Specter defects, haunts Republican party

Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, formerly a Republican, announced his decision to join the Democratic party this past Tuesday.

On Tuesday, moderate gadfly Senator Arlen Specter announced his decision to join the Democratic Party. His defection illustrates the Republican’s increasing inability to unite the disparate wings of their organization. It seems that the Democrats own the middle for the moment, in a game where the biggest tent wins.
Both parties struggle to build consensus in order to gain votes. That’s the way the two-party system works. But it can be easy to assume that the current ideological composition of the parties is set in stone. Republicans are pro-life, free market conservatives and Democrats are liberal, pro-choice, big government meddlers. It’s always been that way, right?
Actually, no. Take my grandfather, for example. A stolid Christian blue-collar union man from Kansas, he watches Fox news, listens to Sean Hannity and would vote Republican in his sleep if you rolled his bed close enough to a ballot box. But forty years ago this was not so.

Back when the Democratic Party was more associated with labor rights than abortion rights, my grandfather counted as a centrist, and many like him are still strong Democrats.  In the 90’s the Republicans successfully whittled away at these blue-collar Democrats thanks to Newt Gingrich’s Moral Majority, a masterful stroke of social conservative campaigning that managed to ally Midwestern values voters with big business fiscal conservatives. This left the Democrats with their own alliance between pro-choice, gay rights progressives and the remnants of their once-solid working class base.
The fascinating thing about this set of uneasy alliances is that it leaves one group of voters in each party voting based on their economic self-interest, while the other set votes based on values. Consider a Silicon Valley technocrat voting Democratic. The Democratic Party is likely to limit free trade and raise tax rates. But she believes that the state should provide a social safety net and that her lesbian friends should receive the same privileges as married couples.
On the other hand, think of an assembly line worker in Michigan. He would benefit from increased trade barriers which could preserve his job against foreign competition, and he is likely to benefit from living wage laws and welfare policies.  However, he believes that abortion is murder and homosexual marriage is abhorrent.  Strangely, both of these people likely voted Democratic in the last election.
Why are the Democrats able to own the middle, despite their own internal divisions? Two words: Barack Obama. Our president is a masterful politician who was able to scoop away blue-collar values voters, placate progressive activists and reassure businessmen all at the same time.
But what’s next? If Republicans are going to make a run at taking back the legislature they’ll have to fight for the centrists. Senator Specter’s departure is a bad omen, but not a death blow.  If Republicans can place themselves as the party that is prepared to deal with globalization, and the leaner, meaner, freer economic realities associated with it, then they have a chance.
The question of social policy is more dicey. In my opinion, Christians concerned with limiting abortion need to build alliances with those traditionally on the “Religious Left,” who may lean left fiscally, while remaining pro-life. It’s time to divorce the issues we care about from the unsteady alliance embodied in the Republican Party. The party must compromise to survive, even when we can’t.