Republicans losing core business vote?

What this article shows as well is that the Democrats are moving to the right and thus attracting former Republicans. Certainly it is not surprising that fiscal Conservatives would give up on Bush since he seems not to worry about spending at all when it comes to war or defence. Those conservatives who are concerned about big government will probably abandon the Republicans since the government is becoming larger because of defence expenditure. A lot of free market Republican types are not at all enamoured of social conservativism and this may cause them to opt for the Democrats as social issue conservatives and fundamentalist Christians gain more influence among Republicans.

Wall Street Journal - October 2, 2007

GOP Is Losing Grip
On Core Business Vote

Deficit Hawks Defect
As Social Issues Prevail;
'The Party Left Me'

By JACKIE CALMES

WASHINGTON -- The Republican Party, known since the late 19th century
as the party of business, is losing its lock on that title.

New evidence suggests a potentially historic shift in the Republican
Party's identity -- what strategists call its "brand." The votes of
many disgruntled fiscal conservatives and other lapsed Republicans
are now up for grabs, which could alter U.S. politics in the 2008
elections and beyond.

Some business leaders are drifting away from the party because of the
war in Iraq, the growing federal debt and a conservative social
agenda they don't share. In manufacturing sectors such as the auto
industry, some Republicans want direct government help with soaring
health-care costs, which Republicans in Washington have been
reluctant to provide. And some business people want more government
action on global warming, arguing that a bolder plan is not only
inevitable, but could spur new industries.

Already, economic conservatives who favor balanced federal budgets
have become a much smaller part of the party's base. That's partly
because other groups, especially social conservatives, have grown
more dominant. But it's also the result of defections by other fiscal
conservatives angered by the growth of government spending during the
six years that Republicans controlled both the White House and
Congress.

The most prominent sign of dissatisfaction has come from former
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, long a pillar of Republican
Party economic thinking. He blasted the party's fiscal record in a
new book. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, he said: "The
Republican Party, which ruled the House, the Senate and the
presidency, I no longer recognize."

Some well-known business leaders have openly changed allegiances.
Morgan Stanley Chairman and Chief Executive John Mack, formerly a big
Bush backer, now supports Democratic front-runner Sen. Hillary
Clinton of New York. John Canning Jr., chairman and chief executive
of Madison Dearborn Partners, a large private-equity firm, now
donates to Democrats after a lifetime as a Republican. Recently, he
told one Democratic Party leader: "The Republican Party left me" -- a
twist on a line Ronald Reagan and his followers used when they
abandoned the Democratic Party decades ago to protest its '60s and
'70s-era liberalism.

Concern for their fiscal reputation is reflected in the fights that
President Bush and congressional Republicans now are picking with the
new Democratic majority over annual appropriations and an expansion
of a children's health program, in hopes of placating party
conservatives.

For all the disillusionment among Republicans, the party retains
strong support in many parts of the business community, in part
because of fears about the taxing and regulating tendencies of
Democrats. Danny Diaz, spokesman for the Republican National
Committee, says, "Americans of every political persuasion that value
hard work, keeping more hard-earned dollars, and economic
independence and entrepreneurship will continue to stand behind the
Republican Party."

Polling Data

But polling data confirm business support for Republicans is eroding.
In the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll in September, 37% of
professionals and managers identify themselves as Republican or
leaning Republican, down from 44% three years ago.

Richard Clinch, a 69-year-old New York native, illustrates the
party's plight. The retired Westinghouse manager and mechanical
engineer says he has been "a lifelong Republican." As a young fiscal
conservative, he was attracted by the party's reputation for frugal
and competent governance, he says. The Democratic Party left him
cold, he says, because of its social spending and ties to the unions
that exasperated him at work. As a retiree in Annapolis, Md., he
became a local Republican officer.

Yet next year, for the first time since he began voting in 1960, Mr.
Clinch won't support the Republican presidential nominee, he says. He
only "very reluctantly" voted for Mr. Bush's re-election in 2004.
"Like many Republicans, I am frustrated," he says. "We've lost
control of spending," and the administration's execution of the Iraq
war has been "incompetent." Mr. Clinch says he is liberal about
rights for women and gays, and vexed that "we [Republicans] get
sidetracked on these issues like gay marriage."

Jumping Parties

Such misgivings do not necessarily translate into long-term gains for
Democrats. Mr. Clinch says his two sons -- one a 50-year-old
ophthalmologist, the other a 42-year-old economist -- have both
jumped from the Republican to the Democratic Party. But Mr. Clinch
isn't necessarily voting Democratic. "I think I'm becoming an
independent," he says. "If I were 21 years old, I'd be an independent
definitely."

For his part, Mr. Greenspan says he doubts he will vote for a
Democrat for president next year, because the party is moving "in the
wrong direction," becoming more populist and protectionist.

Federal campaign-finance reports document shifting support in some
quarters of the business community. Hedge funds last year gave 77% of
their contributions in congressional races to Democrats, up from 71%
during the 2004 election, according to the Center for Responsive
Politics, a nonpartisan analyst of campaign finances. Last year the
securities industry gave 45% of its money to Republicans, down from
58% in 1996, the center said.

"You see it in the lack of donor support" for Republican presidential
candidates, says longtime strategist John Weaver. As former top
adviser to presidential candidate and Arizona Sen. John McCain, Mr.
Weaver recalls hearing Republican businesspeople grouse about the
party's focus on moral issues and Iraq.

Overall, Democratic presidential candidates have raised more than
$200 million this year, about 70% more than their Republican rivals.

Some of the most compelling evidence suggesting a redefinition of the
Republican Party comes from prominent Republican pollster Tony
Fabrizio. Earlier this year, he surveyed 2,000 Republican voters,
updating his similarly exhaustive poll of 10 years ago. In 1997,
about half of Republicans said they were motivated mainly by economic
issues, and about half by social and moral issues. This year, the
culturally conservative wing was roughly the same size, but economic
conservatives accounted for just one in six Republicans. In the wake
of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the ranks of Republicans whose main
concern is defense have grown after subsiding with the end of the
Cold War.

The economic conservatives, Mr. Fabrizio found, are split into
opposing camps: "free market" conservatives opposed to any new taxes,
spending and regulations; and what he calls "government-knows-best"
moderates, who sometimes favor regulations and higher taxes for
causes such as education, environmental programs or infrastructure.

The once-dominant "deficit hawks," who put balanced budgets ahead of
tax cuts (think former Sen. Robert Dole, or Mr. Bush's father), are
all but extinct. A quarter-century of infighting between those
Republicans and others who seek lower taxes regardless of deficits
has been decisively settled in the current Bush administration in
favor of the tax cutters.

The result has been big tax cuts, and in the dozen years when the
Congress was under Republican control, big spending increases as well.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former
Democrat who left the Republican Party three months ago, complained
Sunday at Britain's Conservative Party conference that conservative
politicians in the U.S. were guilty of "lunacy" for running up
deficits for future taxpayers to pay.

Many old-school fiscal conservatives are also upset. Economist Bruce
Bartlett, a Treasury official in the Reagan years, recently
commiserated with like-minded conservatives on a blog. "I haven't
changed my philosophical views in any significant way over the last
10 years, but in the pre-Bush era, I felt comfortable in the
Republican mainstream," he wrote. "Today, I don't really feel there
is any significant element of the Republican coalition where I am
comfortable."

One glue holding the party together is that social conservatives
often share the goals of economic conservatives. Social conservatives
supported the Bush tax cuts and wanted to make them permanent. But
their priority, and what keeps them Republicans, is opposition to
abortion, gay rights and the like.

Some intraparty tension is rooted in cultural differences. Social
conservatives tend to be relatively lower-income, less educated,
concentrated in the South and West, and newer to the party than many
old-line Republicans of an economic or business bent. Each blames the
other for the party's current state -- often employing pejoratives
such as "Bible-thumpers" or "country-club Republicans."

In Washington, Republican leaders' relations are no longer as cozy as
they once were with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation's
foremost business group, with its temple-like headquarters facing the
White House. "It's a much more complex relationship than it used to
be," says Chamber political director William Miller.

Funding Highways

For example, he says, the Chamber supports a higher gasoline tax if
revenues are dedicated to funding highways and bridges that truckers
and other businesses want, and to hold down deficits. But that has
put the Chamber at odds with antitax Republicans in Congress and the
administration. That split comes atop other tensions over trade and,
especially, immigration. As the party's base has shifted south and
west, it has become more protectionist and focused on secure borders.
Business generally favors free trade and liberal immigration laws
that keep workers coming and employer sanctions to a minimum.

Richard Cooper of Winnetka, Ill., a 67-year-old investor and former
chairman of Weight Watchers Inc., hasn't just switched parties -- he
is helping Sen. Clinton's campaign. An early Reaganite, he
unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for Illinois governor
in 1976. He says he has been alienated in recent years by Republican
policies across the board. A leader of the international
"Responsibility to Protect" project for global action against
humanitarian crises, he opposes Bush foreign policies. The father of
a daughter with lupus, he wants funding for stem-cell research, which
antiabortion Republicans oppose.

As for fiscal policy, Mr. Cooper contends that "Democrats are the new
conservatives." Republicans "are still talking about tax cuts. It was
one thing when Ronald Reagan was doing it and the top [income-tax]
rate was about 80%. Now tax rates are reasonable. So what if I have
to pay 5% more in taxes?"

More Centrist

In last fall's midterm elections, rebellious Republicans and
Republican-leaning independents contributed to the Democrats'
takeover of Congress and a raft of state and local offices. The
Democratic Party had lured many newcomers through shifts of its own
since the Reagan era. Particularly under President Clinton, the party
became more centrist and fiscally conservative, espousing balanced
budgets, targeted tax cuts and free trade. Party liberals and
unionists never fully accepted those changes.

Yet the benefits to Democrats were evident in a Wall Street Journal/
NBC News poll last July. When Americans were asked which party could
better deal with national problems, they gave Democrats an edge of 25
percentage points over Republicans on cutting deficits, 16 points on
controlling federal spending, 15 points on dealing with the economy,
9 points on taxes and 3 points on trade. "We have lost our measurable
advantage on fiscal conservatism, and we have quite some ways to go
to get that back," says Terry Nelson, Mr. Bush's national political
director in 2004.

Mr. Clinton said in an interview that he often meets disillusioned
Republicans in his travels. "They say, 'You know, I didn't vote for
you, and I didn't like the fact that you raised taxes on upper-income
people and corporations, but I did better when you were there. You
produced a better economy. You guys knew what you were doing.'"

Such comments could be dismissed as self-serving, but Mr. Greenspan
offers a similar view in his new autobiography, "The Age of
Turbulence: Adventures in a New World." Mr. Greenspan, who was
President Ford's chief economic adviser and Mr. Reagan's choice for
the Fed, praises Mr. Clinton for fighting for deficit reduction and
free trade, over the opposition of fellow Democrats and unions. "A
consistent, disciplined focus on long-term economic growth became a
hallmark of his presidency," Mr. Greenspan writes. In recent years,
his own party's leaders, he writes, "seemed readily inclined to
loosen the federal purse strings any time it might help add a few
more seats to the Republican majority."

Goldwater Republican

In an interview, Mr. Greenspan noted: "I was brought up in the
Republican Party of [Barry] Goldwater. He was for fiscal restraint
and for deregulation, for open markets, for trade. Social issues were
not a critical factor." Today's Republican party, he added, has
"fundamentally been focusing on how to maintain political power, and
my question is, for what purpose?"

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has lost some Republican Party
support because of his socially liberal stands and his proposals on
global warming and universal health care. But those stands have made
him more popular generally in the state, while his party is less so.
Last month, at the state Republicans' convention, he sounded an
alarm. Noting that California Republicans have lost 370,000
registered voters since 2005, the former actor said, "We are dying at
the box office." The voters that Republicans need, Mr. Schwarzenegger
argued, "often hold conservative views on fiscal policy and law-and-
order issues, while taking more liberal stands on social and
environmental issues."

Nationally, support for some Republican causes espoused by social
conservatives and hawks has declined in the general population as
Americans have grown more concerned about economic matters. Those
were the conclusions last spring of the nonpartisan Pew Research
Center, based on its latest surveys on Americans' political attitudes.

'Old-Fashioned Values'

Pew found that between 1987 and this year, for example, support for
"old-fashioned values about family and marriage" had dropped 11
percentage points. The percentage of those who said gay teachers
should be fired dropped 23 points, Pew said. Support for U.S. global
engagement and "peace through military strength" also shrank.

But the number of Americans who share some classic Democratic
concerns has risen. Three-quarters of the population is worried about
growing income inequality, Pew found, while two-thirds favor
government-funded health care for all. Support for a government
safety net for the poor is at its highest level since 1987, Pew said.

"More striking," Pew concluded, was the change in party
identification since 2002. Five years ago, the population was evenly
divided -- 43% for each party. This year, Democrats had a 50% to 35%
advantage.