients" that I estimate for my book. (Click here for details and a quiz that allows you to compute your own Political Quotient.)
Re: NPR: "Political Scientist: Republicans Most Conservative They've Been in 100 Years"
Excellent point, Peter. For the sake of argument, let's assume that gay-marriage issues received no votes in Congress before the late 1990s. In the first roll call vote on gay marriage, suppose people like Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank -- people whom Nominate had prior deemed liberal (based on issues besides gay marriage) -- voted in favor of gay marriage, and people whom Nominate prior deemed conservative voted against gay marriage. Then Nominate would deem the pro-gay-marriage side "liberal" and the anti-gay-marriage side "conservative."
Some issues won't fit the liberal-conservative line segment that Nominate estimates. E.g. this was very true with civil rights issues during the 1960s. For this reason, the Nominate authors sometimes estimate two (or more) dimensions for Nominate. They note that since the early 1980s, the one-dimensional framework predicts votes very well. They argue there is little need since the early 1980s to estimate multiple dimensions for Nominate.
Re: NPR: "Political Scientist: Republicans Most Conservative They've Been in 100 Years"
This is one of my main issues with Nominate - that before the early 1930s, it really doesn't measure what we nowadays call conservative and liberal. Eg. suppose you take Nominate scores estimated only with votes from, say, 1933, and you do the same with votes from, say, 1928. Next, list all the legislators who served in both 1928 and 1933. It turns out that the legislators' 1928 and 1933 Nominate scores won't correlate very highly.
This is evidence, I believe, that a "Grand Re-Alignment" in politics occurred in the late 1920s or early 1930s - that coalitions and the labels we use to describe ideology changed significantly.
It also explains, I believe, why Nominate counterfactually shows Democrats becoming less liberal during the period you mention - Nominate's not really measuring "liberalness" in the late 1920s.
Edited on April 15, 2012 at 3:41pmSep '11
Re: NPR: "Political Scientist: Republicans Most Conservative They've Been in 100 Years"
Tim Groseclose
So, a shorthand way of saying what "conservative" and "liberal" mean with Nominate is simply, "they are just clumps of legislators that tend to vote similarly." Although that definition sounds artificial, it does correlate very strongly to what pundits say when they call legislators "conservative" or "liberal."
It sounds like it just measures polarization. I guess it's possible that Republican legislators are more conservative now than they were 10 years ago...but it's not like they're now saying they want to, say, rollback the prescription drug benefit, or Sarbanes-Oxley, or McCain-Feingold, or any other of the liberal, big-government legislation they passed when they were dominant during the Bush years. I'm not saying there are no such issues--but none spring to mind.
Sep '11
Re: NPR: "Political Scientist: Republicans Most Conservative They've Been in 100 Years"
In any event, Democrats have become much more liberal, and pundits define whatever happens to be the current Dem position as moderately liberal. Take the global warming scam--is the aggregate Republican position on greenhouse-gasses more conservative than it was 20 years ago? Certainly not: since many GOP have been suckered, they can only have moved left overall on the issue. It's just that now expressing cautious concern over greenhouse gasses, but not wanted to eviscerate the economy to solve it, is "conservative," and going completely nuts with a massive government power grab is the sensible, "liberal" solution. Twenty years ago "conservative" was not believing in it at all, and "liberal" was expressing concern.
Oct '10
Re: NPR: "Political Scientist: Republicans Most Conservative They've Been in 100 Years"
Weren't we a progressive party a century ago? I'm confused.
Oct '10
Re: NPR: "Political Scientist: Republicans Most Conservative They've Been in 100 Years"
So, then, I think what we end up with is two ideological extremes that have been getting further apart, and Republicans voting more in unison, both compared to previous Republicans, and current Democrats.
When framed this way, I can see how it might sound ominous to the casual or non-ideological observer - they might just assume Republicans must want to put everything back the way it was 100 years ago.
Another way to look at it is that government, and media, and universities, and Hollywood, have been pushing the culture, and the unwashed masses, and BOTH political parties, in a leftward direction of the last 100 years.
The current 'most conservative in 100 years' House is simply more determined to stop being pushed to the left.
Dec '11
Re: NPR: "Political Scientist: Republicans Most Conservative They've Been in 100 Years"
Wonderful. If only the same could be said about the Conservative Party back home in the UK.