On Monday, Seth Masket wrote a piece about the schism between Tea Partiers and the GOP, investigating whether it mirrors the division between the 1980s Republican elites and the main conservative faction of that time, the Religious Right. Masket suggests that the Tea Party and the GOP might differ less in terms of ‘culture’ than in their ideology. Tea Partiers may simply be more conservative than other Republicans and want the Republican Party to move further to the right.
I think Masket’s hunch is correct, but the data on which he relies (the American National Election Study) does not provide much of a story as to how or why. Here, I bring in the Virginia Politics Study (VPS), a survey I conducted of delegates at Virginia’s 2013 Republican nominating convention. CONT.
Rachel Blum (Georgetown), Mischiefs of Faction