Boehner’s Exit, the Role of Red States and the Outlook for 2016

Boehner’s Exit, the Role of Red States and the Outlook for 2016 SEPT. 25, 2015 Photo Speaker John Boehner after announcing his resignation on Friday. Credit Astrid Riecken/Getty Images Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn Speaker John Boehner’s resignation may have been prompted by a new fight over funding Planned Parenthood, but it was decades in the making. His announcement Friday is a result of the House Republican caucus’s transformation into a far more conservative and Southern body than it was a generation ago. It’s a shift that will most likely define the House for the foreseeable future, although it is less important in presidential primary politics than it is in Congress. Fifty years ago, the House Republicans still reflected the party’s 19th-century strength in the Northeast and Midwest. But the G.O.P.’s center of gravity has gradually drifted toward the South over the last few decades. Today, Republicans from the South, along with the reliably conservative interior West, vastly outnumber Republicans from the Northeast or Pacific Coast. Speaker John A. Boehner will resign in October.John Boehner, House Speaker, Will Resign From CongressSEPT. 25, 2015 The infusion of red-state Republicans has transformed the politics of the Republican Party. Their growing clout has made it far harder for the party to compromise or avoid crises, like the so-called fiscal cliff, the 2013 government shutdown or the Planned Parenthood impasse of today. House G.O.P. Dominated by Red States Over the last 50 years, the ranks of the blue- state Republicans have steadily dwindled. Composition of House Republicans, by region.* 60 40 20 0 Red Regions Blue Regions 1980 2000 2015 *Red regions are defined as the South, the border states, the interior West and the Plains. Blue regions are New England, the Mid-Atlantic and the Pacific Coast. Source: Brookings Institution That’s because red-state Republicans are far more conservative than their blue-state counterparts. They have been far likelier to support aggressive tactics like government shutdowns than their blue-state colleagues. In the 2013 government shutdown, red-state representatives voted against the Senate compromise to restore government funding by a 91-26 margin; Southern representatives voted against the compromise by an 85-25 margin. Conversely, the blue-state representatives voted “yes,” 40-26, while the Republicans from the Northeast and Pacific voted for the Senate compromise by a similar 30-15 margin. The divide was just as fierce in the fiscal cliff vote earlier in 2013, when Southern Republicans overwhelmingly opposed a deal. Mr. Boehner’s Midwest was split on both bills. A similar divide can be expected on the Planned Parenthood vote, which could be particularly turbulent because evangelical Christians are so heavily concentrated in the South. And if there’s a protracted fight to decide the next speaker, this divide could become crucial again. In 2013, Representative Tom Price, Republican of Georgia, went so far as to argue that the House needed “red-state leadership,” perhaps reflecting an awareness of the same schism evident in the data. One thing is clear: The blue-state Republicans have lost the House, and they’re not getting it back anytime soon. Because of racial polarization, most Southern Republicans inhabit extremely safe districts. If anything, future Democratic gains in the House are likely to further erode the number of blue-state Republicans, just as Republican gains in the last midterm election further eroded the number of red-state Democrats. That’s especially true if Democratic gains involve rolling back G.O.P. gerrymanders in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio that have tended to boost the number of relatively moderate Republicans. Mr. Boehner’s resignation, however, does not end the fight of the blue-state Republicans. They have lost the House, but they will take their case to what could be surprisingly friendly terrain: the G.O.P. primary electorate. The blue-state Republicans may be a distinct minority in the House, but they still possess the delegates, voters and resources to decide the party’s presidential nomination. In 2012, there were more Mitt Romney voters in California than in Texas, and in Chicago’s Cook County than in West Virginia. Over all, the states that voted for President Obama in 2012 hold 50 percent of the delegates to the Republican National Convention, even though they contain just 19 percent of Republican senators. In the last two cycles, relatively moderate Republican candidates won the party’s nomination by sweeping the blue states. Mr. Romney and John McCain won every Obama state in the last two cycles, making it all but impossible for a conservative to win the nomination. Mr. Romney lost all but one red-state primary held before Rick Santorum dropped out. The blue-state Republicans also have the advantage of superior financial resources. The blue states represented 62 percent of all Republican primary fund-raising in 2012. This isn’t to say that red-state Republicans couldn’t decide the party’s nomination. The preponderance of elected officials are now from the red states, and they have developed a new Republican establishment — even if it doesn’t like to think of itself that way — of elected officials and networks of donors and operatives tied to more conservative causes than the party’s waning if still wealthy Northeastern elite. If you take the view that party elites decide presidential nominations, then the growing number of red-state Republicans should open the door to more conservative candidates who ultimately win the nomination. They would have to do a better job of coordinating their influence around a single candidate than they have in the past, but they should have enough numbers to support a stronger campaign than candidates like Mr. Santorum or Mike Huckabee ever had. Yet to win, the red-state Republicans will have to persuade blue-state voters. They haven’t had to do that in the House, where their numbers have been enough to force the Republican leadership to shift in their direction and to put pressure on their speaker to resign. But they won’t have those same numbers at the Republican convention. The Upshot provides news, analysis and graphics about politics, policy and everyday life. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for our newsletter.