During the Cold War, the Republican coalition was unified in the face of the Soviet threat. But the Cold War is over, and maintaining this unity is far more difficult. Republicans need to remind themselves that America’s security is still at risk and that its constitutional order is threatened by a political left whose values remain socialist and whose agendas are subversive.
In the election, only 1% of Republicans defected to the Buchanan candidacy compared to 3% of Democrats who voted for Nader. Without this superior Republican unity, the Republican candidate would have lost.
All political campaigns are about forming and maintaining majority coalitions. The very diversity of the electorate means that the success of national campaigns depends on a united political front. For the Republican Party, achieving this unity is not easy. Its coalition embraces amazing diversity—conservatives and moderates, secularists and religionists, moral absolutists and agnostic libertarians (a fact for which Republicans rarely get the credit they deserve).
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