How Republicans Win

George Will is spreading the word about how Republicans win elections, drawing on the work of Los Angeles Times reporters Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten. Their book, One Party Country, refers to where the authors think Republicans are headed, unless Democrats get their act in gear.

Excerpts from Will’s column:

Democrats face "tremendous odds" in their quest to avoid "marginalization" [unless they use] what Republicans embrace, marketing information and what they theoretically are wary of, federal power. . .Did you know that bourbon drinkers are disproportionately Republican and gin drinkers disproportionately Democratic? Karl Rove knows.

[Rove’s] slivers were trimmed from the Democratic base in so many places, "the shift," Hamburger and Wallsten write, "did not always register in national polls, or on the radar of Democratic strategists. It was the political equivalent of stealth technology in air power: Democrats would feel the bombs explode, but they could not see the bombers."

Politically, there are . . . countless constituencies to be courted with niche marketing. In a closely divided nation, with a small and shrinking number of truly unaffiliated voters, supremacy goes to the party with the best database and most nimble microtargeters. . .

[Rove wants to advance] conservative goals that also cripple the other party. For example, shielding businesses from excessive tort-liability lawsuits conforms to basic conservative values—and also slows the flow of money to the Democratic Party from its most lavish constituency, the trial lawyers. . .

Republicans . . . [ironically] use business skills of market segmentation to defeat Democrats by mastering the favor-dispensing and constituency-assembling power of the sprawling government that Democrats did so much to build and justify.

. . . [Still,] Hamburger and Wallsten's intelligent book has a dumb title. This is a closely divided country, and its divisions seem to be hardening. It is not close to being a "one-party country." . .