The Game Theory of the Tea Party

Historically, party discipline is orders of magnitude stronger in Britain than in the United States. My theory is that the totality of the reason why this is so is that in Britain, the parties have plenary control over their nomination process (the central party just says who its candidates are in each constituency), while in the United States, we actually have open primaries in which voters can choose. The result is that it is possible for a candidate to win a primary without establishment support, and so legislators can worry a little bit less about maintaining the absolute support of their party's establishment.

Of course, this develops a self-perpetuating culture. Because everyone knows that in Britain party discipline is roughly-speaking absolute, in that the parties can simply refuse to renominate any MP they tire of, the voters know that they are not really voting for so-and-so, MP; they are voting for the party. Conversely, in the United States the party establishments realize that voters are actually voting for legislators, not parties, and that therefore they can win in unlikely places by nominating (which establishment support can often accomplish) a "maverick." So in the United States, we have a self-perpetuating political culture in which our Congressmen know that they can theoretically win re-election without establishment support and the establishment knows it has something to gain by supporting idiosyncratic candidates in unfavorable territory, and so we have "big tent" parties that often don't vote particularly cohesively. Of course, establishment support is usually essential to nomination (though not always), so in fact the parties' knowledge of the advantages of this 50-state-style strategy is what keeps our parties ideologically diverse.

But two recent developments on the Republican side are changing the game. The first is that the party has become convinced that its best strategy for future success is total opposition to the Obama Administration. The calculation is pretty simple: they think that they have enough power in the Congress to inflict substantial policy failures, especially economic ones, on the Obama Administration, and that the result of these policy failures, especially the continuing poor economy, will hurt Obama more than the appearance of obstructionism will hurt the Republicans. Given that Mitch McConnell only has 41 Republicans to work with (now 42), and needs 41 Republicans to be able to block Democratic policies, that means his caucus can't be very ideologically diverse and still make this strategy work. He can't lose a vote. A single vote. One, that's all it takes. And there are plenty of Republicans with incentives to be moderate in the Senate: Snowe, Collins, Brown, to start with, plus the retiring-and-usually-sensible Voinovich. And the number of Republicans who would naturally vote for, say, cap-&-trade, or a Romney-style health care bill, is much larger; they are, after all, Republican policies. So Mitch McConnell, if he wants to sustain his strategy of total opposition, needs really scary levels of party discipline. And I said earlier that massive party discipline requires establishment control of the nomination process, right?

Well, the second development is, of course, that the Republicans have lost control of their nomination process. To wit: in the 37 U.S. Senate elections, 8 featured a Republican nominee who was not the establishment choice, including two defeated incumbent Republican Senators. And only a handful of other Republican Senate primaries featured actual challenges to the establishment choice. And we can add in Arlen Specter, who was forced out of the party (!) by the threat of a successful primary challenge from an insurgent type. Of course, he was out of the party early enough that Pat Toomey became the establishment candidate long before the primary itself approached. So I think it's clear that the party establishment has no control of its nominations process. (By contrast, only two races featured an establishment Senate Democratic candidate losing the primary, Arlen Specter and Alvin Greene's surprise victory in the sleeper race of SC.)

So this ought to mean that McConnell lacks the discipline ability that he needs to pursue total obstruction with only 42 votes, right? After all, the party is completely out of control of its nominations, so Senators have no incentive to follow McConnell's dictates. And I speculated, back when Lady Gaga was trying to convince the Maine Senators to vote to repeal DADT, that in fact McConnell's discipline might be waning. Well, of course, McConnell's discipline of late has been a fearsome thing to behold: once-reasonable Senators like Ms. Snowe are now indistinguishable from Jim DeMint or Tom Coburn in their voting tendencies. Party discipline is in fact absolute. So what gives?

Well, of course, the answer is simple, and you probably already knew what it is. The Republican establishment has lost control of its nominations process to the Tea Party, which is if anything even more committed to total obstruction and zero compromise than the establishment is right now. So McConnell's fearsome discipline right now is really not McConnell's at all: it is the Tea Party's discipline, and it just so happens that the Tea Party and Mitch McConnell have the same interest in disciplining Senate Republicans right now. So for the moment, it looks like they're just running a good old-fashioned three-line whip on every single vote, and succeeding.

But the truth is somewhat different, because in fact the Republicans have lost control of their nomination process and that means that they can't steer their own ship. For now they are making the calculation that everything the Tea Party wants will benefit their party medium-term. But that could change; indeed, it is certain to change. At some point the GOP will have to realize that in a very good election year it is losing non-whites by 50%, and that if non-whites become 35% of the electorate, that makes them uncompetitive. Even before that, it may soon be true that in, for instance, Massachusetts or perhaps Maine, there is no overlap between what a Tea Party primary will nominate and what the general electorate will elect. In that case, forcing Scott Brown, Olympia Snowe, and Susan Collins to vote strict party-line will simply give us three shiny new Democrats, as Christine O'Donnell gave us a shiny new Democrat out of Delaware this past year. So at some point the Republicans might realize that just allowing the Tea Party to steer for them is no longer going to work.

And at that point, they are screwed. Really, massively screwed. I don't know when this screwedness will manifest itself; I don't know how it will manifest itself; I only know that they are in deep trouble in the long run.

Unfortunately, in the long run...