Last month, the chair of the Washington State Republican Party, Kirby Wilbur, unexpectedly resigned to take a job in D.C. with a conservative group. And so this coming Saturday, the members of the WSRP's state committee will meet in Spokane to elect Kirby's replacement.
There are five candidates seeking to replace Wilbur, with four being somewhat legitimate. The Seattle Times published a story on Monday about the contenders, most of whom seem to ascribe at least part of the Washington State Republican Party's lack of success in winning statewide elections to the fact that their candidates just aren't conservative enough.
It's too soon to say what the members of the state committee will end up doing. But as I explain below the fold (with a chart!), anyone hoping continued misfortune for the Washington GOP should cross their fingers for a conservative victory in Spokane.
The "we need to nominate true conservatives" theory has been around in its current form since the GOP lost control of the U.S. House and Senate in 2006. The logic behind this theory seems to have two variations.
The first is that by nominating a solid conservative, even in swing or Democratic states, Republicans can bring significant numbers of disaffected but ideologically-conservative voters back in to the political process who, the theory claims, haven't lately been voting in as large numbers as they used to. There are problems with this logic - voter turnout is generally higher today than it was in the 1990's, for example - but I'll leave the details to others to examine.
The second variation of this theory is that by nominating a solid conservative, Republicans will actually be able to win over voters who have started voting for more moderate or liberal Democratic candidates but really, deep down, would prefer conservative candidates. As others have pointed out, this second variation is reminiscent of the South Park underpants gnomes profit plan, but again I'll leave others to dissect the logic of it in detail.
Both variations of this theory discount the idea that there are voters who would be turned off by a more conservative candidate and would vote a Democratic candidate instead. Or it assumes that, while some voters would be turned off, there would still be a net gain in votes for the Republicans.
The "true conservative" theory seems to have gained particular potency in the Washington State Republican Party right now because of Rob McKenna's loss to Jay Inslee in the 2012 gubernatorial race. McKenna, though not a Rockefeller Republican by any means, was certainly more moderate in tone and policy than most national Republican figures today.
Since McKenna lost, and since the Washington GOP party activists are generally more conservative than he, I think this is a pleasant and convenient theory for them to help explain the 2012 loss and prepare to be competitive in the future.
The problem is history isn't on their side. On a very broad level, the mainstream of the Republican Party, both in Washington and nationally, has been moving to the right since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 (this movement actually started much before 1980, and still seems to be taking place, but Reagan's victory was the first big Presidential win for the modern conservative movement and the start of a clear rightward drift).
The last time a Republican was elected Governor of Washington? 1980. The last time a Republican presidential candidate won Washington? 1984. The last time a Republican was elected Senator from Washington? 1994.
While the full explanation for these victories and defeats is more nuanced, a general trend can be drawn from the past 30+ years of elections: as the Republican Party has drifted rightward, their ability to win a major statewide election in Washington has been greatly harmed. Before this time, Republican candidates won statewide races for President, Governor and Senator on a regular basis (though you'd need to go back many, many decades to reach a time period where you could honestly describe Washington as a Republican state).
So Republicans have already been trying their "true conservative" theory here in Washington. It hasn't worked out, despite some valiant attempts, such as nominating Ellen Craswell for Governor in 1996, an advocate for surgical castration of sex offenders.
But setting all that fairly recent history aside, Republicans should hopefully be able to see the problem with the "true conservative" theory by looking at results from just the past fifteen years. Which brings me to this chart:
It's a chart!
This chart shows the difference between Democratic margins in King County and Democratic margins statewide for major races over the past fifteen years. For example, in 1998 Patty Murray won King County by a margin of 34.22% in her re-election bid. She won statewide by 16.83%, so the chart shows the difference between those two margins (17.39%).
As one can easily see, the difference has increased in favor of Democrats significantly since 1998 and 2000, when the chart begins. In other words, King County - which was already a Democratic stronghold in 1998 and 2000 - has trended even more Democratic than the rest of the state in just the past fifteen years.
Whether they want to admit it or not, this is the biggest problem for the Washington GOP in their efforts to win statewide elections. In the 2012 presidential election, 30.9% of all Washington votes were cast in King County. That's more than the next two counties (Pierce and Snohomish) combined. If King County stays as Democratic as it has become, there's little hope Republicans will be able to win statewide elections unless the Democratic candidate has a major flaw or is a very unpopular incumbent. There just aren't enough swingable votes elsewhere in the state to make up the margin.
Which leads me back to the "true conservative" theory. King County (which includes Seattle, Bellevue, Renton, Redmond, Auburn and a host of other well-sized cities) is more racially diverse than Washington overall. It's also more educated, both based on percentage of the population with a bachelor's degree and percentage of the population with a post-graduate degree. In other words, it's not a place that is going to respond well to candidates who are even more conservative than what the Washington GOP has been offering as of late.
If the Washington GOP wants to start winning again, they need to start narrowing the margin in King County. It's simple numbers. And if they honestly think the way to do that is to nominate even more conservative candidates, then they will be guilty of political malpractice on a massive scale.