RFK Jr. and MTG are using the same dismissive term for major-party differences. I took at look at this phenomenon at New York:
Partisan polarization has been steadily growing in the U.S. since roughly the 1960s. Ironically, during this time, the complaint that the two parties are actually too alike has become increasingly prevalent. For years, right-wing Republicans have called people in the GOP who don’t share their exact degree of ideological extremism RINOs, or “Republicans in name only,” suggesting they’re basically Democrats. Left-wing Democrats occasionally echo these epithets by calling (relative) moderates “DINOs,” “ConservaDems,” or — back when maximum resistance to George W. Bush was de rigueur — “Vichy Democrats.”
Today the term “Uniparty” has come to denote the idea that Democrats and Republicans are actually working for the same evil Establishment enterprise, their loudly proclaimed differences being a mere sham. This contention was the culmination of a five-page letter Marjorie Taylor Greene recently sent her Republican colleagues calling for House Speaker Mike Johnson’s removal, unless he changes his ways instantly. She wrote:
“With so much at stake for our future and the future of our children, I will not tolerate this type of ‘leadership.’ This has been a complete and total surrender to, if not complete and total lockstep with, the Democrats’ agenda that has angered our Republican base so much and given them very little reason to vote for a Republican House majority …
“If these actions by the leaders of our conference continue, then we are not a Republican party – we are a Uniparty that is hell-bent on remaining on the path of self-inflicted destruction.”
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also leaned heavily into the Uniparty idea in his recent speech introducing running-mate Nicole Shanahan:
“Our independent run for the presidency is finally going to bring down the Democrat and Republican duopoly that gave us ruinous debt, chronic disease, endless wars, lockdowns, mandates, agency capture, and censorship. This is the same Trump/Biden Uniparty that has captured and appropriated our democracy and turned it over to Blackrock, State Street, Vanguard, and their other corporate donors. Nicole Shanahan will help me rally support for our revolution against Uniparty rule from both ends of the traditional Right vs. Left political spectrum.”
The Uniparty claim is ridiculous, of course, as FiveThirtyEight’s Geoffrey Skelley demonstrates:
“[O]ur current political moment is arguably farther away from having anything resembling a uniparty than at any other time in modern U.S. history. Based on their voting records, Democratic and Republican members of Congress have become increasingly polarized, and both the more moderate and more conservative wings of the congressional GOP have moved to the right at similar rates. Meanwhile, polling suggests that Americans now are more likely to view the parties as distinct from one another than in the past, an indication that the public broadly doesn’t see a uniparty in Washington. Although there are areas where the parties are less divided, the broader uniparty claim is at odds with our highly polarized and divided political era.”
Kennedy’s subscription to the Uniparty notion is understandable on two points. The first is that his candidacy is vastly more likely to tilt the 2024 presidential campaign in the direction of one of the two major-party candidates (likely Donald Trump, according to most of the polling) than to actually succeed in winning the presidency. Maintaining that it really doesn’t matter whether it’s Biden or Trump running the country is essential to maintaining RFK’s appeal as November approaches and the futility of his bid becomes clearer. Second, Kennedy’s pervasive conspiracy-theory approach to contemporary life lends itself to the argument that the apparent gulf between the two major parties is a ruse disguising a sinister common purpose.
MTG’s Uniparty contention also reflects dual motives. In part she is simply echoing Trump’s weird but useful contention that he’s an “outsider” battling a Deep-State Establishment that secretly controls both parties, which is pretty rich since he dominates the GOP like Genghis Khan dominated the Golden Horde. But there is a marginally more legitimate sense in which key elements of the two parties really are in line with each other on isolated issues that happen to obsess Greene, such as aid to Ukraine. If you are a hammer, as the saying goes, everything looks like a nail.
The same is true of other implicit Uniparty claims, particularly those made by progressive pro-Palestinian protesters who adamantly argue that the need to smite “Genocide Joe” Biden for his pro-Israel policies outweighs all the reasons it might be a bad idea to help Trump return to the White House (including the fact that Trump is palpably indifferent to Palestinian suffering). If the two parties do not appear to differ on your overriding issue, then the fundamental reality of polarization can fade into irrelevance.
So we’re likely to hear more Uniparty talk even as Democrats and Republicans head toward another highly fractious election with very high stakes attributable to their differences.
We have seen extreme views on the importance of the “moral values” response to an Exit Poll question. At first it was touted as the main explanation for Bush’s victory. Then the question itself was blasted as poorly framed and practically worthless.
In fact, the question was a useful one for identifying a large and important component of Bush supporters, though it probably did not make the difference between 2000 and 2004, which was largely due to Bush’s connection to 9/11 and fighting terrorism.
But criticisms of the question as invalid miss the mark. It not only showed a large difference between Bush and Kerry voters in the main exit poll, but it did so in a comparison of open and closed questions in a Pew post-election poll, so the original finding was not just a function of question wording. Moreover, the claim that “moral values” was not an issue like the others asked about is incorrect. Was “terrorism” really an issue on which the two candidates differed? Hardly. What the choice of “terrorism” by Bush voters indicated was their view of character: Bush as a strong leader, just as moral values also was taken to indicate character, Bush as a faith-based President. Neither response was an “issue” in the sense that taxes was an issue.
Competing in terms of “moral values” will be important for a future Democratic candidate.
We have seen extreme views on the importance of the “moral values” response to an Exit Poll question. At first it was touted as the main explanation for Bush’s victory. Then the question itself was blasted as poorly framed and practically worthless.
In fact, the question was a useful one for identifying a large and important component of Bush supporters, though it probably did not make the difference between 2000 and 2004, which was largely due to Bush’s connection to 9/11 and fighting terrorism.
But criticisms of the question as invalid miss the mark. It not only showed a large difference between Bush and Kerry voters in the main exit poll, but it did so in a comparison of open and closed questions in a Pew post-election poll, so the original finding was not just a function of question wording. Moreover, the claim that “moral values” was not an issue like the others asked about is incorrect. Was “terrorism” really an issue on which the two candidates differed? Hardly. What the choice of “terrorism” by Bush voters indicated was their view of character: Bush as a strong leader, just as moral values also was taken to indicate character, Bush as a faith-based President. Neither response was an “issue” in the sense that taxes was an issue.
Competing in terms of “moral values” will be important for a future Democratic candidate.
The point about the moral values issue is NOT that it led to a wholesale win by Bush. Rather, the issue motivated people to come out who would not have come out otherwise. Remember, the election was close. A small increase in turnout was all that was needed.
If it motivated an additional 20,000-30,000 to come out, that would be important.
Martin – One answer to your lead-off question is that the largest demographic gain for Bush over his 2000 count was white women. He added about 4 million white women voters to his 2004 popular vote total, which is one way to explain his margin of victory. Other recent studies suggest that these were mostly married women. It would be interesting to know the class breakdown of these women and to get some idea of the issues that motivated them.
I second Mark Fine’s request. Tell us, if it wan’t the Jesusland people who put Bush into office, what crazies did so?
I admire and respect Ruy’s statistical analyses, but I think maybe the Democrats have gone a little overboard in looking at statistics. The same set of statistics can yield a dozen sets of conclusions.
I believe the definitive study that needs to be done will ask a lot of people these questions to gain some valuable qualitative data: did you hear Kerry’s message, did you understand his message, did you believe his message, and if you did all this, was that message or was it not important to you? Why or why not?
I simply cannot understand how rational people could vote for a man who has not really done anything to reduce tensions (he has played upon them and, if anything, increased them), improved the economy, brought any noticeable compassion to his task as he said he would, or been the “unifier” he said he would be.
Does this mean about 50% of the electorate is NOT rational? The explanation of the evangelical and theocon votes going to Bush, blocs that are not necessarily rational or pragmatic, made for a very pat explanation. If not that, then what was it?
Get that study going, somebody.
I think that the backlash against the moral values thesis has been too extreme. “Moral values” is ambiguous, of course, but the fact of the matter is that President Bush received 80% of the votes of the 22% who said that moral values was their most important issue. That suggests that a sizable number of voters interpreted moral values as meaning gay marriage, abortion, etc.