The Ideology to Bipartisanship Ratio

by: Chris Bowers

Sat Nov 24, 2007 at 18:26


Back on the day Open Left launched, I produced a piece called The Self-Identified Progressive candidate, which looked at how often Democratic candidate websites used the term "progressive." My basic theory was that "if you can't say it, you can't do it." In other words, unless a candidate was willing to as measly self-identify as a progressive, the most popular ideological term in America, it was unlikely s/he would be willing to stand with progressives in more politically important situations once s/he becomes President.

Here is an update on that post, but with a twist. In addition to the number of times each candidate self-identifies as a progressive on his or her website, here are the number of times the word "bipartisan," is used:

Every Democratic website, expect Biden's, uses the word "progressive" significantly more often than it uses the word "bipartisan." Also, with the exception of Dennis Kucinich, who recently switched websites, every candidate increased the number of times the word "progressive" appears on his or her wesbite. Both of those are positive developments, if you ask me.

Now, here are the Republican numbers, focusing on the words "conservative" and "bipartisan":

What is this meant to prove? While both Democrats and Republicans use the language of ideology more often than they use the language of bipartisanship, Republicans are particularly unlikely to use bipartisan rhetoric. Consider the following rankings of the fourteen candidates, ordered according the ideology / bipartisan ratio on their websites:


  • Huckabee: 60.00
  • Romney: 41.30
  • Paul: 26.50
  • Giuliani: 25.86
  • Thompson: 24.00
  • Kucinich: 10.50
  • McCain: 8.82
  • Tancredo: 8.50
  • Richardson: 6.93
  • Edwards: 5.66
  • Obama: 1.84
  • Dodd: 1.77
  • Clinton: 1.64
  • Biden: 0.15

With the exception of Kucinich, every single Republican candidate is more likely than every Democrat to use ideological language than bi-partisan language (and five Republican candidates use at least twice as much ideological language as Kucinich). John McCain, that great bi-partisan Republican, uses ideological language about as often as Dennis Kucinich, more than Edwards and Richardson, and five times more than Obama, Dodd and Clinton. Giuliani uses ideological language instead of bipartisan language three times more often McCain, Romney does so five times more often, and Huckabee does to seven times more often.

It is interesting that, even when they are now repeatedly losing elections a facing large poll deficits, Republicans are still less likely to talk about bipartisanship than Democrats. It is also worth asking Democrats who they will be bi-partisan with, given that no Republicans ever even promise to be bipartisan. Clearly, there is no bi-partisanship when it comes to the language of bi-partisanship.

Chris Bowers :: The Ideology to Bipartisanship Ratio

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The Ideology to Bipartisanship Ratio | 12 comments
A Phase Transition? (0.00 / 0)
Although I'm not sure you could identify it with such a crude--though effective--measure, I think there's an additional significant phenomena that deserves consideration: the changing significance of words depending on context.

My thesis is simple: if you're talking about "conservative" or "progressive" ideas, principles, policies, etc. all the time, and then throw in a "bi-partisan" that mention of the word is conditioned by the context.  But if you're talking about "bi-partisan" cooperation all the time, then it's the words "conservative" or "progressive" that are conditioned by the context.

These things really do have meaning.  A "bipartisan" conservative, for example, would vote for SCHIP in a heartbeat.  Decades of General Social Survey data show that a majority of conservatives support this sort of spending, not just the SCHIP program in particular.

Anyway, my point is that I think the use of such language differs at different levels of concentration, reflecting an underlying difference in terms of what concept is defiining the context, and what concept is being re-defined by the context.  A good first-approximation would be to look at the 1:1 ration as the cut-point, but as I said, I don't think you can do this using such a crude measure.  What matters is the actual structure of how ideas are articulated. 

This is not just about how proud or certain a candidate is of their identity, it about the very nature of that identity.  This is the thing that Obama just doesn't get, for example, when he fails to distinguish between working with ordinary conservatives versus highly partisan ones.  The former share a lot more in common with progressive Democrats than the latter do.  The former want to increase SCHIP funding, for example, while the later do not.  But this same sort of distinction holds true across a whole range of different issues. Ron Paul, for example, opposses even allowing such programs to continue to exist--a position that's held by less than 0.2% of all Americans.

I don't have any problem with bipartisan language deployed to peel away the vast majority of conservatives to support our social spending agendas.  But that's quite different from how such language is all too often used.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

Do you have a background in the physical sciences? (0.00 / 0)
You seem to talk with a lot of the language that someone in physics would use.
[ Parent ]
Math, More Than Science (0.00 / 0)
Plus my interest in recursion goes back to childhood. I've just always been fascinated by such things.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3
[ Parent ]
Kudos (0.00 / 0)
Your analysis is very nicely done.  Actual dichotomies are hard to find, but the way the whole lot of the republicans outstrip the whole lot of the democrats on the index of ideology to bipartisanship ratio is a really telling fact. 

And it captures something that seems intuitively true about the differences within the democratic field.

Bravo.

Ump

one obvious possibility (0.00 / 0)
Is that, given the structure of the government and their desires to pass positive laws, Democrats are much more likely to need Republican votes to realize their agenda. 

Another is that, having been shut out of power, Democrats are willing to compromise to win while Republicans are arrogant.  I remember Bush talking about cooperating with Democrats in Texas a lot more in 1999/2000.  This is consistent with the odd fact that the Republicans all going to the right to win their primaries. 



New Jersey politics at Blue Jersey.

who will they compromise with? (0.00 / 0)
Is what you ask at the end.  Obviously, if a Democrat wins the Presidency [with independent voters], there is no compromise with the defeated Republican.  The compromise is with senate moderates. 

A little experiment of looking at Arlen Specter and Olympia Snowe's senate sites will find zillions of "bipartisan" and "moderate" and very little "conservative."  Specter's conservative hits, for example, tend to refer to other people, like Larry Craig.

Similarly, looking at my Frank LoBiondo (NJ2) campaign website, the only mention of "conservative" is in a sentence saying he is fiscally conservative (ha) and a "moderate" on most social issues. 

I hope you will look to see how many Republican senators are open to compromise in this way.  As you know, life is easier with 60 votes in 2009, but there won't be 60 Dems.


New Jersey politics at Blue Jersey.

Clinton hardly says "progressive" because that term is (0.00 / 0)
anathema to Mark Penn's conservative, corporate agenda.

For some reason, it seems that Obama has some pathological and deep-seated psychological need for Republicans to like him.  Seriously.  It's weird.
Great post (0.00 / 0)
Makes things clearer to me!
The Ideology to Bipartisanship Ratio | 12 comments
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