Politics & Government
For Republicans: A moderate platform will garner success
Political Science professor/pollster says former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan has set the standard
By Scott Benjamin
Mileah Kromer says the best way forward for Republicans is not Donald Trump populism but Larry Hogan inclusive moderation that focuses on pocketbook issues, de-emphasizes cultural squabbles and maintains a positive rapport with the Democrats.
Kromer, an associate Political Science professor and director of the Sarah T. Hughes Center for Politics at Goucher College in Maryland, said in a phone interview with Patch.com that the Republican former Maryland governor’s “coalition could be a powerful electoral force for Republicans, because it is broadly appealing. He is “taking issues that unite people instead of divide them.”
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She noted in her 2023 book “Blue-State Republican” that Hogan, who recently completed two terms, made in-roads in attracting support from women and African-Americans in his 2018 re-election campaign. He also reduced tolls and canceled what he considered were wasteful public works projects. He is personally opposed to abortion, but said it is “not a black or white issue.”
Hogan governed in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans two to one.
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Kromer said in the interview that nationally Republicans may face a challenging path forward since the older Millennials who came of voting age during Democratic former President Barack Obama’s tenure are not trending more conservative or Republican as they approach middle age, as had been the case with some earlier generations. She added that Generation Z, which is just becoming old enough to cast ballots, has been voting heavily Democratic.
Hogan announced in a recent New York Times column that he will not seek the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Trump formally announced his entry into the race last November.
“I admire Larry Hogan tremendously,” said Larry Lazor of West Hartford, a physician and the 2022 Republican nominee in Connecticut’s First Congressional District.
Hogan spoke at a fund-raiser last July for Republican former state House Leader Themis Klarides of Madison, who was the GOP convention-endorsed candidate for the U.S. Senate. She lost in the August primary to Leora Levy of Greenwich, who was backed by Trump.
Lazor explained that Hogan has emphasized “trust, good policies and empathy for those not doing well.”
“[Trump] has lost that trust piece,” he remarked, pointing to, among other things, the Republican former president’s denial of the 2020 election results.
Lazor is a moderate, who was praised by Hartford Courant political columnist Kevin Rennie for his “candor” in addressing issues such as Social Security reform.
Shortly after the 2020 presidential election, Wall Street Journal columnist William Galston wrote: “In 2024, some candidates may advocate returning to the party’s pre-Trump stances on fiscal policy, trade and immigration. They are likely to face an uphill battle. So long as working-class economic and cultural concerns play a central role in shaping the party’s agenda, suburban professionals and corporate leaders will be forced to choose between taking a back seat in their party and realigning with the Democrats, whose views on some issues are closer to theirs.”
Said Kromer, “I don’t know if it is remade the Republican Party. Trump’s brand of Republicanism is still there. They made a decision in 2016 to go to a more populist agenda. Those remain part of the Republican Party.”
In her book, she stated that, “It’s still unlikely that Trump-style populism, culture wars and conservative identity politics that appeal predominantly to white voters can win the Electoral College and majorities in Congress, particularly if Republican-led efforts to restrict ballot access are successful.”
Former Connecticut Democratic two-time gubernatorial nominee Bill Curry of Farmington has said that during his two years working in the Clinton White House in the mid-1990s the majority Republicans Congress, particularly in the U.S. House, supported strongly conservative positions and gave former President Clinton room to move into an open middle lane.
Isn’t there a similar avenue for Republicans now under a different configuration with a Democratic president, a small Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate and a small Republican Majority in the House?
Just look at the headline/subheadline to a recent Daniel Henninger Wall Street Journal column: “Joe Biden Is Bernie Sanders . . . Democrats thought a socialist couldn’t win the presidency in 2020. Well, they’ve got one now for 2024.”
The Washington Examiner has reported that former Clinton White House aide Paul Begala has said, “The Democrats have gone from being the party of the factory floor to being the party of the faculty lounge.”
So isn’t there an avenue for the politics of inclusion that Republican former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean personified a generation ago and a path of moderation for Republicans that would produce a 10-pin strike?
“They do have one,” Kromer said. “But they are not taking it.”
“I think there is a growing angst in America – that it is going too far to the left,” Lazor said in a phone interview with Patch.com
“That does create this macro opportunity for the Republicans,” he remarked.
However, hasn’t the Republican Party actually been trending more conservative since 1964 when Barry Goldwater was the presidential nominee and the Rockefeller Republicans began to decline?
Kromer remarked, “Among primary voters [that is true,]” regarding the stronger support for conservative candidates.
“But if you look at the country as a whole, a large swath of the population identifies itself as moderates,” Kromer added. “The extremism gets a lot of media attention, but a lot of the voters are in the middle.”
“Most Republicans are moderate,” remarked Lazor, who noted that there is not one Republican U.S. House member from any of the six New England states
He encouraged the GOP in Connecticut to consider including unaffiliated voters in their primaries. He noted that only about four percent of Connecticut’s eligible voters participated in the state’s 2022 Republican U.S. Senate primary.
On another topic, Financial Times News Editor Matthew Garrahan wrote in a New York Times book review in 2018: “There has been a tectonic shift in America: The unsayable is now regularly said, and often by the commander in chief himself.”
He was apparently implying that you can criticize John McCain’s military record and be rude to Megan Kelly on national television and still be elected president.
“I’m not sure that it is unique to Trump itself,” Kromer exclaimed. “Trump got away with what other Republicans would have never said in previous generations. I don’t know if it is transferable to any other candidate.”
From the late 1970s to the late 2000s, four of the five presidents had been governors – Carter, Reagan, Clinton and W. Bush, and the latter three each served for two terms.
Is governor the best training ground for president?
“I don’t know if I would say that,” Kromer remarked.
“I think one of the reasons that they have been successful [in being elected president] is that they can point to individual executive actions made under the purview of their leadership. “It is a significant platform to talk about issues that you care about.”
For example, she said that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has taken “a lot of executive actions that have received national attention.”
His new book, “The Courage to be Free,” is atop The New York Times best-sellers list and he has been the subject of recent columns by Peggy Noonan of The Wall Street Journal and Gail Collins of The New York Times.
Kromer also directs the Goucher College Poll.
Apparently there has been more distrust in polling since Trump’s surprise victory in 2016.
Audrey McNamara of CBS News reported in 2020, “Nearly four years later, that jarring difference between prediction and outcome is still front of mind, leading some to distrust or disregard political polling. Scott Keeter, senior survey adviser at the Pew Research Center, said there was "understandable surprise on the part of people."
"I think the profession did take a wake-up call," he said of the 2016 election.
McNamara reported that, “National polling was accurate — Clinton ultimately won the popular vote — but according to Keeter, polls in states that proved to be pivotal, such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, had problems.
Kromer remarked, “There are problems within the industry. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to get people on the phone.”
She said that the response rate for her polling is similar to the national average over the recent years, which Pew Research has placed at six to seven percent, topping out at nine percent. Reports have indicated a generation ago it was around 35 percent.
However, Kromer indicated that the “statewide polling, including mine, was really accurate” during the 2020 presidential election.
Will there be more online polling in the future?
“The short answer is yes, more polls will be conducted online,” Kromer elaborated. “But ‘conducted online’ is a really broad term. For example, we use a text-to-web option for part of our cell sample in our polls i.e. it's the same randomly selected telephone number, but some cell respondents are sent a text with a link to the survey.”
Pew Research has stated that, “The key question then becomes: If a new online poll estimate differs noticeably from an older phone estimate, does that signal a real change in public opinion, or is the difference just an artifact of the different mode in which the poll was conducted?”
“They are not crystal balls, but they are snapshots of what the electorate is thinking at that time,” Kromer commented. “Things can change drastically in two weeks.”
She lamented that she does “not have the bandwidth to do focus groups” of voters in the Goucher Poll.
“Focus groups tell you why they think it,” she related. “You want to do both polls and focus groups. One is not more important than the other.”
Kromer added “Taken together, you can really find out where America is at.”
Resources:
Phone interview with Mileah Kromer, Patch.com, Monday, February 20, 2023.
Mileah Kromer, Blue-State Republican, 2023, Temple University Press, 189 pages.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fa...
https://www.pewresearch.org/fa...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/02/books/review/yes-we-still-can-dan-pfeiffer.html
https://patch.com/connecticut/...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/2016-polls-president-trump-clinton-what-went-wrong/
https://www.washingtonexaminer...
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/08/opinion/trump-desantis-president-election.html
https://www.wsj.com/articles/r...
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/05/opinion/larry-hogan-president-2024.html
Bill Curry, interview, November 2000.
