The GOP and the city
The cities-as-foreign-territory approach is bad politics for the Republicans: after all, successful cities like New York and Houston surge with ambitious strivers and entrepreneurs, who should instinctively sympathize with the GOP’s faith in private industry. The Republican move away from the cities is also bad for the cities themselves, which have hugely benefited—and could benefit a lot more—from right-of-center ideas. …
The 2012 party platform, by contrast, had no city-oriented policies whatsoever and used the word “urban” just twice—once to decry the current administration’s allegedly “replacing civil engineering with social engineering as it pursues an exclusively urban vision of dense housing and government transit.” …
Cities have suffered from the GOP’s departure. For one thing, any group or place benefits from being the object of political competition: swing groups in swing states, such as Cubans in Miami and autoworkers in Ohio, receive political attention and favors, while solidly Republican or Democratic constituencies get taken for granted. The Obama administration surely did less for cities than it would have if it had feared losing urban votes.
But handouts and other pandering are far less valuable than the other asset that Republican-abandoned cities have lost: the particularly Republican perspective, with its focus on economic freedom, competition, and law and order. That perspective formulated some of the most successful policies in memory for making cities better places to live. Without it, the urban success stories of recent years could wither.
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Cities need our help. We make them thrive.
thebrokenrattle on January 24, 2013 at 2:41 PM
Can the GOP package the message of core conservative values better? Absolutely.
Can the GOP outpander the democrat party? Absolutely not.
Rebar on January 24, 2013 at 2:42 PM
Too much book-lernin’ in those cities.
Pablo Honey on January 24, 2013 at 3:08 PM
They should be able to show how free market principles and policies will produce better results for people on a personal level. It shouldn’t be difficult to convince people that opportunity and upward mobility are better than stagnation and trinkets. But, they don’t even try. Especially people like Romney; he tried to out pander and he got destroyed.
besser tot als rot on January 24, 2013 at 3:19 PM
I know I’ll get flamed for saying this (and probably called a RINO), but the GOP should focus on its economic message and explain how rising water lifts ALL boats – not just those of the rich – and how increased economic freedom will ultimately provide greater opportunity for everyone, especially the “little guy” Dems pander to.
The part that will get me flamed is this – the GOP should also de-emphasize social issues. Many of these urban voters might be more interested in the GOP if they weren’t convinced they want to ban all abortion, restrict sex to marriage, and stuff gays back into the closet.
Yeah, some socons wouldn’t be happy…but I believe the GOP can make up for those numbers with a message of economic and personal liberty.
Besides, wouldn’t it be enough to stop funding things like abortion with taxpayer dollars? Most of these social issues are unwinnable in the political sphere. They are heart-and-mind issues that have to be won by churches and families, not top-down big government.
DRayRaven on January 24, 2013 at 3:34 PM
Republicans have roughly the same problem with urbanites that they do with minorities: whatever the value of your policy prescriptions — and I could get behind most of what was outlined in this article — we’re pretty sure you simply don’t like cities and you don’t like us.
You don’t like our gay friends; everything else aside, Obama’s yuppieness offends you — God forbid he should take his wife out to a nice restaurant; you have a loathing of public transport; your problems with the minorities who live here are well-documented; you distrust educated people as out-of-touch and elitist; you hate modern art; and you generally think of cities as cesspools of crime, sodomy and progressive thought.
An overstatement, perhaps, but you get the point.
Knowing how conservatives feel about cities (and being reminded of it every time we visit our relatives or tell some small-town desk clerk where we live), makes us disinclined to listen to you at all, regardless of the point you’re making.
DC once had a Republican city councilman with a reputation for being smart as hell and having killer instinct for ferreting out waste and fraud. But he was gay. So now he’s an independent.
Start acting like you like us, and we’ll start listening.
urban elitist on January 24, 2013 at 4:23 PM
Stop acting like you hate my guts and I’ll start talking to you about reviving the areas that you & your ideas are in the process of killing.
- Signed: someone with an engineering degree who knows that ‘out of touch elitist’ refers to people who think they’re smarter than they are, not that they’re simply educated.
Cam Winston on January 24, 2013 at 4:28 PM
This is a pet concern of mine. But not in the way the author describes it.
Cities have thrown out the Republicans, not the other way around. Look at what happened when Mitt Romney went to West Philadelphia to talk and learn about charter schools. He was savagely attacked by the corrupt Democrat mayor and OFA organized a nasty crowd of protestors to boo him on the street.
Paul Ryan gave an amazing speech during the campaign at a Jack Kemp Foundation event and laid out a terrific agenda for fighting poverty and ignorance in the cities through freer markets, lower taxes, and education reform. Nobody covered it.
I worked under Jack Kemp at HUD in the 1980s. We wore ourselves out going to public housing projects, inner city schools, churches, you name it, preaching empowerment and free choice and home ownership. Made no difference at all.
We have no more chance of getting traction in cities by promoting free-market economics than we have getting traction with Hispanics because of their so-called family values. Tribal values trump everything.
Cities are places where the population is made up of either transient young single people with jobs who care mostly about sex and booze/drugs and being hip, or poor people who have never had jobs, most of whom are racial minorities on government assistance. None of them are going to vote Republican. The pockets of white working-class people that remain in cities like Philadelphia are already voting Republican, they are just vastly outnumbered by the hipsters and the dependents.
The good news is that a lot of the young single people get married and have kids, and then move to the suburbs and go back to church and become Republicans.
Big city governments are singularly corrupt, one-party fiefdoms that are not interested in Republican ideas, only in padding payrolls and getting city jobs and contracts for their friends and relatives. The rare Republican that gets elected to a big city council soon gets corrupted and votes with the Democrats.
I see no reason why the Republican Party should attempt to appeal to people who will put up with such civic corruption, waste, poverty, and failure.
But that’s just me.
rockmom on January 24, 2013 at 4:32 PM
If Mitt Romney had run on Obama’s platform & Obama run on Romney’s, I wonder how many urbanites or minorities would have changed their votes (read: lockstep party voters). Questions about if Republicans act in like fashion can be address to
Senatorfailed candidate Akin, from a state that went overwhelmingly Romney.Cam Winston on January 24, 2013 at 4:35 PM
No you won’t. We “like you” just fine. But you simply do not care about the same things we care about.
I assume you live in a city. Do you know who your city council representative is? Do you know how long he/she has been there, how many of his/her relatives work for the city, how much of your taxes goes to pay inflated pensions for people who are related to him/her? Do you know anyone who actually sends a child to a public school in your city? Do you know how much that school district spends every year and how little of that goes to actual education vs. huge administrative staffs? Do you live in a high-crime neighborhood, and if not, how much do you really give a damn about people who do?
We care about this stuff. You care about gays getting married and modern art and hip restaurants.
rockmom on January 24, 2013 at 4:40 PM
You prove my point.
You say you “like” me. And yet you assume, because I live in the city, that I know nothing about the city I live in — that I’m too stupid to pay attention. And then you question whether I give a damn about anyone else (my neighborhood has plenty crime, thank you).
That’s not I say I like someone. And it certainly doesn’t improve my opinion of you, and ideas that someone who regards in such a light might have.
urban elitist on January 24, 2013 at 4:52 PM