As redistricting proceeds at the national and state levels, it is in the interest of conservatives to consider helping the GOP make the most of its election wins in 2010. In states where it is very unlikely to win every national district (and for every state legislature map), most redistricting strategies will focus on the time honored method of constructing a limited and minimal number of “packed” districts for Democrats and creating as many districts as possible for the GOP to win by a small but healthy margin, say 55-45. A packed district will contain as many Democrats as possible and is “thrown away” to the opposition in order to make GOP candidates viable in more places elsewhere; e.g. a state with 12 districts may make 2 or 3 such that Democrats win them 80-20 or more, and the rest are won by GOP candidates by no more than 60-40. The proportion or # of packed districts ultimately relies on the risk averseness of the map drawer in the face of what damage he or she projects wave elections can wreck and other constraints such as the VRA and ancillary rules.

While modern redistricting software combined with lots of voting returns data and statistical analysis make this exercise more doable than ever, I have come to wonder: are redistricting strategies limited by considering only general election returns and not additionally the effect of primary returns? That is to say, if redistricting made allowances to consider that not all Ds and Rs are the same, might it be used to alter the kind and quality of the opposition’s candidates in addition to altering the proportion of the opposition’s voters?

Redistricting as currently conceived seems to focus exclusively on general election outcomes, and appears to treat all Ds and Rs as interchangeable units. But this is not true in practice – different voters choose different people to represent them in the primary, and the winner emerges to compete in the general election. Let us assume that moderate voters are more likely to choose more centrist politicians, and that more liberal voters are more likely to choose more liberal politicians. This allows the citizens of a district to choose a candidate that best represents their voters for that district, which may be relatively “centrist” or “extreme,” to enhance his or her general election winning probability. This is very important, especially to the democrats who have a large contingent of voters who appear to prefer ‘blue dog’ democrats (fewer these days, but nevertheless); if every democrat had to run as a Nancy Pelosi liberal, they would have drastically lower chances of winning districts they currently occupy outside of the coasts; consider examples such as Mike Ross (AR 4), Dan Boren (OK 2), Jim Matheson (UT 2) and many more.

But what if you could coax the democrats into selecting more extreme, liberal candidates using the same redistricting tools that are already in place, and applying them to primary elections in addition to general ones? What if, by distinguishing between voters in the same party, and by drawing district lines accordingly, moderate and very liberal democrats could be grouped in such a way that blue dog democratic voters are unable to select blue dog democrat politicians? Would this be worth pursuing, and if so for what gains?

If you are of the opinion that the GOP prospers when democrats are at their most liberal public face, then the answer to the last question is “yes,” and the gains are every district that democrats currently win by advertising themselves as centrist and moderate while governing as anything but. Strip away the legislative electoral viability of “centrist” democrats, and the remaining liberal majority has a far harder time accomplishing its goals in normal America, which doesn’t normally swallow very liberal well. If successful, such a strategy would serve to a) ensure that your GOP politicians are always facing the most liberal opponent possible, b) make very liberal (and unpopular) politicians (e.g. Pelosi, Rangel, Grijalva, Waxman) the public persona of the Democratic Party and c) enhance the election chances of GOP candidates. A trivial but effective demonstration of how a-c are possible is presented numerically.

Let’s say that there are 100 voters, all of whom vote in both the primary and general election, and they are to be put into 2 districts of 50 voters apiece. Let’s further say that in this area of 100 people, there are 30 republicans, 10 of whom are moderate, and 70 democrats, 20 of whom are moderate. Say further that I have decided to “pack” District A 100% full of democrats (democrat wins 50-0) to make District B winnable by 30R-20D. Using traditional redistricting, the problem is done and I can stop. But can we do better by considering the effect of which district we place the moderate democrats in? I say we can. Let’s pretend that we put 20 moderate democrats in with the republicans, so that district A is 50 liberal democrats, 0 moderate democrats and district B is 20 moderate democrats, 10 moderate republicans and 20 conservative republicans. Every year, the voters in district A select a liberal democrat in the primary (by 50 liberal to 0 moderate vote). Every year, the voters in district B select a conservative republican in the primary (by 20 conservative to 10 moderate vote) and a moderate democrat (by 20 moderate to 0 liberal vote). In an average year, the democrat will win in A and lose in B. But say we get a democratic wave year, or a particularly “centrist” democratic candidate like Heath Shuler(NC) or Bradley Ellsworth(IN). In that year, say that 6 of the 10 moderate republicans vote democratic because they feel that they are electing a ‘pragmatic, centrist candidate.’ The centrist democrat wins 26-24. Now you have a democratic politician in districts A and B. That is bad.

Instead, let’s consider what happens if we make sure to put very liberal primary voters in district B. Every year, the voters in district A select a liberal democrat in the primary (by 30 liberal to 20 moderate vote). Every year, the voters in district B select a conservative republican in the primary (by 20 conservative to 10 moderate vote) and a liberal democrat (by 20 liberal – 0 moderate vote). In this scenario, even if there’s a wave year, the republican still wins district B – let’s say by 27-23 (20 conservative republicans, 7 moderate republicans to 3 moderate republicans and 20 liberal democrats). This happened because the democrat base demanded a candidate too liberal to win in a conservative leaning district. How did this happen conceptually? Conceptually, it happened because the redistrictor made sure to spread the liberal democratic voters around to make sure that only liberal democrats get selected in primaries, democrats so liberal that even in a bad year, moderate republicans/RINOs won’t defect. This achieves a-c: always make sure the opponent is as liberal as possible, always make sure that liberals are the face of the party (particularly in heartland states) and use it to protect GOP candidates in ‘swing’ districts (those where the victory margins are less than 10 or so).

This sort of thinking, as far as I know, is counterintuitive. Most of us are only too happy to see Alan Grayson and Carol Shea-Porter gone, because we think their policies are hurtful and that they themselves are nasty. This impulse is in line with how we live our personal lives: evict the jerks and if we have to live with people we don’t like, at least make them palatable. But in the world of redistricting, this is exactly backwards. We WANT our opponents looking extreme. We WANT our opponents looking out of touch, nasty, etc. When the opposition hands you an Alan Grayson and a Heath Shuler, you need to keep Grayson and retire Shuler (ideally retire both, but you’re not going to get a Texas or Florida with 100% of either party). Politicians are generally loathe to think this way because they a) accumulate grudges over time, and b) want to face the most moderate possible opposition voters, because in theory there’s a higher chance you can get their crossover vote. What GOP politicians forget is that a) people they dislike are often also disliked by the American people and b) voters who are moderate select candidates that are moderate, and who try to steal RINO crossover voters.

This plan is straightforward in the sense that it doesn’t require one to change fundamentally the basic overarching redistricting strategy. What it does is go one step further and squeeze more money’s worth out of any given map layout in order to eliminate the political viability of blue dog/centrist democrats who pose the greatest electoral threat to conservative republicans. “How do you tell a centrist from a liberal voter,” you may be asking yourself. I’m willing to let the statisticians decide, but I can think of several metrics that can be mined from data available at the county and precinct level: first, look at ticket splitting; e.g. West Virginians who vote 20 points against Obama then vote democrats into every other office. Every state has at least some voters like this (note, this strategy will be more effective at the state level). Second, consider districts that have large swings between elections in terms of vote share. Some districts appear to go R or D rain or shine, while others seem to swing as many as 15 points or more every other election. These are the places you find your moderates. Let’s help our opposition pick the worst candidates possible.

We wouldn’t be very conservative if we didn’t consider the potential weaknesses of a plan which at its heart involves some central planning and an attempt to influence the outcomes of the decisions of free people. Therefore, a word of caution is advised – we should consider that a plan like this might be hard to implement based on the demands it makes regarding the availability of certain data, and the assumptions it makes about voting behavior (moderates select moderates &extremists select extremists, for example). I welcome dissenting views here, especially by people who have worked these streets before. Human nature doesn’t always seem to act like our models say it ought to, as 80 years of social engineering has demonstrated. The PA GOP found that out the hard way this last decade, as their redistricting gains blew up in their face midway through the decade.

The basic idea – to use the ingrained tendencies of our opposition to make them show their worst face to the voting public – should at least be considered. If this idea is not pleasing, then let us at least consider that the current method of considering only the general election and skipping the primary election is at best incomplete.

I visit RedState several times each day, but I rarely post. Like many of you, I’ve been frothing at the mouth excited waiting for November 2nd to come and get rid of the Democratic majority which seems to hurt the nation every time it thinks or moves. Because I don’t post, I try to help out as best I can by prowling the Internet for candidates to give money to, especially early in the cycle – my main focus in senators. I’ve given as much as I can spare to Buck, Angle, Toomey, Rubio, DeVore, Paul, Lee, Johnson and even Lamontagne (believe it or not, I was moved by Erick’s weekend post). I sent day-sized paychecks to Joe Miller back when I couldn’t even find a post about him on RedState (and was overjoyed to see his win). But I will not give to either candidate in Delaware, and I would vote for Castle if I lived there, even though he’s the sort of legislator I’d usually rather fall on my sword than support. I thought I might go into why, briefly. I doubt it will lend much middle ground to the raging Mike vs. Christine fight currently unfolding, but maybe it will give you more tools with which to disagree more efficiently.

The basic question is this: what is the minimum percentage of your GOP delegation you can tolerate as being conservatives, where conservative is defined as, “votes like DeMint?” Before you say 100%, hear me out.

As the percentage you demand goes to 100%, you will exert almost infinite resources and time to achieve it, if you even can. Forget for the moment all the arguments about Scott Brown, majority vs. minority, is it or isn’t it like Alaska, and principle vs. pragmatism, and visualize the first number that comes to your head. If you a) don’t have an answer or b) still say 100%, then I think you really ought to before you go forward.

Just like with anything good, there’s a marginal decreasing utility of conservative GOP senator percentage. That is to say, no matter if we have 41, 50, or 67 GOP senators, we only need a fraction of them to be conservative to get the best outcome possible most of the time (as opposed to 2000-2006, where we rarely seemed to get what we want, because that percentage seemed < 10%, at least to me. Thank God for Coburn/DeMint in ’04). Notice I didn’t say a good outcome, I just said the best possible.

I postulate that per the legislative rules of our system, you don’t need 100% of all senators to think as we’d like before you start getting preferable outcomes from lesser factors like party unity, and the filibuster vs. regular vote. Does anyone here think 100% of Democratic senators really wanted to pass the health care law because they personally believed in it? Of course not. The highly liberal wing of the party made enough promises, threats and deals and the remainder went along to end discussion. The same would have been true for just about any judge Obama nominated.

This may stink in the nostrils of some of you, because it suggests we should allow political strumpets in our midst. I sympathize with you. However, I bet you’d at least reconsider this stance if I could demonstrate a conservative yield of 84%, with 60 GOP senators breaking a filibuster and 50 passing the bill that privatizes S.S., or builds a border wall and ends amnesty, or votes in that 5th or 6th judge. On that day, we might be very glad we elected 10 Mike Castles.

Or you might argue that we lost the post-cloture vote 49-51 because we didn’t have Christine O’Donnell. But the point is, you don’t need 100%, and you should know what number you would accept so you know how to marshal your resources, and you know whether or not to spend your time fighting for Christine in Delaware, because she will arguably take more resources. For those of you still repeating 100%, I ask you a followup question – as the bills to pay for the resources necessary to elect 100% conservatives comes due, from where should I make up the difference? Should I give less money to Sharron Angle, Kristi Noem, Scott Walker, or whichever brave soul is opposing Nancy Pelosi? I hope I don’t have to explain why I can’t just fund 100% of the conservatives in this alternative, too.

I’ll even go out on a limb and give my percentage: 80%. I got it by assuming that we should be able to get a dedicated conservative from the 31 states that elected Bush at least 75% of the time, a dedicated conservative from the states that voted within 5% points of Bush (OR, WI, MN, MI, NH, PA)at least 50% of the time, and a dedicated conservative from the rest only 10% of the time. Then I assumed that we will actually elect GOP senators from the Bush states 85% of the time, from the ‘swing’ states 50% of the time, and from the remaining 13 states 20% of the time. That’s 43 good senators out of 55 senators, for roughly 80%. So I’m willing to accept one knuckle dragger for every four statesmen and stateswomen.

While we haven’t won 80% of contestable primaries this time around in the senate (IN, CA, some would say WA, AZ, and NH TBD), we’ll get some of them next time, and given that DeMint and Coburn are already in the mix, we’ll have close to 80% for this class. So to me, there is easily room for someone like Castle in my remaining 20%, to make a bid at a state which wasn’t even within 5% of Bush in either election. Others may pick other numbers, and that’s fine. Just make sure you know where your resource boundaries are, because as Barack Obama is learning, American families’ resources are not infinite.

That being said, I see no reason to gloat because in my opinion, the goal was never to destroy the establishment GOP vessels but to reform them. So now that we’re putting our plans into play on a national level, with the expectation that every election cycle going forward will feature several Rubio vs. Crist situations, what exactly are our demands? That is to say, what are our specific goals for how the RNCC etc. should reform, so that we will know when they’ve been met?

Given the tendency of any organizational bureaucracy to skew away from conservatism over time, I don’t think I’m being pessimistic to say that we’ll always need to keep an eye on the GOP establishment. But we may have more luck working together with them if they know what we actually want from them in detail; at a minimum it gives them an option to cooperate instead of just assuming we’ll hate them no matter what they do because of past infractions (Toomey, Rubio, Hoffman, etc.).

The ‘no money for open seat primaries’ is a good start. I have a 2nd bullet point – donation money only to be spent in the general election instead of the primary. This would prevent not only the awful NY-23 events we just witnessed, but also keep the Laffey scenario in RI from 2006 from being repeated, replete with Get-Out-the-Vote machinery being employed by the GOP against an actual conservative.

Anyone else have any demands they can think of which are specific and concise enough to be followed by the superintelligences currently running the show down in D.C.?

To summarize my motivations as a voter quickly, I’m always trying to minimize governmental authority and maximize personal responsibility. I think Federal government spending has been too high a fraction of GDP since, well, FDR really. I’m socially conservative, but because I believe social conservatism (and religion) do best when government does least, I suppose I could be best pigeon-holed as a pro-life libertarian. Candidates I’ve enjoyed and donated to include Jim Demint, Pat Toomey, Marco Rubio, Tim Walberg, Andy Harris, and Ron Paul – for all his faults. I did not give money to Bush or McCain. I either vote Republican, occasionally libertarian, or not at all – if there are any Democrats interested in liberty these days, they do a damn good job hiding it.

I don’t trust any Republican national or state organization to do anything but stand by their labeled candidate – be that an Arlen Specter, a Dede Scozzafava, or a recent amnesty-peddling president. I worry that for every 5 dollars I might want to send in, 1 will get to a candidate who really shares my values. However, I am concerned that if I continue to send 100% of my contributions to institutions like CfG and the GoA instead of the RNC and the NRA, I am at some level contributing to a weaker than desirable national GOP presence to oppose the worst of the Democratic Party.

So here’s my question/concern: is there any way we can think of to spend our donation money in a way that best encourages GOP “apparatus” organizations to become more like the sort of ideological organizations that many conservative base members feel better reflect their values? I don’t want to destroy or impoverish the RNC & Co. for having the unenviable job of defending the entire GOP delegation and sometimes POTUS, but I do want to give them incentives to produce more Tom McClintocks and fewer Bob Bennetts. To rephrase the question, has the conservative web (or any other) community ever considered a coordinated plan to try create a carrot-and-stick system for GOP organizations?

To reiterate, I don’t advocate for the destruction or merger of right leaning organizations – as a believer in competition, I think having many organizations that do these sorts of things is (usually) a good thing, esp. combined with the cheapening cost of information thanks to the Internet. But I ask this question because I worry that there is still no effective way for disgruntled anti-big government types such as myself to adequately communicate/punish the GOP’s money organizations into providing a better ‘product.’ I worry this because it might be the case that for all they know, I (and the minority of GOP voters who stay away from the mainstream organizations) don’t exist. The market for political donations isn’t a mostly zero sum game in the way that, say, eating food is. If breakfast producers make something comically wretched like BooBerry cereal, I can eat Lucky Charms, pop tarts, or bagels, sending a signal to stop making gross blueberry marshmallows. I don’t have to give money to any political organization at all. As a result, I wonder if, when revenues at the RNSC go down, they even realize it’s because they have a crappy product. Do they even recognize a competition? Do they even know I’m donating to CfG?

So I repeat: is there any easy to disseminate strategy you all have every thought of to make a political party organization act not like a political party organization? The signal-to-noise ratio for the money the RNSC receives versus whether it does a ‘good’ job must be very, very low, but are there any clever ideas for letting them know they’re getting a stick when we decide they should get one? I feel like the liberals are so much better at collectively reforming (or at least marginalizing) their equivalently squishy agencies (the DLC, for example).

Thanks for the input.

]]> Greetings folks. I’m a frequent visitor to Redstate and while I’m usually content to read and run, I’ve recently come across a political problem related to donations that I think it best to pose here, and see what sort of advice I get. My question involves a common thorny topic for GOP-leaning voters like me who try to maximize the oomph of their limited donation resources: how do you balance giving money between larger, more ‘party apparatus’ style organizations like the RNSC and more ideological organizations like the Club for Growth, Gun Owners of America, etc?

To summarize my motivations as a voter quickly, I’m always trying to minimize governmental authority and maximize personal responsibility. I think Federal government spending has been too high a fraction of GDP since, well, FDR really. I’m socially conservative, but because I believe social conservatism (and religion) do best when government does least, I suppose I could be best pigeon-holed as a pro-life libertarian. Candidates I’ve enjoyed and donated to include Jim Demint, Pat Toomey, Marco Rubio, Tim Walberg, Andy Harris, and Ron Paul – for all his faults. I did not give money to Bush or McCain. I either vote Republican, occasionally libertarian, or not at all – if there are any Democrats interested in liberty these days, they do a damn good job hiding it.

I don’t trust any Republican national or state organization to do anything but stand by their labeled candidate – be that an Arlen Specter, a Dede Scozzafava, or a recent amnesty-peddling president. I worry that for every 5 dollars I might want to send in, 1 will get to a candidate who really shares my values. However, I am concerned that if I continue to send 100% of my contributions to institutions like CfG and the GoA instead of the RNC and the NRA, I am at some level contributing to a weaker than desirable national GOP presence to oppose the worst of the Democratic Party.

So here’s my question/concern: is there any way we can think of to spend our donation money in a way that best encourages GOP “apparatus” organizations to become more like the sort of ideological organizations that many conservative base members feel better reflect their values? I don’t want to destroy or impoverish the RNC & Co. for having the unenviable job of defending the entire GOP delegation and sometimes POTUS, but I do want to give them incentives to produce more Tom McClintocks and fewer Bob Bennetts. To rephrase the question, has the conservative web (or any other) community ever considered a coordinated plan to try create a carrot-and-stick system for GOP organizations?

To reiterate, I don’t advocate for the destruction or merger of right leaning organizations – as a believer in competition, I think having many organizations that do these sorts of things is (usually) a good thing, esp. combined with the cheapening cost of information thanks to the Internet. But I ask this question because I worry that there is still no effective way for disgruntled anti-big government types such as myself to adequately communicate/punish the GOP’s money organizations into providing a better ‘product.’ I worry this because it might be the case that for all they know, I (and the minority of GOP voters who stay away from the mainstream organizations) don’t exist. The market for political donations isn’t a mostly zero sum game in the way that, say, eating food is. If breakfast producers make something comically wretched like BooBerry cereal, I can eat Lucky Charms, pop tarts, or bagels, sending a signal to stop making gross blueberry marshmallows. I don’t have to give money to any political organization at all. As a result, I wonder if, when revenues at the RNSC go down, they even realize it’s because they have a crappy product. Do they even recognize a competition? Do they even know I’m donating to CfG?

So I repeat: is there any easy to disseminate strategy you all have every thought of to make a political party organization act not like a political party organization? The signal-to-noise ratio for the money the RNSC receives versus whether it does a ‘good’ job must be very, very low, but are there any clever ideas for letting them know they’re getting a stick when we decide they should get one? I feel like the liberals are so much better at collectively reforming (or at least marginalizing) their equivalently squishy agencies (the DLC, for example).

Thanks for the input.

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