Lots of Attitudes Mean Little Latitude

We have argued that the bargaining over Ronald Reagan's taxing and spending package was shaped by the difficulty of uniting southern Democratic boll weevils and northern Republican gypsy moths. The circumstances of early 1981 were ideal for overcoming such divisions. A new president was on his honeymoon; the failures of his predecessor fed a demand to "do something"; the president had no failures of his own to defend; the public was willing to give him a chance; members of his party, elated by control of one branch of Congress for the first time in a generation, united to show they could govern. Senate Republican unity on budget votes was unprecedented.^[13] House GOP unity, though limited to far fewer votes, was nearly as impressive. Thus, Reagan was able to

hold his party and win over enough House boll weevils to build a majority. All the favorable circumstances vanished by the end of 1981; they are summarized in the fact that the president was no longer leading. After the September offensive fizzled, budget votes were no longer matters of support for "the president's program." As program content became more important, therefore, so did the divisions of preference among congressmen.

These divisions, shaping decisions in both chambers, were both more visible and more effective in the House. Senate Republicans, under the skillful leadership of Howard Baker, trying to make the most of their rare opportunity to govern, knowing that if they could settle differences among themselves that would be enough, remained remarkably unified. The House had no such governing party; Republicans needed help from the boll weevils, who in turn were very different from most Democrats.

Party, region, and ideology are the major cleavages among American politicians and voters. They overlap in large measure, but nowhere near perfectly.

Broadly defined, a party is an alliance of politicians united to help each other win elections, control Congress and the presidency, and thereby enjoy the fruits of government. Members of Congress vote with their party because this stable, if rather weak, system helps them know who their friends are. But party also has a strong, often forgotten, ideological component. The budget battles highlighted deep differences within parties in attitudes toward the government and the market. In the United States, what makes party divisions rather messy is a disjunction between party as alliance and party as ideology. That disjunction is mainly a consequence of regional divisions.

The heritage of slavery exacerbated regional economic differences. Until the 1960s, Civil War memories and the search for allies to defend the remnants of its "peculiar system" left the Democratic party as the only party in the South. Republicans, who waged the Civil War, were not welcome. The Great Depression gave Democrats something like parity in the Northeast and Midwest, making them, because of their southern monopoly, the normal party of government. Yet the powerful unions and ethnic groups in the North fit very badly with the WASP conservatism of the South. In the 1960s, when Democrats in the North finally turned on their southern compatriots over civil rights, Republicans began to court the South. At the same time many more liberal Republicans in the North moved toward the Democrats.

From 1964 to 1980 the disjunction between ideological and regional bases of the parties diminished. Yet many Democrats in the South held ideologies that did not much resemble northern liberalism. Especially on issues of race, religion, and social values, Republicans in the Northeast,

upper Midwest, and Pacific Coast states were far from comfortable with their party's courtship of the South. They were descendants of the Yankees who, though quite capitalist, had a "commonwealth" ethic of noblesse oblige and community governance that fit poorly with both Reaganite individualism and New Right moralism. As we saw, their districts' material interests also made these gypsy moths more supportive of social programs than were most Republicans.

For most legislators, the 1981 battles on the budget resolution, reconciliation, and tax cut saw party, ideology, and regional interest support each other. The boll weevils, however, followed ideology and interest over party, while the gypsy moths favored party. All that was possible because attention was focused on general characterizations of policy rather than on program content. When the issue became content, as on the tax auction, less grand definitions of interest became more relevant.