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AEI’s Henry Olsen wrote one of this week’s most interesting paragraphs in an article for National Review. His theme in the piece, continuing a subject on which Olsen has written perceptively more than once, is the voting pattern of blue collar whites, who make up about 40% of the electorate. This important segment of the population went 63% for Republicans in 2010, but it has a history of swinging back the other way.
Olsen shows that this feisty and sizeable group votes its interests and values much more reliably than it maintains any type of party fealty.
Then, Olsen makes this observation, a paragraph worth quoting as a whole:
If conservatives want to break this cycle and finally reverse the seemingly perpetual growth of government, they must understand how blue-collar voters are different from them. Research shows that blue-collar whites take the political positions they do because of their self-perception. They know they are less skilled than others; this makes them friendlier to protection from competition, whether the competition comes from trade abroad or immigrant workers at home. They depend more on public services to provide public order (which is why they support police so much) and economic stability (which is what middle-class entitlements support). Above all, they are risk-averse and proud. They fear the future as much as or more than they welcome it; one misstep and their whole world can collapse. This means they are wary of sudden change, whether it comes from the left or the right. And their dignity and pride mean they resist attempts to tell them what to do or treat them like pawns in someone else's game, whether those attempts come from big business, big government, or big anything.
Given what we are currently seeing in the labor market – namely sluggish and uneven job growth (see this chart here) – there will still be much more to fear than welcome about the future in November 2012, especially for blue collar workers.
Republicans, both in the 2012 presidential field and in Congress, should be capitalizing on two things to reach not only blue collar voters but also the broader electorate:
- the essence of job creation,
- and opposition to the big institutions that serve the powerful at the expense of us ordinary people.
Unfortunately, they aren’t.
The most conservative voters don’t know what the GOP jobs agenda is, and they haven’t known what it is for months now. Republicans need to get away from talking about “job-killing” health care laws and the like (which has done nothing to convince voters the GOP knows anything about jobs), and start articulating what is essential to create new businesses, which in term create the most new jobs.
Republicans also need to stop talking about “uncertainty” in the marketplace in general, and explain to voters how they will introduce greater certainty by ensuring that banks get smaller not bigger, that through better competition health insurance companies will stop taking so much of our money, and that small enterprises will experience a comeback in America against the continuing dominance of large companies.
This is, in short, a Republican version of the politics of aspiration, which is sorely needed. Not the politics of aspiration a la Obama, which was built around a cult of personality, but in the Reagan vein - built on ideas and a vision that ordinary voters can grasp and repeat to themselves.
Right now, looking at Larry Sabato’s top tier in the 2012 race, which consists of Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann, and Rick Perry, the Texas Governor, Perry, looks best able to deliver that message. Romney, despite his frontrunner status and strong executive record, embodies big business and government-manipulated health care (fairly or not) in a way that weakens his position with blue collar voters. Bachmann hits the right notes, but is rather untested. Perry, on the other hand, hits the right notes and has a long track record of economic growth and opposition to big government, despite being relatively untested on the national stage.
Yet no one in the current or expected field has articulated in a compelling way what is necessary to create not just jobs, but the new enteprsises that create the new jobs.
And no one has articulated a vision for how to reinvigorate the smal and vital center of America - families, small businesses, neighborhoods, and schools - to stand strong against the prevailing forces of the big institutions (banks, government, insurers) who are all growing, not shrinking, under Obama.
On the bright side of things, it's clear there's a lot of opportunity for the enterprising candidate to get a new, brighter message through to voters.
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