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Abstract
Members of the U.S. Congress have created new, sub-partisan institutions to capture some influence in an increasingly polarized and competitive two-party system. However, scholars have only recently begun to empirically evaluate the impact of groups like the Blue Dog Coalition or the House Freedom Caucus. In this article, I show that faction affiliation alone can shift the way that political donors, activists, and leaders perceive a candidate’s ideological position. These experimental results contribute to our understanding of how factions can accumulate valuable political resources and, ultimately, loosen the bonds of two-party government.Footnote1
Notes
1 I am indebted to Julia Cassidy and the Lafayette College Gov Lab for invaluable research assistance for this project. My thanks, also, to Thomas Gray, Adam Hughes, Kenneth Lowande, Jeff Jenkins, Rachel Potter, Lynn Sanders, Nick Winter, Craig Volden, and the Legislative Studies Virtual Working Group for helpful comments and general assistance with earlier stages of this research project. This study was generously supported by the University of Virginia Political Psychology Working Group and the Lafayette College EXCEL Scholarship Program. The Blue Dog experiment was approved by the UVA Institutional Review Board for the Social and Behavioral Sciences (SBS numbers 2014-0341-00), but no pre-analysis plan was made, as this study was conducted in November 2014. The Freedom Caucus experiment was approved by the Lafayette College Institutional Review Board on May 12, 2021 (Proposal Number: AY2021-52). The pre-analysis plan for the second experiment (AsPredicted #75670) was registered just before our recruitment email was distributed, on September 28, 2021. Replication files will be uploaded to Dataverse upon publication.
2 Ironically, the heuristic capacity of brands is most effectively used by citizens that need informational shortcuts the least (Lau and Redlawsk Citation2001).
3 The Freedom Caucus brand was discussed, in part, because of the extremely conservative subset of the American electorate in the audience. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) endorsed Alex Mooney (R-WV) by calling him a “professional RINO [Republican in Name Only] hunter” and fearless conservative that would help fire Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). Attendees at this rally were entered in a “Tavor X95 Rifle Gun Giveaway.”
4 Recent work has formalized and expanded upon these theoretical claims while providing qualitative case studies to support the model in two policy domains (Pomirchy Citation2022).
5 The group’s roots can apparently be traced back to the “Boll Weevils” in the Conservative Democratic Forum of the 1980s (Block Rubin 2017). As Bloch Rubin (Citation2017, p. 191) explains, the boll weevil (insect) devastated cotton crop in the U.S. South, forcing a diversification for that industry’s survival. The “Boll Weevil” (Democrat) symbolism was thus intended to drive home the need for ideological diversity within the Democratic Party. Put differently, even this proto-factional institution seemed to organize on the premise of dealing with an ill-fitting national brand.
6 Rep. Schrader is, in fact, a co-chair of the Blue Dog Coalition. While conducting background research, I was able to share the results of the experiment with a Blue Dog affiliate.
7 The Blue Dog image, as displayed, was also genuinely used by members of the organization at the time of the experiment. They have since cleaned up and improved their logo.
8 The design of the outcome measure followed directly from Butler and Powell (Citation2014) use of sliders with the ends labeled as ‘`liberal'’ or “conservative” in their study of party brands. The appendix provides an example of the survey instrument.
9 Technically, I am able to perform a subset analysis among political donors and volunteers using demographic questions at the end of the survey. Re-running the analysis with the 116 respondents that indicated their participation in these behaviors leads to a slightly larger intent-to-treat effect (7.6, p < 0.05). However, relying upon this subset analysis raises questions of post-treatment bias in our analysis, so the focus of the manuscript remains on the full sample.
10 Analyzing the constituent slider responses – rather than an average of these scores – reveals a similar finding. Respondents view the Blue Dog version of Kurt Schrader (D-OR) as about 6 points to the right of the control condition (p < 0.01) for the individual tax, defense, and immigration policy responses.
11 The average party unity score for Democrats in the House was 95% in 2020. Rep. Schrader’s score was 87.3%.
12 According to the House Freedom Caucus (Citation2015), the founding members included: Scott Garrett (R-NJ), Jim Jordan (R-OH), John Fleming (R-LA), Matt Salmon (R-AZ), Justin Amash (R-MI), Rep. Raúl Labrador (R-ID), Mick Mulvaney (R-SC), Ron DeSantis (R-FL), and Mark Meadows (R-NC).
13 Like the organization’s secrecy, the effectiveness of the 80% rule may be overstated. As Green (Citation2019) points out, Freedom Caucus members were given more than one “free passes” before punitive actions would be taken.
14 Perhaps most famously, the Freedom Caucus has been credited with the overthrow of former Speaker John Boehner in their inaugural year. Unsurprisingly, the former Republican leader did not think highly of the group.
15 For examples of impermissible use of FEC data, please see the list of advisory opinions (AO) on their website: https://www.fec.gov/updates/sale-or-use-contributor-information/
16 See https://www.nfrw.org/history for more details on the NFRW.
17 See https://www.nfdw.com/history for more details on the NFDW.
18 Democratic donors, local Democratic Party leaders, local Republican Party leaders, members of the National Federation of Democratic Women, and members of the National Federation of Republican Women.
20 More specifically, 227 of the 258 total responses selecting “definitely yes,” “probably yes,” or “might or might not” to either the question about donations or the inquiry about volunteering were Republicans.
21 In this case, Democrats made up 841 of the 868 total responses selecting “definitely not” for both the questions about volunteering and donations.
22 Again, these patterns should be taken in their appropriate context. The negative association with the Freedom Caucus is almost certainly a function of a relatively small share of Republican respondents in the sample.
23 Perhaps owing to the timing of the survey, many of these responses further tied Donalds to anti-democratic positions more generally. For example, respondents noted that: “Byron Donalds is associated with the Freedom Caucus, a group that is undermining fundamental democratic values. I would not support anyone who associated with the Freedom Caucus.” Others were more blunt, still: “he's an insurrectionist fascist Trump supporting ass.”
24 Some respondents had clearly detailed views on the faction, for example, one wrote: “Joining the Freedom Caucus is as much a partisan choice as it is a political; said differently, it has a reputation of leveraging political support through the outlandish and immature procedural chicanery of its members under the guise of conservative partisan principles. the delay tactics and voting records of the members do not align with what the group stands for; adhesion to this caucus *lowers* my estimation of Byron Donalds because I infer that the group’s purpose - buffoonish obstructionism when a Democrat is president and hypocritical spinelessness when the same behavior would cost republican primary votes - is more about retaining elected office than effecting (sic) good governance.”