Why the Republican Establishment Doesn't Care Much about Centrism in Primary Contests

Originally published in the Mischiefs of Faction blog.

By Jonathan M. Ladd

We are nearing the end of primary season in this congressional election year. As in 2010 and 2012, many Republican primaries were contests between candidates backed by party establishment and insurgents associated with the Tea Party movement. The response of many commentators has been to point out that the policy differences between these two types of candidates is minimal because both types take very similar public policy positions.

I really hate to pick on Jon Stewart, but his coverage of the Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's Kentucky primary win was an example of this. Stewart poked fun at the fact that while McConnell, whom he described as "the ultimate mainstream establishment Republican," defeated his Tea Party-affiliated primary opponent, Matt Bevin, McConnell didn't seem to disagree with Bevin on any significant issue. Stewart concluded, "It doesn't seem like the Tea Party lost, so much as found a new host."

Discussing the Republican Senate primary in Mississippi, which is headed for a runoff, Jonathan Chait notes that incumbent Thad Cochran and Tea Party-backed challenger Chris McDaniel seem to agree on everything. Chait describes the race as a...

"...Senate primary between incumbent Thad Cochran, a hard-line conservative who votes with his party on everything, and challenger Chris McDaniel, a hard-line conservative who will also vote with his party on everything but will say a bunch of crazy stuff as well."

In Georgia, Saxby Chambliss decided not to run for reelection at least partially because he worried that he was perceived as insufficiently radical to survive a primary challenge. Yet in the May 20 Senate Republican primary, businessman David Perdue as well as House Appropriations Committee member and  vice-chair of the Republican Conference Jack Kingston came in first and second to qualify for the July runoff. They defeated multiple Tea Party challengers, including former Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel, who was endorsed by national conservative pundits like Sarah Palin and Erick Erickson. The candidate with the most establishment connections is Kingston. Yet he has shown no hesitation making sure no other candidate can get to his right ideologically. Ed Kilgore has been following the race and reports that Kingston "has dealt with the RINO label by running an aggressively right-wing campaign." Kilgore goes on:

"If ]Kingston's] not attacking The Welfare, he’s holding an imaginary conversation with Obama in which he refuses to 'back off on Obamacare.' He’s lately been emphasizing his long-time support for that ancient wingnut boob-bait panacea, the Fair Tax (a highly regressive national sales tax scheme), and his every communication is emblazoned with the spurious National Journal rating that gives him 'the most conservative voting record in the race'...As I keep insisting, if the Establishment 'wins' simply by preempting the Tea Party’s issue positions and chest-thumping radicalism, then who is really winning?"

It does seem that the party establishment cares little about centrist policy positions. Should this be surprising? If they don't care about relative moderation, what do party insiders care about in nomination battles? I have a few thoughts on what might be going on here.

A simple version of the Downsian or Hotelling model of elections would predict that candidates always move to the ideological center in order to win the most votes. This is the well known "median voter theorem." But while this is an elegant way to start thinking about elections, it is certainly incomplete. (Downs' book doesn't even predict full convergence because he says activists at the fringes will not participate if that happens.) The literature on candidate convergence is far too extensive to review here, but lets just say that the evidence is mixed at best. It is true that members of Congress whose ideology matches their district are more likely to get elected and then win reelection. But usually we still observe substantial divergence between the Democratic and Republican candidates.

One reason is that parties care about more than winning. Party coalitions want to get control of government in order to enact certain policies, not as an end in itself. Party insiders are almost always not completely soulless hacks who care only about winning. Candidates who find themselves in the position of establishment figures would not have gotten into politics if they did not care about the issues their party stands for. Most party politicians, whether currently in the establishment or relative outsiders, got started in politics through connections to some of the policy demanding groups that make up the party's coalition. That's why, when politicians change positions, it is usually not to cater to the median voter but to respond to changes in their party's interest group coalition.

Second, leaders in the party (politicians and donors) may prefer experienced candidates not because they are more moderate but because political experience gives you a much better chance to win. Incumbents have an electoral advantage at pretty much all levels of government. Short of being an incumbent, candidates who have won a lower elected office in the past do better in elections than those who haven't. In addition to being better at raising money and the logistics of running a general election campaign, experienced politicians are less likely to make the embarrassing gaffes that plagued some Republican Senate candidates in 2012.
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Third and finally, party leaders may be concerned that, even though they take the same policy positions, insurgent congressional candidates will be unwilling to follow their party's legislative strategies for achieving those goals. Parties in Congress operate as legislative teams or cartels in order to achieve their policy goals. Leaders may legitimately worry that an outsider may take showy actions (like symbolic filibusters with no legislative effects) that make news but are either no help or counterproductive to achieving those shared goals.

In summary, primary contests between those backed by the party establishment and the Tea Party are important, even when the candidates end up taking the same positions on the campaign trail. There are important differences between these candidates and the Party has good reasons to prefer the former.

[Update (6/11/14): This post was written the day before Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor's (VA-12) surprise primary loss to economics professor David Brat. Yet I think its main points hold up pretty well even in that example. There are far bigger differences between Cantor and Brat on tactics and style than on positions over active legislative controversies. And Brat's lack of campaign skills is already evident, even though that won't necessarily prevent him from winning the district's general election.]