A Monkey Cage reader emailed me and solicited my thoughts on question he recently was asked:
bq. Someone asked me if I thought Republicans could get political traction by promising to “run the House differently.”
And so we’re back to the question of whether concerns about the political process will drive voting behavior. I’ve already suggested that concerns about process were not crucial to opinion about health care reform. I’ve also argued that the economy, not aspects of political process, drive trust in government and evaluations of incumbent leaders.
So, naturally, I’m skeptical that the GOP would make any headway with this claim. We’ll leave aside the fact that any party who makes such a claim is lying. The main Republican complaints about how the Democrats have run Congress are the same complaints Democrats had when Republicans ran Congress: in short, “you don’t let us do anything.” I wouldn’t expect either party to suddenly embrace bipartisanship.
Thus, it seems pretty unlikely to me that people will vote out incumbent Democrats because a Republican majority will run Congress in a consensual bipartisan matter. It also seems unlikely that people will vote out incumbents of both parties and just replace them with fresh blood. People like their representative and don’t tend to hold him or her responsible for what “Congress” does or doesn’t do.
Fundamentally, I don’t think that people evaluate candidates in some objective fashion based on the “process” they do or don’t promise. I certainly don’t think that Obama’s promise to change government was all that consequential for his election. The number of votes and seats that Republicans win in 2010 will depend much more on the economy, presidential approval, and local dynamics in contested races, than on promises to govern differently.