Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, Off Center: "Conclusion: Meeting the Challenge"

Steps for restoring a balance of political power

1) rebuild the breadth of labor unions -- but this will have to be done largely after balance is achieved rather than as a prerequisite. It is impossible to pass the new laws and issue the regulations needed for a labor revival while Republican extremists are in control.
2) Use the internet to organize opposition. Fundraising, e-mail lists, blogs. Powerful and flexible tool for coordination.

Republican corruption and overreach have created an opening for restoration of political balance.
Proposals
1) Remove barriers to increased voter turnout.
a) Reform voter registration: implement same-day registration; get rid of requirement to re-register after moving; restore voting rights for ex-felons
b) Make election day a national holiday

2) Increase the proportion of competitive elections
a) Put redistricting in the hands of non-partisan panels
b) Split state electoral votes by district as well as state (neither this or the preceding should be done only in Democratic states, however -- that would be "unilateral disarmament")
c) Create pure open primaries with top two vote-getters advancing to general election
d) Require free TV and radio airtime for federal candidates
e) Take constituent service out of the hands of Congressmen and have it performed by non-partisan ombudsmen (strongly disagree with this: the vested interest of politicians in reelection gives them a stronger incentive to perform constituent service well, and the incumbency advantage this provides is bearable).

3) Increase transparency and accountability
a) Restore the Fairness Doctrine
b) Start an American tradition of Question Time for the President before Congress
c) Provide a simple yearly prospectus of government spending every year (perhaps with tax returns)
d) Restrict use of closed rules in the House and make sure that existing rules for conference committees can only be waived with a two-thirds vote.

Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, Off Center: Chapter 6, "The Center Does Not Hold"

Political scientists and pundits generally expect centrists to hold sway. This has not happened because the institutional moderating forces have not been as effective as expected.

1) voters -- not only are voters poorly informed, but this ignorance is not random. Republicans strive to make sure voter ignorance is tilted in their favor, which has diluted the effectiveness of voters without strong ideological affiliations as a moderating influence.

2) opposition -- the Democrats are simply not as unified and organized as the Republicans. Senior committee members more autonomous. Campaign funding often depends on special interests with an agenda that cuts against liberal policy. Moderates vulnerable to Republican framing. Lack of institutional control means there is little ability to reward loyalists, while Republicans can reward those who stray. Disproportionate significance of Republican-leaning small states in Senate apportionment creates a large segment of vulnerable Democratic Senators who are especially hard to keep in line.

3) media -- decreasingly effective in exposing the actual effects of Republican policies because of a) focus on entertainment over substance, b) "he-said she-said" model of objectivity, and c) herd mentality in deciding what issues are worth covering. The parallel right-wing media universe also plays an important part in distorting coverage.

4) Republican moderates -- intimidated and bought off.

Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, Off Center: Chapter 5, "The Republican Machine"

New Republican power brokers (Norquist, DeLay, Rove) are a key to the direction of American politics.Two key facts: (1) their politics is extreme; (2) their power is not necessarily a function of official positions.

The new power brokers have created the high degree of centralization and coordination in conservative politics. From their role as middlemen between activists, politicians, and lobbyists,they impose discipline on all of them to foster a unified (and extreme) agenda. They control the access of interest groups and lobbyists to politicans and legislation, and they also control the access of politicians to campaign money and leadership posts. They determine how much apparent independence supposedly moderate Republicans can show in order to strengthen their electoral prospects.

The coordination makes possible several kinds of "backlash insurance" to protect vulnerable incumbents from the consequences of supporting an unpopular far-right policies.
1) Agenda control - control what comes up for debate in Congress, keep popular and more centrist or liberal issues from getting a hearing, use unified public relations campaign to frame how the issues are presented in the media.
2) procedural manipulation - protect Republicans from unpopular votes on bills by using legislative rules. In the House, Republicans use a closed debate rule to quash moderate of liberal amendments to bills. This can't be done in the Senate,but conference committees are abused in a way that makes the original Senate bill irrelevant, so that Senators can safely vote for popular amendments that will be stricken from the final law.
3) Policy distortion - design legislation so that relatively trivial but popular aspects are most evident (e.g., front-loading middle-class tax cuts) while more significant and very unpopular right-wing measures are obscured (e.g., phase-ins and sunsets for tax cuts that mostly affect the very rich to hide their true extent).
4) Throw lots of money behind incumbents who are still at risk despite other measures.

Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, Off Center: Chapter 4, "The Race to the Base"

Three sources of radicalization in the Congressional Republican caucus: replacement of Southern Democrats, replacement of Republicans by more conservative Republicans, tendency for Republican members of Congress to grow more conservative the longer they are in office.


Party leaders have actively sought to promote policies that satisfy the conservative base, and they have organized the led and relied on the base to weed out or bring into line Republican politicians who are too moderate.


Increasing political influence of the wealthy. Turnout becoming more heavily tilted to the most well off. Money is becoming a much more important factor in political races as campaigns become more expensive, and this, of course, is an even bigger boost to the influence of the wealthy. Trade unions and civic groups once provided an organizational counterweight for the less well-off, but they have largely decayed.

Congressional and Senatorial seats have increasingly become safe for one party or the other -- most often, Republicans. Some of this is due to historical trends in party affiliation (like the movement of the South to Republicans). But on the district level, a great deal of it is the result of partisan redistricting. This means that Republican incumbents generally have more to fear from primary challenges than general elections opponents.

Activist groups representing base constituencies within the GOP coalition increasingly drive turnout. They also are playing a larger role in recruiting and vetting candidates.

Political parties are actually becoming a more important factor in candidate success, largely because they have become a centralized source of money. Money from Republican Party leaders' PACs are an especially important factor in driving primary and general election success of right-wing candidates.

Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, Off Center: Chapter 3, "New Rules for Radicals"

Six rules that explain how Republicans make major changes in public policy with very small majorities despite widepsread public opposition.

1. Control the agenda.
Control of both houses of Congress means being able to decide which measures are even considered. This can mean either pushing legislation which doesn't have broad public backing at all (Social Security privatization) or preventing more popular alternatives or amendments from being considered (censure vs. impeachment for Clinton, many amendments to the bankruptcy bill, conservation vs. energy company subsidies).

2. Control the content of legislation.
The example used is Medicare Plan B (prescription drug coverage), in which a more popular Senate plan was frozen out of a final vote by stacking the reconciliation committee. It's debatable how different this is from the first rule.

3. Make changes surreptitiously.
Many goals can be achieved either in legislation that draws little attention or by even less conspicuous executive orders. Examples: workplace safety deregulation (executive action and little noticed Congressional action), removing overtime pay protections (executive action with Congressional response squelched by agenda control), and environmental deregulation (executive action).

4. Stall needed changes or reauthorizations.
Preventing renewal of assault weapons ban. Stonewalling an update of the minimum wage. Stifling expansion of public health care initiatives.

5. "Starve the beast:" tax cuts now to force spending cuts later

6. Tilt the playing field -- change the rules of political competition to favor Republicans.
Mid-term redistricting. Threats to nullify Senate filibuster by parliamentary procedure.

These methods don't necessarily work with issues that are highly publicized or when opposition is well-organized.

Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, Off Center: Chapter 2, "Partying with the 'People's Money'"

The American public did not favor the Bush tax cuts over increased social spending or even deficit reduction. Nor did Americans favor the skewed distribution of those tax cuts over more egalitarian alternatives. The Republicans were aware that they were pursuing a policy without public support. So they disguised the size of the cuts with phase-ins (especially at the top end) and sunsets. They also left the alternative minimum tax in place to give them more apparent room for cuts: they realized that its increasing bite on the middle class would compel a fix, but by that time the cuts would already be in place. The sunsets were also designed to create an artificial crisis of sudden, apparent tax increases several years later; the idea is that this will create pressure to make the cuts permanent at that time.

They also stretched legislative norms to maneuver the cuts through Congress. They used their control of the agenda in the House to evade consideration of budgetary alternatives and consequences. And they passed the cuts through the budget reconciliation process to circumvent a Senate filibuster.

Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, Off Center: Chapter 1, "Off Center"

There is greater political polarization almost entirely because the Republican Party has become more extreme at all levels: the base of party activists, the rank and file congressional membership, the presidency, and the top political bosses and consultants. There has not been a corresponding trend among Democratic Party activists and members of Congress. Democratic activists have not become particularly more liberal, and Democratic members of Congress only slightly so.

Nor is there a corresponding trend among the public at large. Polling shows that the public has grown neither more polarized nor more conservative. Furthermore, the polling data probably understates the gap between the increasingly radical Republican party and the electorate. This is because of the somewhat narrow range of issues polled and because of the ability of focused Republican political campaigns to shape opinion on a few issues.

Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, Off Center: Introduction

Republicans have won recent elections by very narrow margins. Public opinion is evenly divided. Nevertheless, Republicans have succeeded in enacting an ideologically extreme agenda.

Traditional view is that the large proportion of politically moderate voters would weed out political extremists. But Republicans no longer fear the median voter, because voters are increasingly in the dark about the content of policies. Media coverage focuses on personalities, and the Republican Party controls the legislative agenda and designs its policies with the objective of concealing their real effect on the public. The policies are also designed to shape and restrict future policy choices by stealth. (The authors call these twin innovations "backlash insurance.") The winnowing of political hopefuls is increasingly in the hands of a small minority of rich contributors and highly organized ideological groups. Along with the rise of safe seats, this makes intraparty competition the main concern of many Republicans, thus driving them to more extremist politics. The Republican Party leadership has also successfully centralized authority within the party.