Michael Barone: ...the Republican Party is the party of people who are considered, by themselves and by others, as normal Americans—Northern white Protestants in the 19th century, married white Christians more recently—while the Democratic Party is the party of the out groups who are in some sense seen, by themselves and by others, as not normal—white Southerners and Catholic immigrants in the 19th century, blacks and white seculars more recently. Thus it's natural for the Democrats to be more fissiparous.
He's right on one point, if horribly impolitic about it. For most of the time since the Civil War, the Republican Party has been the "default" party for northern white protestants. This is why so many of my relatives are still Republicans even though they no longer necessarily agree with the direction of the GOP. Our family became Republicans with Lincoln, and, over the years, that association has (largely) stuck.
With Barone, however, you can't help but think that he thinks the decline of "normal Americans" is a crying shame. His attitude seems rather like a friend of mine's after a trip to California, "There's no normal Americans out there. It's like a foreign country." As Jon Chait put it, "Barone was probably just trying to find another way to work in his oft-stated belief that Democrats are a bunch of freaks disconnected from middle America."
Yes. Which is also why the Democrats have won the last two elections overwhelmingly, and have been building to a majority for nearly twenty years. Barone's view does explain the posture of the GOP, which seems to see itself as the final redoubt of "normal-Americanism," a self-designation to which it clings ever more fiercely even as its numbers dwindle, which, in a nutshell, is why the Democrats been winning and the GOP has been losing.
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