Henry Olsen: How to spot a Republican

Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics & Public Policy Center, is a leading analyst of American politics and the co-author of a new book, The Four Faces of the Republican Party and the Fight for the 2016 Presidential Nomination.

What happened to Marco Rubio, who a year ago looked to be Republicans’ great ascending star? Rubio never communicated a strong reason why people should vote for him. He was positioning himself to be everyone’s second choice, but to get through the presidential primaries you have to be passionately loved by one of the four major Republican groups, which means you have to risk being unloved by one of these groups. John Kasich chose to be passionately loved by moderates in the Republican Party and independents who were willing to switch between parties. That means he chose not be loved by the very conservative groups.

Cruz made the opposite calculation? Yes, and Rubio was never willing to make that choice.

Tell us about these four GOP groups, starting with the largest, which you call “somewhat conservative.” In this race the “somewhat conservatives” have increased their share of Republican voters by nearly 10 points, from 35-40 percent to 45-50 percent. They are not moved to vote primarily by their religious beliefs. They are conservative, but not in the way that the Heritage Foundation or the Family Research Council would define conservatism. They traditionally were the Bush voters, the Romney voters—and this year Donald Trump is carrying them in almost every state.

These voters think we are in a tough situation and need a tough guy? Traditionally they have liked people like Jeb Bush or John Kasich. They have not liked people like Ted Cruz. This time close to a majority of them like Donald Trump, and a substantial minority prefer some combination of Kasich and Rubio. Ted Cruz often loses this group to Trump and often to either Rubio or Kasich. They simply do not find him appealing as their first choice.

‘To get through the presidential primaries you have to be passionately loved by one of the four major Republican groups, which means you have to risk being unloved by one of these groups.’

I’d suspect the second-largest group is conservative evangelicals, but you say it’s not been that way. The second-largest group traditionally has been moderates: 25-30 percent; but in this election, for the first time in 20 years, that’s down nearly 10 points. This group is antithetical to the “very conservative evangelical” group. Very conservative evangelicals want tax cuts. Moderates want balanced budgets. They have been John Kasich’s base of support.

What about that third-largest group historically, the “very conservative evangelicals”? Ted Cruz’s base throughout the election. They tell pollsters they are both very conservative in their politics and evangelical in their religion—25 or so percent of Republicans nationwide, but more than that in Southern states. They value life and traditional marriage over same-sex marriage. They oppose judicial activism. Cruz targeted them and pushed aside their previous favorites, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, with amazing ease. They are not a large segment of the electorate in the Northeast or the Pacific Northwest. Ted Cruz’s challenge is how to expand beyond the group that brought him to the dance.

“Very conservative secularists” are the fourth and smallest group. These are the soft libertarians: Rand Paul, Club for Growth, Steve Forbes people. They love economics, but very few Republican voters are motivated by that: Nor enough to propel one of them into the final round.

Are evangelicals who go to church weekly more likely to be Cruz voters, while self-declared evangelicals who don’t go to church tend to vote for Trump? That’s correct. Cruz support varies positively with religious practice as defined by church attendance. Exit polls ask, “How important is it to you that a candidate shares your religious values?” The more important it is, the better Ted Cruz does. Donald Trump does well among nonbelievers, nonpractitioners, and Catholics.

Is an anti-immigration position considered to be “conservative” this year? Immigration is often the least important single issue for voters. “Terrorism” or “government spending” ranks higher. Those who choose immigration, however, are wild Trump supporters.

In earlier years Jeb Bush promoted Rubio. This year he actively fought him, even after Jeb himself was out. Why? The Bush family has a very strong sense of loyalty. Once you’re in, you cannot really exercise independent judgment, and I think they saw this year as Jeb’s time: Marco was younger and had been promoted by the Bush clan, so he owed it loyalty. It became a grudge match against someone who didn’t wait his turn.

Chris Christie’s legacy: He took out Rubio in a debate, then endorsed Trump and quickly received a put-down? Absent a Trump presidency where he can redeem himself as attorney general, yes. Christie threw away the chance to be the nominee in 2012, when secular tea party groups and the somewhat-conservative establishment begged him to run against Romney.

What kind of deals do you think deal-maker Donald Trump is offering people now? He is offering people the ability to think they can make a deal. People want to strike high-level deals, but there’s a limited amount of high-level patronage. So Trump’s phone calls now say, “Don’t be my enemy. I’m willing to treat you as my friend, and we can work out the details later.”

How long can that approach work? The closer we get to the convention the more Trump will have to make some hard commitments. At this stage he’s sending emissaries to say, “I’m not going to behead the mayor as long as you lay down your arms.”

Some Patrick Henry students here found Ben Carson’s endorsement of Trump surprising. Carson is very smart but very unschooled in politics. He convinced himself that Ted Cruz did him in in Iowa. It could very well be that Carson looked at the state of the race and said, basically, “I have to endorse either Trump or Cruz, and over my dead body will I endorse that lying. …”

Why Donald Trump? I’ve been writing for years about an unmet demand in American politics from native-born Americans hurt by globalization. This unmet demand was ignored by every candidate except the one untied to any existing faction. Incumbents find it hard to break out of the mindset and habits that got them there in the first place. Donald Trump got there and set a fire to dry grass that had been lying there for a long time.

This reminds me of Thomas Kuhn’s half-century-old classic, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Outsiders see challenges that settled science and settled politicians tend to overlook. Yes—either minds are rigid or observers have what we now call confirmation bias: See a new piece of evidence and instead of examining it try to make it consistent with what they already believe. Plus, incentives are important: So many people tied into a system are unwilling to take a risk, so the paradigm gets broken from the outside rather than reformed from the inside.

For Olsen’s specific forecasts concerning April and May primaries, see “President John Kasich?”