GOP Should Run Against the Power of the Center

By Michael Barone

Move to the center. That's the advice Republicans are getting from quarters friendly and otherwise. It seems to make a certain amount of sense. If opinion is arrayed along a single- dimension, left-to-right spectrum and clustered in the middle in a bell-curve pattern, then a party on the right needs only to move a few steps toward the center or just beyond to convert itself from minority to majority status.

But the world is a lot more complicated than that. Opinion is not arrayed on a single dimension, but flies all over the place in two or three or even four dimensions (which is to say it changes over time). New issues crop up, and old issues appear in a different light. Success in politics often comes not from readjusting one's stand to conform with current opinion, but in redefining what is at stake and reframing issues so that you have majorities on your side.

It's arguably good policy as well as good politics to run against this over-powerful center. Bailout favoritism and crony capitalism not only misallocate economic resources, they also sap faith in the fairness of our institutions. After World War II, Democrats wanted to retain wartime high taxes, pro-union labor laws, and wage and price controls -- all manipulatable for political benefit by political insiders. Republicans ran in 1946 on the theme of

"Had enough?"

and won big enough majorities to lower taxes, revise labor laws and abolish controls.

The 1946 Republicans didn't move to the center. They ran against the power of the center and permanently redefined where the center of the political spectrum was. That's a path today's Republicans might want to consider...

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