Republican voters are purists, not pragmatists

Opinion editor's note: Star Tribune Opinion publishes a mix of national and local commentaries online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

•••

Republicans have been responsible for every extended government shutdown in U.S. history, and they will probably add to their total this fall. The latest New York Times/Siena College poll helps explain why: Republican voters tend to have outlandish or even impossible expectations for their politicians — and pointless confrontation, such as a government shutdown, is a way for elected officials to get around the incompatibility of these preferences.

The basic problem is straightforward: Republican voters dislike pragmatism yet tend not to have a strong attachment to a specific policy agenda. So they're not interested in cutting deals to achieve incremental progress on any given issue.

That Republican voters are more purists than pragmatists isn't necessarily news. But the new polling confirms it. Six of 10 Republicans prefer a candidate who agrees with them on the issues to one with a better chance of winning. A similar number also prefers a candidate who is "more conservative than most Republicans" to one who is more moderate.

Exactly what "more conservative" means is complicated. For example, one might think from all the rhetoric coming from conservative House Republicans that cutting spending and reducing the deficit were important ideological goals. And yet, in a proportion of 2 to 1, Republicans in the poll prefer keeping Social Security and Medicare benefits intact to reducing the budget deficit.

To some extent, this is a paradox that plagues both parties; voters like spending cuts in the abstract, but support more spending on almost every specific government program. The difference is that, when it comes to governing, Democratic voters do not demand that the party deliver on both (incompatible) agenda items. Republican voters do.

The combination of unclear or incoherent policy demands with a strong preference for confrontation over bargaining helps explain the behavior of House Republicans: They see hostage-taking as a principle, with ransom demands secondary. That's what happened in the debt-limit fight earlier this year, and it's probably what will happen over government spending bills this fall, with the threat of a shutdown as the current hostage.

For the party as a whole, there's no path to victory here. Eventually there will have to be spending bills that pass with bipartisan support, just as the debt-limit bill passed with the votes of both parties' leaders. That's the only way things can get done in a divided government. No matter how long an impasse might last, spending bills will pass, the government will reopen and — as was the case with the debt-limit deal — House radicals and Republican-aligned media outlets will claim that the Republican leadership sold them out. That's a recipe for minimal policy gains for the party, while some individual members of the House reap rewards.

What's less clear is whether the impetus here comes from voters themselves, or from the Republican-aligned media they listen to (as Greg Sargent points out, Republicans with the most irresponsible positions get their information mainly from partisan sources. It's possible that Fox News and other TV networks, radio shows and podcasts are creating the Republican electorate's opinions. It's also possible that those outlets are only giving those voters what they want — and if they didn't, the audience would move on to even more irresponsible media.

Most likely, it's some combination of both: Republican voters and Republican-aligned media are egging each other on.

Whatever the mix, the result is that it is hard for congressional leaders or any other party actors to move policy incrementally in their preferred direction. And that almost certainly means there is more irresponsible governing ahead, with a greater chance of yet another government shutdown.