We’re getting close to a major congressional election, and the early maneuvers of the 2012 presidential race are under way.  That means it’s time to worry about independent voters again.

Independents are the battleground where national elections are fought.  The winning formula involves some combination of motivating the party base, suppressing the other party’s base, and gaining support from independent voters.  The tactics necessary to succeed at any one of these things makes the others more difficult.  Appeal to the “middle” too much and your base grows restless, and eventually disgusted enough to stay home on Election Day.  Play to your base and you make independents nervous, along with firing up the other side’s core supporters.

Insufficient appeal to independent voters is often cited as the fatal flaw in candidates beloved by the conservative base.  (It never seems to be a problem for liberal candidates from the Democrat Party, who are never described in the media as “extremists” who “frighten away moderates.”)  No brand of conventional wisdom is received as eagerly as the diagnosis of conservative extremism.

The great challenge for conservatives, when appealing to independent voters in the next few elections, is that moderate measures cannot effectively combat extremism.  How can we respond to the massive leftward swing of the past few years without proposing some “extreme” courses of action?  The statist Obama economy is a massive dead weight crushing the American chest.  It cannot be removed with gentle pressure.

Successful appeals to independent voters must begin with the understanding that, contrary to common media portrayals, they’re not all the same.  The composition of the independent voter pool changes over time – it’s not the same today as it was in 2008.

A fair number of “independents” are better described as ignorant. They don’t follow the issues closely.  They describe themselves as moderate or independent because they think it makes them sound intelligent and open-minded.  Those who really would consider voting for either party’s candidate tend to make up their minds late in the election cycle.

This assessment might sound dismissive, but I have no contempt for these people.  In a free country, they shouldn’t have to become experts on a hundred complex topics to cast an informed vote.  A just and disciplined Republic does not punish those who express no great interest in charting its course.  No one should have to worry that a poorly researched vote will lead to the seizure of his property or business.

Conservatives will always have trouble appealing to the disengaged segment of the independent population, because we won’t be able to match the Left’s control over popular culture for the foreseeable future… and ignorant voters are heavily swayed by the opinions of television journalists and entertainers.  They’re most likely to hear messages pumped through the sub-woofers of mass media, and they view agreement with the pop-culture hive as the best way to seem informed with minimal effort.

If these people can be reached at all, it’s usually through a combination of wit and charisma.  This is the paradox of Sarah Palin’s relationship with casual independents: they respond to lazy cultural slander like the Tina Fey caricature, so they give her poor marks in opinion polls… but she’s also one of the few prominent conservatives with a decent chance of charming them.

Some independents are passive. They don’t want to get sucked into any great crusades.  They tend to vote for the candidate who seems most sensible and reliable.  They fled John Kerry in droves when the “reporting for duty” glow of the 2004 Democratic convention faded, and he started looking downright creepy.  An intelligent, committed conservative candidate should be able to do well with these people in 2012, by pointing out that the carnivorous government created by the Democrats will not leave them alone. The only choices at this point are active resistance, or submission.  Independent voters in search of stability should be reminded there’s no sense in maintaining a straight and true course that leads right off the edge of a cliff.

There is danger in pursuing the votes of these people too aggressively.  They become alarmed at the prospect of significant changes to the status quo… and the status quo is killing us.  If Obama hadn’t come along, it would have ruined us in twenty years, instead of ten.  If the Republicans go frumming off on a doomed quest to land this relatively small portion of the electorate, they risk alienating their base… and then losing the passive vote to a Democrat establishment that will always be ready to promise them more, at absolutely no cost, of course.

On the other hand, the passive vote is becoming profoundly disenchanted with the Democrats, precisely because they are beginning to pay a painful cost for those wonderful benefits and entitlements.  They’re willing to respect the moral imperative of the welfare state when they believe faceless rich people will pick up the tab.  Double-digit unemployment, frightening economic news, and the looming shadow of massive middle-class tax hikes make the embrace of the maternal State feel suffocating.  Practical arguments are most effective with them.  The aura of incompetence congealing around the Obama Administration worries them.  They might not know much about the Constitution, but they’d really like to know why their retirement plans are crumbling to dust.

At the moment, I think the largest component of the independent electorate consists of confused moderates.  These are people who sincerely wish to remain open to all points of view… entertaining both appeals to liberty, and the idea that only a powerful government can address certain issues.  The party in power naturally tends to bleed voters into this group, particularly when things are not going well.  That means the current independent pool includes a good number of folks who normally lean Democrat, and have no strong philosophical objection to immense, maternal government, but are uneasy about the evidence of its failure littering the evening news.  They know something is wrong, and they’re grudgingly prepared to hear the other side’s explanation… but they recoil from angry partisanship.  They want to hear solutions, not insults, and explanations instead of accusations.

This makes appealing to them in 2012 difficult, because what has been happening to this country makes a lot of us angry.  It’s hard not to be outraged by outrages.

I think the key is found through explanation, as mentioned above.  Big Government is sold to moderates as a series of solutions, when in fact it’s a regime of imperatives. These programs may be subject to some future modification, but it’s virtually impossible to eliminate them… without becoming precisely the type of fiery extremist moderates run away from.  In this way, “moderation” is made to serve the interests of aggressive government.  Each expansion of its power is sold as a reasonable solution to an intractable problem, only to evolve into a permanent feature of public life.  Once these programs calcify, their continued survival becomes the accepted “moderate” position forever.

The radical expansion of the State has left no room for thoughtful moderates.  If they wish to have any meaningful choices in the future at all, the reckless bloat of the Obama years must be forcefully cut away.  In a few years, there will be no “middle of the road” positions on socialized medicine – only meek compliance, or savage combat against a system that will fight to the death to protect itself.  There will be no room for polite questions about automatic tax increases to pay for the gold bricks piled on the government’s accelerator pedal.  The State will have increasingly less patience for any questions at all.

It will be the task of the next Republican presidential candidate to explain that, before anyone can honestly claim to be a “centrist,” this country has to journey quite a distance to the Right.  No one who truly desires to be independent can be a passive accomplice to a system that must eliminate theconcept of independence to survive.  It’s an explanation that must be delivered with a winning combination of humor, logic, and determination… plus a strong dose of optimism, because we can make that journey.

We should also embrace the importance of being honest with independent voters.  A mandate which lasts beyond the next election is needed.  Democrats often celebrate elections as great victories, because they know an activist President and willing Congress can easily nourish new growth from a hungry State.  Conservatives must understand that electoral victory is thebeginning of a great undertaking, not an end in itself.  Great challenges lie ahead, stretching across years to come, and we owe all Americans the respect of speaking clearly about them.

Let moderate voters understand that the Democrats have built a government which has no further use for them, except as dupes.  The Left claims the power to write their destiny, while the Right believes the future belongs to citizens, not the ruling class.  That shouldn’t be a tough choice for any sort of independent person to make.

Cross-posted at www.doczero.org.

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