The idea has gotten around that Republicans lost the 2006 election because they weren’t conservative enough. At National Review‘s conservative summit, Jeb Bush, the ex-Florida governor, said as much: “Sadly, in Washington, Republicans have lost their way. We have become timid.” He said Republicans have abandoned conservative reform. House minority leader John Boehner has said roughly the same thing. So has Rep. John Shadegg of Arizona. And so have an army of disgruntled conservatives.
It’s true that congressional Republicans would have helped themselves last fall if they’d championed the reforms listed by Bush–Social Security, health care, education–and moved on congressional and immigration reform as well. But they would have lost the election anyway, the House for sure, and perhaps the Senate. And it wasn’t because Republicans weren’t conservative enough.
Conservative voters had plenty to be unhappy about, particularly excessive spending by the then-Republican Congress and the growth of the federal government. Many conservatives detest President Bush’s education and immigration policies. But it wasn’t conservatives who flipped in the election. They showed up and voted for Republicans. It was independents who jumped to the Democrats. They tend to be nonideological swing voters, not the type who would ditch Republicans because they weren’t conservative enough.
Look at the numbers, tedious as that may be. First, the decline in the share of Republicans who voted for Republican House candidates was minimal: 91 percent in 2006, the same as in 2000, and only marginally less than 93 percent in 2004. What this means is that the Republican base voted for Republicans. And who makes up that base? Conservatives.
More specifically, of self-identified conservatives, 78 percent voted for Republican House candidates, down from 81 percent in 2004 and 80 percent in 2000. This is not a statistically significant dropoff. That was not the case with independents, who gave Republican House candidates 46 percent of their votes in 2004 but only 39 percent in 2006. That is a pretty significant dip. The Democratic share of the independent vote jumped from 47 percent in 2000 and 49 percent in 2004 to 57 percent last year.
Independents are a large voting bloc in the inner suburbs. And the overall vote for House candidates in these suburbs of the nation’s top 50 metropolitan areas rose from 53 percent Democratic in 2002 to 60 percent in 2006. Republicans held their own last year among regular church attendees, who are generally conservative. But they lost ground among secular voters, those who never go to church or synagogue. The Democratic share of the secular vote in House races climbed from 58 percent in 2000 to 60 percent in 2004, then to a new high of 67 percent in 2006. Secular voters include many independents.
And look who lost in the election. It wasn’t chiefly conservatives, who may or may not have been unflaggingly conservative. Aside from those House members tainted by corruption (or at least charges of wrong doing), the biggest victims were Republican moderates in districts with a sizable bloc of independents and soft Republicans, who are the functional equivalent of independents.
Start with House Republicans in Connecticut, where two (Nancy Johnson, Rob Simmons) out of three moderates were defeated. Moderates Charlie Bass in New Hampshire and Sue Kelly of New York lost. Another loser was Jim Leach of Iowa, a preeminent moderate. Open moderate seats previously held by Republicans, such as the border district in Arizona where Jim Kolbe retired, were also won by Democrats. And the list goes on.
The percentage of people who identify themselves as moderates in exit polls varies from election to election. Last year, it reached 47 percent of the electorate. And Democratic House candidates won 61 percent of that group, up from 56 percent in 2004 and 53 percent in 2000. It’s safe to say moderate deserters from the Republican fold were not motivated by the absence of full-throated conservatism among Republican candidates.
In truth, Republicans lost for the obvious reasons: Iraq and corruption, but also the poor performance of congressional Republicans. Iraq was the single biggest factor. Wars without victory in sight invariably damage the party in power.
So conservatives should stop flagellating themselves. It’s certainly preferable for them to stick to conservative principles. But doing so wouldn’t have averted a bad election outcome last year. What conservatives should remember is the Republican party is a center-right party. And the problem in 2006 was that the center did not hold.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
