George Hawley
When Republicans battle for presidential nominations, we expect candidates to compete for the mantle of “true conservative,” or more specifically, “Ronald Reagan conservative.” Candidates use every opportunity to lambast their opponents for their apparent lack of conservative purity. The 2016 GOP primary was different; Donald Trump chose not to play that game and was pilloried by the conservative intelligentsia. Leading conservatives apparently believed the modal Republican voter was a “true conservative,” dedicated to constitutional government, limited intervention in the economy, traditional family values, and neoconservative foreign policies. Thus, they thought pointing out Trump’s ideological impurity would derail his candidacy. To these conservatives’ frustration, their attacks did not matter. They did not matter because Republicans in the electorate care about conservative principles far less than conservatives in the Beltway believed. The public’s conservatism, as the conservative movement understands the term, is more symbolic than substantive.
The conservative attacks on Trump began early in the campaign. Some preceded the announcement of his candidacy. The conservative radio show host Mark Levin declared Trump a nonconservative in 2011.1 That same year, the conservative blogger and activist Andrew Breitbart expressed concern that Trump might run for president as a Republican, which was a problem because Trump was “not a conservative.”2 In the months leading up to Trump’s announcement of his candidacy, conservative pundits mocked the idea. In April 2015, when asked to place a bet on which candidate would likely become the Republican nominee, George Will said he was willing to give Trump a 1 percent chance “in the hope that he will be tempted to run, be predictably shellacked, and we will be spared ever more this quadrennial charade of his.”3 The next day, Jonah Goldberg wrote the following: “All I see is a guy who’s been preening for attention with bogus talk about running for president for years who’s deeply offended that nobody believes him or cares anymore.”4 When Trump formally became a candidate, the conservative columnist Kevin D. Williamson described Trump as a “witless ape” with a “messiah complex.” Williamson then remarked, “The problem with messiah complexes is that there’s no way to know whether you are going to rise on the third day unless somebody crucifies you. Trump has announced, and I say we get started on that.”5
Attacks on Trump’s lack of consistent conservatism increased after he formally threw his hat into the presidential ring. The popular and influential radio personality Glenn Beck declared in June 2015: “He is a progressive, and you can prove that by the things that he believes in. A progressive believes in high tariffs. A progressive believes the government is the answer. Donald Trump has shown time and time again he believes the government is the problem, and if it is run properly, it is the answer. That’s what a progressive believes.”6 A few days later, the conservative journalist John Fund questioned whether Trump was a closet leftist: “But just maybe Trump is a double agent for the Left. He is nearly a cartoon version of what a comedian such as Stephen Colbert considers a conservative—the kind of conservative Colbert played on Comedy Central until this year. He reinforces all the Left’s negative stereotypes of conservatives as ignorant blowhards.”7 Later in that article, Fund clarified that he did not think Trump was literally a left-wing double agent; instead, “he is playing the useful idiot for the Left. He might as well be doing it on purpose.” Michael Reagan, son of Ronald Reagan, made a similar remark, saying, “The liberal media treasure Trump even more because he spends so much time helping them discredit the Republican Party and conservatism.”8
Writing in The Atlantic in early July, Conor Friedersdorf pointed out that Trump has an amazing ability to switch positions on a dime and make contradictory statements with what can appear to be passion and sincerity: “He seems as if he is fearlessly stating his core convictions, consequences be damned, even when he is being a shameless poseur.”9 Matt Walsh, a popular conservative blogger, not only attacked Trump but also attacked all self-described conservatives who supported him: “Like Obama voters in 2008, you have become not proponents of a set of ideas, but advocates for an individual. You are supporters of personality, not policy. This is particularly true in your case, because Trump’s policies are either: A) non-existent, or B) completely anathema to anything that could possibly be considered conservatism.”10
Anti-Trump sentiment reached a peak when National Review, weeks before the Iowa caucus, dedicated an entire issue to denouncing Donald Trump. The cover dramatically carried the words “Against Trump.” The magazine made the entire issue available for free online. The issue drew from a wide range of thinkers on the right. The first signed essay of the symposium was written by the talk show host Glenn Beck (who endorsed Ted Cruz for the nomination). Beck is one of the most influential conservative talk show hosts in the United States. The issue also included the talk show hosts Michael Medved and Erick Erickson. Many of the contributors were leaders of the neoconservative wing of the movement, such as William Kristol and John Podhoretz. Thomas Sowell, perhaps the most celebrated living conservative scholar, also wrote an essay. There was even a nonconservative contributor—David Boaz, who is the executive vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute. The ecumenical nature of the issue demonstrated that there were strong reasons to oppose Trump, regardless of where one belonged within the big tent that is American conservatism.
In the unsigned editorial that began the issue, National Review made it very clear that conservatives of all stripes must resist the temptation to support Trump, and did so in the harshest terms: “Trump is a philosophically unmoored political opportunist who would trash the broad conservative ideological consensus within the GOP in favor of a free-floating populism with strong-man overtones.”11 The essay went on to describe the damage a Trump nomination would cause conservatism in almost apocalyptic tones: “If Trump were to become the president, the Republican nominee, or even a failed candidate with strong conservative support, what would that say about conservatives? The movement that ground down the Soviet Union and took the shine, at least temporarily, off socialism would have fallen in behind a huckster. The movement concerned with such ‘permanent things’ as constitutional government, marriage, and the right to life would have become a claque for a Twitter feed.”12
Many of these same charges were repeated in the signed essays that followed. The various arguments were not always in agreement with each other, and many seemed contradictory. Several contributors noted that Trump was, and may still be, a liberal. Katie Pavlich noted, “Trump’s liberal positions aren’t in the distant past—he has openly promoted them on the campaign trail. Trump isn’t fighting for anyone but himself, which has been his pattern for decades.”13 Mona Charen asked, “Is Trump a liberal? Who knows? He played one for decades—donating to liberal causes and politicians (including Al Sharpton) and inviting Hillary Clinton to his (third) wedding.”14
Trump was also chastised for reasons unrelated to his history of liberal positions—some of which he never disavowed. Two essays attacked him for his “populism,” which is ostensibly incompatible with conservatism. Two essays compared Trump to Mussolini. Hitler’s name was brought up three times. He was also called a racist. Medved noted that Trump’s candidacy would only strengthen the Left’s argument that the conservative movement was largely motivated by racial animus: “Even those who take Trump at his word—accepting his declaration that he qualifies as the least racist individual in the nation—can imagine the parade of negative ads the Democrats are already preparing for radio stations with mainly black audiences and for Spanish-language television.”15 Beyond the mere political calculation, Russell Moore argued that conservatives should reject Trump’s rhetoric on women and minorities out of principle: “Beyond that, Trump’s vitriolic—and often racist and sexist—language about immigrants, women, the disabled, and others ought to concern anyone who believes that all persons, not just the ‘winners’ of the moment, are created in God’s image.”16
The charge that Donald Trump is not a movement conservative is unquestionably true. He has never shown any interest in conservative political theory, nor does he lambast policy proposals purely because they are not congruent with conservative ideas. According to conventional wisdom, this was supposed to hinder his ability to capture the Republican nomination. Those who follow national politics often assume that the kind of person who regularly votes in a Republican primary is a conservative who is looking for the most conservative candidate that can plausibly win the general election. When conservative opinion leaders assess what ails the Republican Party, a common refrain is that the party has abandoned its conservative principles, and to abandon conservative principles is to “betray” the voters who put Republicans in power.17
This view has some support. A Gallup poll conducted in late 2015 showed that 60 percent of Republicans wanted the GOP to nominate a candidate who was either conservative or very conservative.18 But leading figures of the conservative movement may not define conservatism the same as your average voter. To assume that the average Republican voter is familiar with the conservative canon, understands the argument that there is a logical connection between free markets and tradition, or can even identify which specific policies are associated with conservatism requires overestimating the electorate’s political sophistication.
There is evidence that many Republicans in office agree with the idea that their base of support is conservative across the policy spectrum, on economics, social issues, and foreign policy. They fear the wrath of talk radio. There is also a real fear that an elected Republican can be defeated in a primary for angering certain elements of the conservative base; Eric Cantor’s 2014 primary defeat at the hands of a political neophyte seemed to demonstrate this. Nevertheless, the notion that pure conservatism is a common trait among Republican voters, let alone the overall population, is questionable.
There has long been a disconnect between how pundits and other strong ideologues in the media view the ideological inclinations of the electorate and how political scientists view these same convictions. No one with a passing familiarity with the political science literature on American electoral behavior will be surprised to learn that ideological purity is a rare trait among voters. Yet the failure of Republican primary voters to repudiate Trump’s ideological inconsistency is apparently shocking to many opinion leaders. In 1964, Philip Converse published an influential article that investigated the degree to which mass publics exhibited ideological “constraints,” which he defined as “the probability that a change in the perceived status (truth, desirability, and so forth) of one idea-element would psychologically require, from the point of view of the actor, some compensating change(s) in the status of idea-elements elsewhere in the configuration.”19 In other words, logically, a person’s views on one issue should correlate with his or her views on related issues, and a changing attitude on one of those issues should correlate with changes in the others. In his empirical examination, Converse found that there was shockingly little evidence that much of the population exhibited these kinds of logical constraints. Only at the elite level do we ever find coherent political belief systems. In the subsequent decades, a great deal of research provided additional evidence for Converse’s argument.20
Not all scholars agreed with Converse’s conclusions,21 and one can reasonably argue that ideological consistency in the electorate has increased.22 As elites have become more polarized and are thus giving more consistent ideological cues to the public, the public also seems to have become more consistent in its ideological stances.23 But the assumption that ideology should be treated as a one-dimensional scale (running between liberal and conservative) may also be problematic, and if it is, such a finding creates a new source of headaches for scholars who wish to carefully examine this issue.24 At the elite level there tends to be a strong correlation between conservative attitudes on economic issues and conservative attitudes on social issues, but this correlation is weaker among the general public.25
Although it is reasonable to say that most Americans are not consistent ideologues, it may be unfair to claim that they have no meaningful political attitudes or that their attitudes are cobbled together in a haphazard manner. Stephen Ansolabehere and his colleagues made a compelling argument that policy issues play an important role in shaping vote choice.26 Alan Abramowitz and Kyle Saunders additionally found that ideological orientation, as opposed to social identity, has become an increasingly important determinant of party identification.27 Even so, the growing congruence between ideological stance and party ID has not really translated into new constraints when it comes to issues—when we look at most peoples’ list of policy preferences, we still see very little logical coherence across multiple issues.28
In spite of new caveats, Converse’s thesis still holds up pretty well.29 There is evidence that some of the perceived lack of political sophistication within the electorate is due to poor wording of survey questions and measurement errors on the part of political scientists.30 But even if we take this into account, we continue to find that hard-core ideologues, with consistently conservative or liberal policy preferences, are not the norm. A 2008 study by David E. RePass found that only about 7.4 percent of potential voters were both strong conservatives and strong Republicans.31 Hillygus and Shields examined what they called “cross-pressured voters,” those voters with policy preferences that are not aligned with the platform of their preferred party. They concluded that more than a quarter of “partisans embrace issue positions that are inconsistent with their preferred political party.”32 Donald Kinder and Nathan Kalmoe also weighed in on this debate. In their 2017 book, Neither Liberal nor Conservative, these political scientists revisited Converse’s hypothesis, using a massive amount of public opinion data. They concluded that Converse’s theory is just as valid today as it was in the 1960s.33
Even if we could find congruence between policy preferences and vote choice and party identification, however, our concerns about the reasonability of the electorate may not be alleviated. People may not determine their party identification or their vote choice based on policy considerations. Instead, once their party identification is well established, their policy preferences subsequently become aligned with the positions taken by their preferred party.34 To complicate this issue even further, the direction of the causal arrow on this question may not be consistent over time; during some periods, policy preferences seem to drive party identification, and during other periods, the relationship appears to be reversed.35
Resolving these issues is well beyond the scope of this chapter. I bring up these debates because some of the best political science research gives us a strong reason to be suspicious of the claim that the modal Republican voter is a strong conservative, and that conservatism is what drives his or her party identification and vote choice. To a limited extent, major figures associated with the conservative movement have also acknowledged this; within the conservative movement, at least among intellectual conservatives, it is recognized that there is a meaningful difference between social conservatives and economic conservatives. In spite of the efforts of fusionists like Frank Meyer and others, this distinction has never gone away entirely, and these differences can only be painted over in the hope that these two wings of the movement can hold together well enough to form a powerful political coalition—the logic being that, whatever their differences, economic and social conservatives still prefer each other to the progressive egalitarianism embodied by the modern Democratic Party. That still assumes, however, that within the broad Republican coalition we can find a significant percentage of voters who are at least consistent traditionalists or consistent supporters of free-market economics. We will consider this in the pages ahead, but first we should consider whether most self-described Republicans even consider themselves to be conservative.
For many decades, the American National Election Survey (NES) has been among the most useful tools for scholars of American politics. It combines a large number of observations with a large number of useful questions, and it can provide a detailed snapshot of where the American public stands on important political issues. For this study, I rely on the 2012 NES because it was completed well before the 2016 presidential election cycle. Had I examined 2016 data, one might reasonably question whether Trump’s candidacy had influenced the views of Republican voters.
In the Republican category, I include people who initially identify as a Republican as well as independents who, when pushed, admit that they lean more toward the Republican Party than the Democratic Party. This is because so-called independent leaners tend to be no less committed to their party than people who expressly and immediately declare themselves supporters of a particular party.36
The first general question is whether most Republicans describe themselves as conservative. The NES includes a helpful scale that allows us to see where Americans fall ideologically. Respondents were asked to place themselves somewhere on a seven-point ideological scale, between “extremely liberal” and “extremely conservative.” If we collapse this into a dichotomous variable, so that the “extremely conservative,” the “conservative,” and the “slightly conservative” respondents are all merged into a single category, and moderates and all varieties of liberals are categorized as a separate category, we see that a large majority of Republicans consider themselves conservative—about 74 percent. When we break conservatism down into those three possible categories, however, we see that extreme conservatives are relatively uncommon, even among Republicans (only about 8 percent described themselves in that manner). Far more called themselves conservative (about 42 percent) or slightly conservative (about 24 percent). In fact, self-described moderates were more than twice as common as self-described extreme conservatives (about 22 percent called themselves “middle of the road”). This is unsurprising, as other important research has indicated that ideological polarization, while present at the elite level, has never been pronounced in the electorate.37
As a verification check on the finding that most Republicans view themselves as conservatives of some sort but rarely identify as “extreme conservatives,” we can consult the 2014 General Social Survey (GSS). This survey has been conducted regularly since the early 1970s and includes a large battery of questions related to personal demographics, cultural practices, and political and policy attitudes. The GSS also includes a question about ideology, using very similar wording to the NES. It also found that a large majority of Republicans consider themselves conservative. Also like the NES, it found that only about 8 percent of them considered themselves “very conservative.”
Terms like “moderate” and “conservative” are subjective, however. Someone could be far right of the median voter on a large number of issues and still consider himself or herself to be a moderate. A person may also be a self-described conservative despite having few points of agreement with the mainstream conservative movement—by “conservative,” a person may simply mean something like “levelheaded,” or even just vaguely patriotic. An often neglected fact of American politics is that a large percentage of self-described conservatives do not support the conservative movement’s policy agenda. This was an important point in Ideology in America, by Christopher Ellis and James Stimson.38 We must recognize that there are two very different conceptions of ideology: symbolic ideology and operational ideology. Symbolic ideology may have only a tenuous relationship to policy preferences. Americans are, on average, very attached to symbolic conservatism: they love the flag, consider themselves religious, and are moved by talk of liberty and the Constitution. Operational ideology is focused on the actual things people want government to do. Here we find that Americans, including Republicans, are much more liberal. Among political and intellectual elites, symbolic and operational ideologies are infrequently in conflict. Among the general public, the two are frequently in conflict, which can lead observers to overstate the degree to which Americans are politically conservative.
Given that self-placement on the ideological scale may not be useful for discerning where the public stands on the issues, the more interesting question is how Republicans think about actual policies.
To keep its various factions united, the conservative movement has always accepted a degree of ideological diversity. Nonetheless, the typical conservative journalist or intellectual will contend that a true American conservative must agree with the three core principles of contemporary conservatism: limited government intervention in the economy, the promotion of traditional values, and support for the American military. When it comes to more specific policies, there is much variation in how these principles should be put into practice, but the principles themselves are nonnegotiable. This of course is true if we are looking at conservative elites, but is it true of Republicans in the electorate? We can organize these issues into three general areas: economic issues, social issues, and foreign policy issues.
We begin with the signature issue of the GOP: taxes. Conservatives fondly remember President Reagan for his major tax cuts, and the revolt against George H. W. Bush was presumably the result of his decision to break his promise of “no new taxes.” From this, we might plausibly infer that Republicans are uniformly opposed to any new taxes or hikes in the tax rate. Yet, this does not appear to be true. According to the NES, Republicans in the electorate are actually very open to the idea of higher taxes for high earners. When asked whether they would support higher taxes on millionaires, almost 62 percent of Republicans responded that they would favor such a policy. Another question lowered the income level at which taxes should be raised in order to reduce the budget deficit, specifically asking whether income taxes should be raised on anyone who makes more than $250,000 a year. A near majority (49.87 percent) of Republicans favored such a policy; an additional 18 percent were ambivalent. Only about 32 percent opposed a new tax increase on those whose income exceeds that threshold. Many Republicans are even open to the idea of a higher tax rate on corporations in order to reduce the budget deficit—about 42 percent of Republicans expressed support for such a policy, compared with 36 percent who were opposed.
One might argue that this analysis considers too large a group. A significant percentage of the electorate identifies as Republican, but the average Republican is not particularly active and involved. Perhaps if we look at a particular class of Republicans, one that is very active and vocal, we will find a stronger degree of fiscal conservatism on the tax issue. The NES also helpfully asked respondents if they were supporters of the Tea Party. If there is any element of the electorate that is likely to be extremely conservative on fiscal matters, we can expect it to be this group. Yet even Republicans who support the Tea Party are divided on the question of taxes. Within this group of respondents only 49.36 percent said they opposed raising taxes on people making more than $250,000 annually.
There are many Republicans in the electorate who are doctrinaire economic libertarians. But they are not the norm. Even the Tea Party faction of the GOP is not unified in its opposition to higher taxes. It is possible that the Republicans who oppose new taxes are passionate about this issue, whereas those who are open to the idea of higher taxes are generally indifferent. Nonetheless, the fact that a large percentage of Republicans are willing to support higher taxes, at least theoretically, is underappreciated.
Even if Republicans are not unified in their opposition to higher taxes, perhaps they agree that government spending needs to be cut. Yet we see little evidence that most Republicans want to see major federal spending cuts. Conservatives have long argued that a Republican president should abolish the Department of Education, presumably to return control of education back to state and local governments. Yet very few Republicans actually want to decrease federal spending on education. About 19 percent wanted federal spending on education to be cut, compared with about 47 percent that wanted it increased and about 34 percent that think current spending levels are about right. Less than 10 percent of Republicans wanted to see spending cuts to Social Security.
Other scholars have similarly found that fiscal conservatism among Republicans is less common than is frequently assumed. In a 2007 study, Stephen Miller found that the relationship between party identification and economic beliefs is not particularly strong.39 On average, Republicans and Democrats are very similar to each other when it comes to economic policy preferences. Although both Republicans and Democrats tend to reject classical elements of socialism—such as wage and price controls—there is a general liberal consensus that the United States should have a system that is best described as “welfare capitalism.”
If average Republicans are not die-hard budget hawks, perhaps they are strong conservatives on those social issues that have been so divisive in American politics. Such a finding would be congruent with the argument that middle- and lower-income Republicans vote against their economic interests because they are devoted to the religious Right and its social agenda. This was the thesis of Thomas Frank’s best-selling book, What’s the Matter with Kansas? These voters may not care about taxes, but maintaining American virtue is high on their agenda. We can easily examine the degree to which this is true.
Every four years, the GOP platform includes language indicating support for new abortion restrictions. Court decisions such as Roe v. Wade were partly responsible for the rise of the religious Right in the 1970s, as well as the avalanche of votes this movement brought to the Republican Party. Perhaps no other issue has inspired such heated rhetoric and strong passions in the United States since the civil rights movement.
Although the faction of voters that would ban abortion in all circumstances is a vocal element of the conservative coalition, they represent a small minority of all Republicans. As of 2012, only 18 percent of NES respondents agreed with the statement “by law, abortion should never be permitted.” In fact, there were far more pro-choice purists in Republican ranks than those who consistently take a pro-life stance. About 29 percent of Republicans agreed that, “by law, a woman should always be able to obtain an abortion as a matter of personal choice.” In other words, almost three in ten Republicans believe there should be fewer restrictions on abortion than is the case today. A slight majority of Republicans believe abortion should be permitted, but with restrictions; about 37 percent want fairly harsh restriction, such as allowing abortion only in the case of rape, incest, or danger to the mother; and an additional 16 percent would allow it in other circumstances as well but do not favor total legalization of abortion in all possible circumstances. On average, Republicans are much more pro-life than non-Republicans (a majority of non-Republican respondents declared that they thought abortion should always be legal in all cases), but that does not mean that Republicans are uniformly opposed to abortion.
We see similar patterns when we turn our attention to other social issues. The issue of gay marriage was extraordinarily divisive during the Bush presidency. Throughout those years, a number of states passed laws prohibiting gay marriage, and it was widely believed that the evangelicals who turned out to oppose gay marriage played a role in securing Bush’s second term as president. Although Republicans may have been uniformly against legal recognition of gay marriage a decade ago, that is not the case today. In fact, as of 2012, a majority (about 64 percent) of Republicans actually favored some kind of legal recognition for same-sex couples (about 21 percent favored full marriage rights, and about 43 percent favored civil unions). Only about 35 percent of Republicans believed there should be no legal recognition of gay couples. Unlike abortion, which will likely remain a divisive issue indefinitely, the issue of gay marriage appears to be permanently settled; even if the Supreme Court decision that legalized gay marriage nationwide were overturned, the legal recognition of gay relationships now has massive, bipartisan support from the American public.
Compared with abortion and same-sex marriage, the issue of marijuana legalization is now less politically contentious—several states have legalized marijuana for medical and even recreational use, with little pushback from the national conservative movement. A number of leading conservatives have even advocated for the legalization of marijuana on libertarian grounds.40 That said, we might nonetheless expect that most Republicans in the electorate are opposed to legalization. It is true that opposition to legalization remained the modal response among Republicans as of 2012 (about 48 percent held this position). But about 28 percent favored legalization, and about 23 percent neither favored nor opposed legalization.
Gun control is another deeply divisive issue in the United States, and the National Rifle Association is one of the most influential lobbying groups in the country. Conservative media are nearly uniform in their uncompromising stance on the Second Amendment. Perhaps here we can find a conservative consensus among Republicans. Yet we actually see that many Republicans are in agreement with progressives on this issue, and very few are interested in removing existing laws. When asked whether laws should make it more difficult to access a gun, should make it easier to access a gun, or are about right as they are, an impressive 26 percent of Republicans said that it should be more difficult to get a gun. Only about 8 percent thought it should be easier. The rest felt gun laws were fine as they are. Although, as of 2012, a majority of Republicans did not favor new restrictions on guns, there was little interest in abolishing laws that already exist.
On several of the most contentious, and supposedly partisan, social issues, we do not see that most Republicans are doctrinaire conservatives. Large minorities within the GOP actually prefer a more liberal position when it comes to abortion, gay marriage, and guns. Much smaller minorities prefer the most extreme conservative option available to them. Although, on average, Republicans tend to be more conservative on these issues than Democrats and independents, they are not particularly conservative.
Foreign policy is the final leg of the conservative stool, and it must also be addressed. On this subject, we might again expect a large amount of Republican agreement. That is indeed what we find. The number of Republicans who say they want to decrease military spending is small. However, Republicans have become increasingly willing to declare that foreign policy decisions made by the last Republican administration were mistakes.
Republicans remain very supportive of the military. The NES includes “feeling thermometer” questions for a large number of social groups, institutions, and individuals. On a feeling thermometer, the range is between zero and one hundred, and higher values indicate that the respondent has warmer feelings toward the group in question. Among Republicans, the military consistently gets warmer scores than most other groups. In 2012, the mean score for the military was 85.5. This is much higher than the mean score for the Tea Party (about 52), conservatives (about 69), and even Christians (about 78). Republicans, at least rhetorically, very much still “support our troops.”
However, although Republicans continue to hold the military in high esteem, they, on average, have begun to show signs of war weariness. In 2012, about two-thirds (66.5 percent) of Republicans concluded that the Iraq War was not worth the cost. We similarly saw that Republicans were generally opposed to the use of the military to make sure Iran does not develop nuclear weapons. An overwhelming majority (95 percent) of Republican respondents believed that Iran was trying to develop nuclear weapons. However, when asked what they wanted to do about this supposed threat, most favored a nonmilitary response. About 69 percent said that they favored direct diplomacy; about 74 percent said they favored an increase in economic sanctions; only about 40 percent were willing to favor an airstrike on Iranian nuclear sites; and only about 21 percent said they were willing to support a ground invasion to prevent Iran from developing these weapons. In other words, although many of the leading conservative intellectuals and pundits believed President Obama’s strategy toward Iran was too accommodating or even qualified as “appeasement,” Obama’s foreign policy decisions on this subject were similar to those favored by ordinary Republicans in the electorate. When it comes to foreign affairs, it would not be a stretch to say that your average Republican was closer to President Obama than to the editorial staff of the Weekly Standard.
We should not overstate this, of course. There are more recent data indicating that many Republicans subsequently became more hawkish. The data I cited were from 2012, before the rise of the Islamic State and renewed fears of terrorism. A Pew study conducted in 2015 indicated that most Republican voters would prefer a candidate who took a hard line on foreign policy.41 More than two-thirds (69 percent) of Republicans stated that they would be more likely to support a GOP candidate who wanted to end the nuclear agreement with Iran. A slight majority (53 percent) even indicated that they would be more likely to support a Republican candidate who supported using ground troops to fight ISIS. Unfortunately, that wording was vague, and a differently worded question might have yielded different results—did these respondents actually favor an invasion of Syria, or did they mean the use of troops again in Iraq, where the United States already had a presence on the ground? The best explanation for the discrepancy between the 2012 NES results and the 2015 Pew results is that views on foreign policy and terrorism are probably context dependent. In times when terrorism is a salient fear—as it certainly was in the fall of 2015—a Republican candidate’s fortunes in a primary appear to be strengthened by taking a hawkish position. In other circumstances, this is less of a certainty. The main takeaway from these findings on Republican feelings about foreign policy is that they are inconsistent over time when it comes to specific policies; they may even be ambivalent when it comes to the overall tone of American foreign policy.
It may be the case that, to keep the conservative coalition together, some degree of fusionism is indispensable at the elite level. Different conservative groups with different interests need to be able to talk to each other and cooperate. In the electorate, however, there may not be such a need for this kind of ideological consistency. Your average voter has no reason to be concerned with coalition building. He or she simply has preferences on economic and social issues, which may or may not be related, and votes accordingly. For the sake of simplicity, in this section I use those NES questions that allowed answers of “yes,” “no,” or “don’t know” responses, rather than lengthier scales—it is easier to identify the conservative answer to such a question, but more difficult to identify the precise dividing line between liberalism and conservatism on a seven-point scale.
To begin with, we should measure what percentage of Republicans are consistent in their attachment to economic conservatism. That is, on every question related to taxes, they express their opposition to higher rates. It turns out that this is very much a minority position. Less than a quarter of all Republicans (about 21 percent) claimed that they were against any new tax increases for any group. Even if we restrict our sample to Republicans who describe themselves as supporters of the Tea Party, we still do not find across-the-board opposition to new taxes. Only about 38 percent of Tea Party Republicans said they opposed all new taxes. This does not mean that Republicans in office are free to raise taxes, of course. That 21 percent is likely a powerful segment of the Republican coalition. Some of the most influential lobbying groups in Congress are heavily focused on the tax issue, and there are grassroots lobbying organizations, such as Americans for Prosperity, that can quickly mobilize opposition when nonconservative economic policy is considered. Nonetheless, although strong economic conservatives are a vocal and powerful minority within the GOP, they are a minority.
Consistent social conservatives are just as rare. Only about 14 percent of Republicans gave a traditionalist conservative response on the question of gay marriage (opposing all forms of legal recognition), marijuana (opposing legalization), abortion (opposing legalization except in cases of rape or incest), and guns (opposing new laws that make purchasing firearms more difficult). One might argue that this is unfair, as the more questions one includes on such a measure, the more likely it is that a respondent will choose at least one nonconservative answer. The most logical question to remove from consideration is the question on marijuana, as it is generally low salience and a number of conservatives have called for its legalization. If we drop this question from consideration, the number of consistent social conservatives increases, but not by much—about 20 percent gave conservative answers on the questions about guns, abortion, and gay marriage.
Perhaps if we restrict our attention to a particular subset of Republicans, we will find more uniformity on social issues. In this case, it makes sense to restrict the analysis to evangelical Christians, as this group is presumably the main constituency for social conservatism in American politics. If we look just at evangelical Christian Republicans, we still find that only about 35 percent held consistently conservative positions on issues of gay marriage, abortion, and guns. The majority held a moderate or liberal position on at least one of those issues.
So we see that both consistent social conservatives and economic conservatives are a minority among self-described Republicans. That being the case, it necessarily follows that consistently conservative Republicans, who prefer a conservative position on both social and economic issues, must be an even smaller percentage of all Republicans. Of course, as the number of questions that must be answered in the conservative direction increases in order for a person to be classified as a consistent conservative, the number of people who receive such a classification decreases. Increasing the number of questions additionally increases the odds that measurement error will throw off the results. Thus, I classify a consistent conservative as anyone who answers two out of three questions related to taxes in a conservative direction and two out of three questions related to social issues in a conservative direction as a consistent conservative. When we use even this fairly generous definition of a consistent conservative, we find that only about 17 percent of Republicans in this 2012 sample answered a majority of questions related to social issues and economic issues in a conservative manner.
Of course, one could argue that there is a problem with this methodology, as I examined all self-described Republicans in this sample, including those who identified as weak Republicans and who identified as independents who leaned Republican, as well as those who do not vote. For purposes of this study, it will be useful to examine the relative conservatism of Republican primary voters. Even when we restrict ourselves to this much smaller sample of self-described Republicans, we still find that only a minority (about one-quarter) can be classified as consistent conservatives when it comes to both social and economic policy. I must again include the caveat that these data are from 2012. However, there is little reason to expect that the policy preferences of Republicans have shifted in any systematic way since that time. Indeed, given the high levels of interest and turnout in Republican primaries and caucuses in 2016, we can reasonably expect that strong conservatives were an even smaller minority in the most recent election.
Note that in my examination of conservative consistency among Republican voters I have included only two of the three legs of modern conservatism. I have not added questions of foreign policy. If a true conservative is always against higher taxes, takes conservative stances on social issues, and is a foreign policy hawk, these numbers are even smaller. If we contend that conservatives must also be supporters of the Iraq War to properly wear the label, then only about 8 percent of all Republicans and about 12 percent of Republican primary voters pass the test.
The finding that ideological conservatism is uncommon seems to defy our everyday observations of the political world. After all, there seem to be signs all around that the United States is politically polarized, with huge numbers of people firmly on the far left or far right. Can the signs of polarization be reconciled with the often liberal policy preferences expressed by ordinary Republicans? One thing to keep in mind is that the polarization of the electorate has been overstated. Morris Fiorina and his colleagues persuasively made this argument in their book, Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America.42 This work made the case that ideological and partisan polarization is primarily an elite phenomenon; among the electorate more broadly, there is little evidence that Americans are increasingly divided along red and blue lines.
Yet this also seems unsatisfying. If we look at Americans who are not part of the political elite, we can still find a lot of bitter partisanship; political candidates, party leaders, and talk radio and cable news hosts are not the only angry voices in American politics. Lilliana Mason’s research sheds light on the apparent paradox of an electorate that seems bitterly divided and polarized despite the relatively small percentage of voters that support extreme policies. Building on the work of other scholars,43 Mason argued that partisanship should be considered the result of social identity, rather than policy preferences.44 Americans feel a strong emotional connection to their parties, and strongly dislike the opposing party, but these feelings of partisanship are only loosely connected to policy preferences. Instead, we form attachments to parties based on our social group memberships (such as our race and religion), and our parties subsequently become a part of our personal identity. Most Republicans do not support their party because they have strong feelings about the estate tax; they are Republicans because the GOP is the “correct” party for people with their other social identities (white, native born, Christian, etc.). The Republican Party can expect widespread support from a large number of enthusiastic voters, even if those voters have very little interest in conservative public policies per se. This suggests that they are not going to abandon the Republican Party anytime soon, but they may be open to a GOP that stands for something other than conservatism—they may even prefer a less conservative GOP.
The existing survey data lead us to conclude that very few Americans are consistent conservatives, at least as the organized conservative movement defines the term. This finding will not surprise scholars of American politics, but many pundits, politicians, and consultants are under the impression that there is a great grassroots army of conservatives and that voters rally around the movement and embrace all of its elements. It is true that more Americans describe themselves as conservative than describe themselves as liberal; this has long been the case. But calling oneself a conservative is not the same thing as endorsing the policy positions pushed by the official voices of the conservative movement. If we use policy preferences as our measure, then we can emphatically declare that most Americans are not conservatives. We can even confidently state that most Republicans are not conservative.
This disconnect between the reality of voter preferences and the rhetoric of conservative think tanks, journalists, and advocacy organizations helps us understand why so many leading voices on the right mistakenly declared Trump’s candidacy dead in the water. The truth is that most Republican voters do not insist that candidates pass a specific conservative litmus test. These voters would not personally pass such a test. If there is a conservative consensus, it exists only at the elite level. That being the case, it is clear that elites play a critical role in keeping the Republican Party’s elected officials within conservative boundaries. Republican leaders clearly listen to what the leading voices of the conservative movement have to say, and rely on them when forming policy.
This arrangement, where the leaders of the conservative movement keep the Republican Party wedded to conservative principles, has worked well for conservatives—even if conservative pundits lament the large number of “Republicans in name only” in Congress. However, as we have seen, this system is vulnerable to Republican candidates who are not reliant on the conservative movement in any way—either in formulating policy or in securing donations. Up until now, the number of such Republicans has been small. The few examples we have, such as Ron Paul, were not threatening to the conservative movement, as Paul’s libertarian ideology is even more unappealing to American voters than conservatism.
In fairness to mainstream conservative commentators, at least some have recognized and admitted the weak hold that the movement has on the electorate, including Republican voters. Talk show host Rush Limbaugh is one surprising personality who made this point. In January 2016, in reaction to the bafflement many conservatives expressed about Trump’s high level of support, Limbaugh stated that “the degree of conservatism in the Republican Party has been overestimated.”45 When conservative talk radio show hosts make such statements, they are usually referring to Republican politicians in office or party leaders. Limbaugh, however, was referring to Republicans in the electorate. Limbaugh went on: “It’s not just conservative principles that hold people who are conservative together. There are many different things, and the full-blown conservatives are a little bothered by this because it makes ’em think maybe they’re not that important. It could be bothersome.”46
“Bothersome” is an understatement. Donald Trump’s primary victory, as well as the conservative “Never Trump” movement’s failure to peel away many voters in the general election, set a dangerous precedent for conservatives. The conservative movement’s power comes exclusively from its hold on the GOP. It never succeeded in persuading many Americans to support conservative policies. This fact has always been lurking in public opinion data, but before Trump’s election, the myth of conservative voters kept many Republican politicians in line. It is likely that the conservative movement has been a liability to the GOP, rather than an asset. If that becomes widely acknowledged, and a new wave of GOP candidates reject conservative orthodoxy, the mainstream conservative movement may become irrelevant.