Why The ‘Suicide Caucus’ Won’t Compromise

The red dots in the graph above represent the districts of the 80 Republicans that have been the driving force behind the shutdown.  Ryan Lizza dubs them “the Suicide Caucus” (although Rep. Devin Nunes deserves credit too).  He then explains what their districts look like:

The members of the suicide caucus live in a different America from the one that most political commentators describe when talking about how the country is transforming. The average suicide-caucus district is seventy-five per cent white, while the average House district is sixty-three per cent white. Latinos make up an average of nine per cent of suicide-district residents, while the over-all average is seventeen per cent. The districts also have slightly lower levels of education (twenty-five per cent of the population in suicide districts have college degrees, while that number is twenty-nine per cent for the average district). . .

Obama defeated Romney by four points nationally. But in the eighty suicide-caucus districts, Obama lost to Romney by an average of twenty-three points. The Republican members themselves did even better. In these eighty districts, the average margin of victory for the Republican candidate was thirty-four points.

In short, these eighty members represent an America where the population is getting whiter, where there are few major cities, where Obama lost the last election in a landslide, and where the Republican Party is becoming more dominant and more popular. Meanwhile, in national politics, each of these trends is actually reversed.

As far as the Suicide Caucus is concerned, their constituents wholeheartedly support them so why compromise. Eventually those in the Republican Party with a district that looks a bit more like America are going to have to cut these folks loose and reach a deal.  Or else it will be suicide for both the Republican Party and the economy.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.