Primaries Expose Party Splits

In a useful review of the campaign season thus far, Michael Barone finds that the candidates are exposing the fault lines in the two major parties.  First the Democrats:

One faction of the Democratic Party is relatively upscale, well-educated, young. This faction is supporting Barack Obama. The other faction is relatively downscale, less-educated, old. This faction is supporting Hillary Clinton.

The mainstream media loves to play the game of split-the-Republicans, but you have to wonder if the split between secular liberal university professors and single mothers isn’t a political tsunami waiting to happen.  Looking back to the days of FDR and JFK:

The Democratic primary electorate was heavily downscale, ethnic and religious. But now the two factions are roughly equal in size. The downscale constituency has tended to prevail, but not always and not inevitably.

Of course, these two factions are joined at the hip, because it is the hip professors and MPA graduates that administer and dispense the benefits of the welfare state to the downscale victims while reserving a reasonable and customary slice for themselves.  But sometimes people forget who their friends are.

The Republicans have more factions:

• Huckabee is the candidate of the “religious conservatives and no-one else.”
• Fred Thompson competes for the same plus the southern-accented.
• John McCain appeals to “the remnants and descendants of the historic Protestant Yankee base of the party.”
• “Rudy Giuliani, with his liberal positions on cultural issues... [appeals to the] ethnic and metropolitan.”
• “Mitt Romney’s appeal seems to be strongest among economic conservatives, impressed perhaps by his business record and untroubled by his switches on cultural issues.”

That’s the way it should be, of course.  Each of the factions puts up their own candidate.  But what does it all mean?

Barone thinks that the Democratic race could be decided by February 5.  But the Republicans are likely to take longer.

The problem is that the longer the party factions are fighting, the harder it will be to bring them together for the general election battle.

The primary battle is important.  The conflict is a test of strength and will, and it allows the factions to decide if they really want to belong to the party any more.

Usually they do want to stay.  But sometimes they don’t, and that is when the fun really begins.