The GOP’s middle-class problem
Romney ended up as an odd combination of an essentially pragmatic politician running on a cookie-cutter conservative agenda. Don’t get me wrong: His agenda was far preferable to the president’s, was brave on Medicare and would have been good for the country. But his conservatism had no distinctive flavor and nothing to inoculate it from simplistic attacks. In 2000, George W. Bush and his team came up with “compassionate conservatism” precisely to brand him as something different and buttressed the slogan with policy proposals.
A different Romney agenda could have provided more substantive reinforcement for his rhetoric about increasing take-home pay: say, a tax plan that offered a generous child tax credit for families, a more explicit replacement plan for Obamacare that emphasized controlling health care costs, a proposal to begin addressing spiraling college tuitions.
There is a resistance on the right to a direct appeal to the middle class, out of an understandable fear of pandering and of anything that smacks of class-based politics. But the middle class isn’t a special-interest group; it is nearly everyone in America. A recent Pew Survey found that only 7 percent of people call themselves lower class and 2 percent upper class. Everyone else says they are middle, upper-middle or lower-middle class.
Blowback
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How many times do we have to say “free stuff”.
rob verdi on November 8, 2012 at 5:05 PM
The Blacks, Latinos, Youth, and Women were not voting based on any sort of message other than must vote Obama or die.
El_Terrible on November 8, 2012 at 5:06 PM
But you’d better start pandering!!!! Let’s see, how many groups now does that make that these Romney butt-boys are blaming in their efforts to cover their own asses?
ddrintn on November 8, 2012 at 5:10 PM
By the way, what the hell does that mean? “Distinctive flavor”?
ddrintn on November 8, 2012 at 5:12 PM
Hey Lowry, who got your endorsement again?
Valkyriepundit on November 8, 2012 at 5:20 PM
Can we quit with the naval gazing? The Democrats bought the election by paying campaign workers to heard no-information voters to the polls with Democrat ticket instruction cards. The lost the argument, but that didn’t mater because they just made up for it by pulling votes out of the sea of non-voters.
There will be no Republican victories until the Republican party does the same thing, sending out their own workers to round up non-voters and send them to the polls with Republican ticket cards.
Count to 10 on November 8, 2012 at 5:20 PM
I think how W called himself a compassionate conservative, Palin a common sense conservative, and Romney a severe conservative
El_Terrible on November 8, 2012 at 5:20 PM
I think it means he had nothing unique to set himself apart from a generic Republican. No signature policy proposal, nor a new twist on old issues. So the only evaluations people could do were a) do I like him personally, or b) do I like the Republican party generally?
AngusMc on November 8, 2012 at 5:22 PM
There is no argument that can win presidential elections anymore. There is only non-voter herding. Everything else is little more than a reduction in the numbers you have to generate.
Count to 10 on November 8, 2012 at 5:22 PM
Holy cow, Romney lost by 2-3% and the GOP is doomed for all eternity by everything from the middle class, poor people and rich people, to hurricanes, to Hispanics, to Big Bird, to Orca/Narwhal, to the media, to the Moron Vote.
forest on November 8, 2012 at 5:24 PM
And the answer was a resounding “Yes!”
But it has no effect on non-voters who weren’t paying any attention to anyone but the nice campaign worker that knocked on their door and took them to the polls.
Count to 10 on November 8, 2012 at 5:24 PM
wrong!!!! mittens was a lousy choice for the GOP….end of story….mittens is the only one to blame….him and only him….why won’t the GOP just admit it and re-build from there?
Pragmatic on November 8, 2012 at 5:28 PM
People who are part of the problem probably shouldn’t draw attention to themselves.
Count to 10 on November 8, 2012 at 5:30 PM
the GOP should start paying people to vote and providing them transportation like the Democrats do.
joey24007 on November 8, 2012 at 5:31 PM
That goes triple for people who sat around with their “people WANT boring bland competence…they don’t care about being inspired or having ideological integrity…people are TIRED of rock star politicians….Mitt’s gonna win 40 states….because the indies love him and you HAVE TO HAVE THOSE INDIES…”
ddrintn on November 8, 2012 at 5:33 PM
The GOP doesn’t have a “middle-class” problem, they have a “stupid” problem.
squint on November 8, 2012 at 5:33 PM
Wasn’t pawlenty supposed to be the middle class Wal-Mart conservative?
myrenovations on November 8, 2012 at 5:33 PM
We should not allow ourselves to be demoralized by the media’s triumphalism and predictions of demographic doom.
The Democrat coalition is much weaker than it appears and it could take very little to crack it.
“Obama” won with millions fewer votes than he received in ’08 and despite the propaganda run on his behalf by State Media, his policies remain as unpopular as ever.
Leftism has not been accepted by the American electorate- it was rejected in 2010 and that still stands. Romney and the GOP failed us big time. The Republican Party failed this country when real leadership was most needed.
Let’s not let them blame us for what happened. We did just like we were supposed to.
sartana on November 8, 2012 at 5:33 PM
I agree.
ddrintn on November 8, 2012 at 5:39 PM
If the voting was limited to people who actually payed attention to the race, Mitt would have one in a landslide.
Unfortunately, the race was decided by the “ground game” of people who cast their vote for whoever drove them to the polls.
Count to 10 on November 8, 2012 at 5:40 PM
Between the droogs and the middle-class idiots who actually think the community organizers are helping the poor, there are enough to sway elections. We need to make leftism start hurting the idiots more than it makes them feel good. Idiots will give up a latte or a lunch for the poor, but their jobs and houses are a bridge too far. Put the paddle away and break out the knives.
Sekhmet on November 8, 2012 at 5:42 PM
I tend to think the middle-class has an identity problem.
antipc on November 8, 2012 at 5:42 PM
The Democrats broke the system. Unless you find another way to play, you have to use their hack to compete.
…and it pisses me off that there is no other choice but to watch the country descend into madness.
Count to 10 on November 8, 2012 at 5:43 PM
“If only everyone was as smart as we ‘bots are…”
That’s part of the problem. People WERE paying attention and didn’t see a sufficient difference. Romney would win a “landslide” only in your fantasy bizarro planet.
ddrintn on November 8, 2012 at 5:43 PM
So, you can pretend that Romney didn’t have a huge lead among high information voters, but that really doesn’t help anyone.
Count to 10 on November 8, 2012 at 5:45 PM
Well go start your own little Egghead Colony with Mitt at the rostrum. The rest of us have to live in the real world.
ddrintn on November 8, 2012 at 5:49 PM
Speaking of reality, what part of that statement had any connection to reality?
Count to 10 on November 8, 2012 at 5:52 PM
Says someone who, along with his fellow ‘bots, has been spending the better part of the past year spewing triumphalist fantastic drivel.
ddrintn on November 8, 2012 at 5:56 PM
I called how I saw it. Didn’t appreciate the non-voter vote.
Oh, and I basically sat out the primary, so calling me a “bot” is pretty over the top.
Count to 10 on November 8, 2012 at 6:12 PM
More than anything else, the GOP has an image problem and always will until our candidates smarten up and fight back. They are constantly vilified without consequence. As much as I don’t care for Trump, and as much as Christie has disappointed me lately, neither man would be accused of being a pushover, and that is part of their success. We could use candidates with a bit more fire in them like those two (but less embarrassing than them).
Smoothies on November 8, 2012 at 6:15 PM
It’s not a “GOP middle-class problem” when the American “middle-class” reelects a pinko community organizer who presided over trillion plus dollar deficits for four years and plans four more years of the samem while telling the nation that if only the “rich pay a little more” all will be well.
It’s not a “GOP middle-class problem” when the American “middle-class” reelects a pinko community organizer who raids Medicare of $500 billion to fund socialized health care for others, denies it, and is believed.
The nation has a “middle-class” stupidity problem aided and abetted by the government run education system, the media, and pop-culture. The “middle-class” does not understand basic arithmetic and math, and neither do most left-wing journalism school graduates.
farsighted on November 8, 2012 at 6:31 PM
You really didn’t have to pander to the middle class. You could have simply worked to protect their standard of living, instead of being the party that gleefully sacrificed them on the alter of international free trade, and Republicans like Bush supported importing illegal aliens to compete for the jobs that couldn’t be outsourced. Did you think they wouldn’t notice that?
DFCtomm on November 8, 2012 at 6:32 PM
Fear of pandering? That’s all I’ve been hearing for the last couple days is what group conservatives must pander to. Their is no fear of pandering in the GOP whatsoever.
roy_batty on November 8, 2012 at 7:30 PM
Have you been paying attention since Wednesday morning, lol? Do you know what everyone and his mother is calling for now, on both sides? Comprehensive immigration reform…aka AMNESTY. And they’re going to get it, and more. Boehner can’t sell out fast enough. I don’t recall Romney calling for that. In fact, he was opposed to it, at least publicly. Sure, it could have been a lie, but it may not have been. Doesn’t matter now though.
Over the next 4 years, we’re going to get as close to an open borders society as possibly without going completely full blown open borders. We’re going to give citizenship to millions of illegals who currently aren’t allowed to vote, but will be able to after. And you know what that means? Republicans, conservatives included, will never win another election of any significance again. You and every other republican who sat home this year screwed yourselves, genius.
The idiot vote is now in the majority in this country, and it isn’t limited to one side.
xblade on November 8, 2012 at 7:30 PM
The voters who stayed home are no “allies” of the right. I may have disliked Romney but we needed him to impede the lefts attempts at transforming the nation. Now the right will be vastly outnumbered. I’m a libertarian but I understood the necessity of allying with the republicans for the sake of liberty.
cjv209 on November 8, 2012 at 7:39 PM