Sawbriars
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- Feb 18, 2012
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Columnist Timothy Carney advocates a hybrid of the populism advocated by Huey Long and Teddy Roosevelt:
Republicans need a new coalition and a new message. The heart of that coalition should be the White Working Class. The message should be populism.
Carney expects that Republican efforts to build more substantial margins among well-educated affluent whites will fail:
Upscale white suburbs have steadily trended Democratic. Montgomery County, Maryland, was one of the first. Westchester, New York, and the North Shore of Chicago followed. Philadelphias white-collar counties and Northern Virginia soon joined the club. In 2008, Obama made huge gains in the suburbs, pulling in 60 percent in Fairfax County, for instance, and winning the vote of those voters earning over $100,000, according to exit polls.
Carney writes that in 2012, Republicans couldnt have picked a candidate better suited for highly educated, upper-middle-class suburban voters. Romney was successful, risk-averse, smart and non-ideological, but his suburban strategy fizzled.
These setbacks suggest that it is time to give up on building majorities on a suburban foundation. Instead, the Republican Party, in Carneys view,
needs to play to the disaffected. The disaffected are not the wealthy, an obvious point that conservatives cant seem to understand. The wealthy got wealthier under Obama, and corporations earned record profits while median family earnings fell. Obama uses these facts to defuse the charges hes a socialist. Republicans should use them to show that Obamas big government expands the privileges of the privileged class.
Carneys views are shared, at least in part, by a wing of conservatism that includes Ross Douthat, who, along with Reihan Salam, a contributing editor at National Review, in 2005 proposed a downscale or Sams Club Republican strategy in The Weekly Standard, an argument which they elaborated upon in a 2008 book Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the White Working Class Vote and Save the American Dream.
Carneys proposal would require an upheaval of the Republican hierarchy. Currently, the party has substantial support from the white working class, but its agenda, particularly its economic agenda, is set by an elite with century-old ties to corporate America. At the policy-making level, the Republican Party has represented the interests of societys winners, not its losers.
Republicans need a new coalition and a new message. The heart of that coalition should be the White Working Class. The message should be populism.
Carney expects that Republican efforts to build more substantial margins among well-educated affluent whites will fail:
Upscale white suburbs have steadily trended Democratic. Montgomery County, Maryland, was one of the first. Westchester, New York, and the North Shore of Chicago followed. Philadelphias white-collar counties and Northern Virginia soon joined the club. In 2008, Obama made huge gains in the suburbs, pulling in 60 percent in Fairfax County, for instance, and winning the vote of those voters earning over $100,000, according to exit polls.
Carney writes that in 2012, Republicans couldnt have picked a candidate better suited for highly educated, upper-middle-class suburban voters. Romney was successful, risk-averse, smart and non-ideological, but his suburban strategy fizzled.
These setbacks suggest that it is time to give up on building majorities on a suburban foundation. Instead, the Republican Party, in Carneys view,
needs to play to the disaffected. The disaffected are not the wealthy, an obvious point that conservatives cant seem to understand. The wealthy got wealthier under Obama, and corporations earned record profits while median family earnings fell. Obama uses these facts to defuse the charges hes a socialist. Republicans should use them to show that Obamas big government expands the privileges of the privileged class.
Carneys views are shared, at least in part, by a wing of conservatism that includes Ross Douthat, who, along with Reihan Salam, a contributing editor at National Review, in 2005 proposed a downscale or Sams Club Republican strategy in The Weekly Standard, an argument which they elaborated upon in a 2008 book Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the White Working Class Vote and Save the American Dream.
Carneys proposal would require an upheaval of the Republican hierarchy. Currently, the party has substantial support from the white working class, but its agenda, particularly its economic agenda, is set by an elite with century-old ties to corporate America. At the policy-making level, the Republican Party has represented the interests of societys winners, not its losers.
