Below The Beltway

Since 1980, political pundits have talked about the so-called Republican Lock….the fact that Republican Presidential candidates since 1968 have, for the most part, dominated the Southern and Western United States. If Ryan Sager is right, though, part of that coalition may be about to defect.

[I]t’s looking more and more likely that the eight states of the Southwest and the broader interior West — Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — are on their way to becoming the next great swing region in American politics. As the Republican Party tilts on its South-West axis, increasingly favoring southern values (religion, morality, tradition) over western ones (freedom, independence, privacy), the Democrats have been presented with a tremendous opportunity. If the Republican Party doesn’t want to lose its hold over all of the West, as it lost hold of once-reliable California more than a decade ago, its leaders are going to have to rethink their embrace of big-government, big-religion conservatism.

Sager cites three issues contributing to the defection of the Western wing of the GOP:

First, take religion. Generally, as progressive Paul Waldman points out in his new book, Being Right Is Not Enough, Republican strongholds have lots of evangelicals, Democratic strongholds have very few, and swing states are in between. By this rule of thumb, the Southwest fits neatly into the “swing” category. But so does the interior Northwest, which is typically considered more socially conservative and more solidly Republican. Evangelicals make up between 29 percent and 33 percent of the population in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming — figures much closer to California’s 28 percent or Maine’s 26 percent than to Virginia’s 41 percent or Texas’s 51 percent.

Second, take the growth of the Hispanic population. It’s no secret that the West is becoming more Hispanic, and Hispanics tend to cast their ballots for Democrats. Republicans made a lot of noise after the 2004 election about their inroads with this population, and initial exit polls showed Bush taking 44 percent of the Hispanic vote nationwide. But later, more careful reviews deflated that figure to 40 percent or less, with much of Bush’s support clustered in Texas and Florida. What’s more, whatever gains Bush has made among Hispanics seem to begin and end with him. Hispanic party identification consistently registers roughly two to one in favor of the Democrats, and hasn’t shown any major swing toward the GOP under Bush. Continuing growth of the Hispanic population in the interior West is bad news for Republicans.

And third, take the growth of what might be called the ex-Californian population. The congested, generally liberal population centers of California are overflowing — and as they do, it’s as if a bucket of blue paint were spilling over the West. More than 400,000 Arizonans and 360,000 Nevadans were born in California. The thinly populated mountain West states are slowly taking on a left-coast character as well: as of the last census, 122,000 native Californians lived in Idaho (total population 1.3 million) while 47,000 lived in Montana (900,000) and 21,000 lived in Wyoming (490,000).

In other words, its all a matter of where you choose to live. But that’s only part of the story, there’s also an ideological difference in the West that the GOP appears to be completely abandoning:

To give a small sample of the results recounted in my book: Almost twice as many people in the interior West say that religion is “not that important to me” as say the same in the South (30 percent versus 17 percent); both the Pacific Coast and the Northeast also hover at around 30 percent on that question. On gay rights, only 39 percent of southerners think homosexuality “should be accepted by society,” while 53 percent in the interior West support tolerance of gays. (That figure bumps up to 60 percent on the Pacific Coast and in the Northeast.) Similarly, 53 percent of southerners think public-school libraries should ban “books that contain dangerous ideas,” versus 44 percent in the interior West.

In other words, while the interior West is just as fiscally conservative as the South, it is clearly more socially libertarian. (Other hints on this front include medical marijuana laws out West, resolutions against the Patriot Act passed by legislatures out West and a rebellion against the No Child Left Behind Act by Colorado and Utah.) And as the Republican Party embraces the big government it once fought against, and increasingly stakes its political fortunes on cultural hot-buttons such as gay marriage and flag burning, libertarian-minded voters are up for grabs.

So where do these libertarian Westerners go ? Some would have them go to the Democratic Party:

Markos Moulitsas, proprietor of Daily Kos, says he is writing a book on “libertarian Democrats” and has made it clear that he sees the Mountain West as a key opportunity for the party. Liberal political science professor Tom Schaller has written a book, Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South. His short answer: by winning the rest of the West.

Honing a Democratic message out West that appeals to disaffected, libertarian-minded Republicans won’t be easy. Issues like guns, the environment and the longstanding association of Democrats with big government will all be roadblocks.

As interesting an idea as “libertarian Democrats” might sound, this piece at Cato@Liberty shows that there is far less to the idea than meets the eye.

Republicans have taken their libertarian wing for granted for a long time. The social conservative wing of the party would, most likely, just as soon not have them around to begin with. Now it appears that they may learn what not having them around really means.

H/T: Outside The Beltway