GOP losses in North widen regional rifts
The heaviest casualties in the nationwide congressional races yesterday appeared likely to be Republicans in the North, suggesting that when the new Congress convenes in January, the regional split between the parties could be as stark as at any time since the aftermath of the Civil War.
The Democrats appeared certain to increase their dominance in regions they already largely control -- the Northeast, the West Coast, and parts of the Midwest -- and the Republicans, even with some Democratic inroads, were losing little ground in traditional bastions like the South and Mountain Plains.
Among scholars and party strategists, there is growing concern that this hardening of geographical political boundaries may exacerbate rather than simply reflect the country's partisan divisions.
A rare alignment of factors -- an unpopular war and an unpopular president, scandals among Republican legislators, rising health care costs -- fueled the projected consolidation of Democratic control in the North in this election. But the result also forms part of a larger historical shift.
"This is a regional realignment. Back in 1994, we had Democrats who got wiped out in the South, now the Republicans are getting wiped out in the Northeast and parts of the Midwest," said Darryl West, a professor of political science at Brown University. West described the realignment as a "durable, longer-term trend" that is independent of the Iraq war or President Bush's approval ratings.
After the Civil War, the South was solidly Democratic for nearly a century, only beginning to shift when the federal government enforced desegregation in the 1950s and 1960s. By the Reagan era, the region was solidly Republican.
Fifty years ago, the Northeast, by contrast, was the most Republican part of the country. In the 1960s, along with California, it began to shift toward the Democrats, as Northeastern Republicans felt less and less at home in a party dominated by the South and the Sun Belt.
"The country increasingly has become polarized. People in the South don't trust Democrats, and voters in the Northeast don't trust Republicans," West said.
Thomas Mann, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, said this mistrust is self-perpetuating, especially when coupled with electoral losses. "The loss of Northeastern Republican moderates pushes the Republican Party more to the right," he said, "and that means you're likely to have more ideological conservatives and less pragmatic ones."
Merle Black, a political scientist at Emory University specializing in Southern politics, said the growing polarization has been evident in the last few Congresses: As the Republican leadership has grown more Southern, and more culturally divorced from the increasingly northern Democrats, it has been increasingly prone to ignoring the opposition.
"The parties differ on a wider range of issues than ever before," Black said. "The Republicans, acting as a majority, have been passing their preferred policies with very little influence from the Democrats."
If the Democrats gain the majority in the House, he said, they will probably follow the same pattern.
A Democratic Party run by self-identified liberals, including Nancy Pelosi of California and Charles B. Rangel of New York, areas long dominated by like-minded legislators, might be just as likely to cut its Republican minority out of the legislative process. Many analysts contend that when a state's Congressional delegation is dominated by one party, it removes one of the main incentives for working across party lines.
James Ruvolo, former chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party, said that Republicans and Democrats have to mind the needs of their constituents, often collaborating on bringing federal money to their state or district.
"It's in the interest of Democrats and Republicans in Ohio and Michigan to help the auto industry," he said. "That's true of the basic economic interest in Ohio and the Midwest."
A key question in determining how the split will affect the parties' behavior in the coming Congress is what lesson they draw from yesterday's election.
Howard Reiter, a political scientist who specializes in elections at the University of Connecticut, said that the Republicans may be chastened enough by their losses and the prospect of a presidential loss in 2008, to pull the party back toward the center. They may ultimately decide, he said, that "being pushed even further to the right is not a good idea."
The projected modest Democratic gains in the South and Mountain West, though not as great as in the North, may serve as a centrist anchor on the Democrats, as well. The candidates who ran in those races tended to be much more conservative than the national party on issues such as abortion, guns, and the war in Iraq. If the party wants to protect those gains in 2008, it will have to keep from alienating the more conservative voters in those districts.
"The worst thing they could do," said Mann, "is feed the stereotype of the crazy left-wing Democratic Party by acting in accord with the fears of conservative voters."
Of course, if the experience of the Northern moderate Republican is any guide, there may ultimately be little that the Democrats can do to protect their new Southern pick-ups. Over the long term, geography may be destiny. 