The Illusion of 'Either-Or' Politics

On November 23, 2004, a mere 21 days after the 2004 presidential election, Tod Lindberg’s article “The Illusion of ‘either-or’ politics” appeared in the Washington Times. He claims that the Republican party has yet to come to a satisfying conclusion as to the methods of their victory: by appealing to their base, pumping up turnout especially among evangelical Christians, or by reaching to the middle, where they made gains among women, Catholics, etc”. Lindberg goes on to describe the intraparty struggle amongst both Republicans and Democrats. There are two main factions within each party: the extremists and the moderates. Each faction would like to be in control of the party and therefore wield more power over changing policy, etc. Upon seizing control, there would be only one definition for the party. Lindberg depicts these options as a Democratic “party of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council or the activist left wing that produced the surge of early enthusiasm for Howard Dean? Will Republicans be the party of the religious right or will the more moderate types of the John McCain, Arnold Schwarzenegger or Rudy Giuliani school carry the day?” The appearance of choice is exactly that – an illusion. Lindberg argues that should any party swing to the moderates or the extremists, the dividing party would become a minority party. Secondly, “the prevailing faction would immediately split into two, probably divided over the question of how to bring the losers … back into the fold”. Furthermore, for the good of the party, each individual party tries their hardest to portray their opposing political party as extremists - GOP evangelical Christians and the "characterization of the Democratic party as 'liberal, liberal, liberal' ". The reason for this is because it allows the party to "operate both in maintaining their base and reaching toward the middle." Meanwhile, the moderates within each party try to moderate these hyperbolic views, insisting that they possess more centrist views to try and explicitly garner support from the median voter. Lindberg concludes that the necessity of the median voter will result in President Bush avoiding a hard right stance in favor of a mostly moderate policy scheme because he has such a “broad, majority coalition to manage.” Also, his administration’s success hinges upon “his ability to keep it [the coalition] intact and broaden it for Republicans to go forward.” Lindberg’s assertions closely correlate to Hotelling’s spatial location theory and the median voter theorem. Hotelling argued that within a single issue space with two individuals (or candidates), each candidate will move towards the middle in order to maximize the amount of space to include both their extreme point and at least half of the middle. If an individual does not claim the middle ground, the likely point for his/her competitor is to choose the spot exactly next door so as to take as much of the space as possible. This leapfrogging will occur until both individuals end up in the middle. However, there can be no stable equilibrium if there are more than two individuals (or political parties). Thus, should any faction within the Republican or Democratic party seize power and oust their fellow members, there would most likely be one of two results. Either their members would all surge towards the Republican party, thus returning the space to two individuals and going back to the need to move towards the middle, or three political parties would exist. With three parties, continuous leapfrogging would occur as each party tried to best the other until inevitably two of the parties fused. The parties are well to be confused since it behooves them to change their stances according to the political stage. As discussed in class today, the United States electoral system occurs in two stages: the primary and later the general election. It is generally believed that the primary will garner more support from extremists. As a result, candidates must appeal to the median voter of the party, as opposed to the median voter within of the entire country. It is probable that the party’s median will be farther to the from the middle than the voting populace. After party nominations, candidates scurry towards the middle to gain the most issue space. As a result of our two-stage system, candidates may not be able to actually reach the middle in time for the general election; however, while their absolute proximity is subjective, they do come fairly close, especially when compared to the alternative suggested by public interest theory.