John Rossomando
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Polls show that blue-collar voters have become increasingly impatient with President Obama’s performance in the White House, which means Republicans have an opening for 2012.
Pollster John Zogby told me last month that dissatisfaction among these voters could put Rust Relt states that went for Obama in 2008 like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin into play for the right GOP candidate.
“A Democrat can’t win with 35 percent support among union members,” Zogby said.
And a poll released by Franklin and Marshall College early last month found that 57 percent of blue-collar union members in Pennsylvania want someone other than Obama.
These voters are overwhelmingly conservative on issues related to God and guns, but tend to be more supportive of social programs than the white Evangelicals who make up the GOP base. But these voters who used to be known as Reagan Democrats would deny Obama re-election because the Rust Belt states accounted for over 70 of the electoral votes that the president received in 2008.
AEI’s John Olsen observes that:
“Political analysts on both sides of the aisle overlook blue-collar whites. But they are a large share of the electorate, about 40 percent. When they coalesce around one party, their preferences shape the election. That’s what happened in 2010. A record 63 percent of blue-collar whites voted Republican in House races in 2010, up from 54 percent in 2008.”
And Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan observed that these voters could be a key voting block when I met with him recently.
But comments like Herman Cain’s seeming to disparage the poor for not working hard enough only can serve to alienate the very people he or any other GOP candidates need to win.
Rick Santorum’s strategy of pointing to what Obama’s economic policies have done to this crucial bloc of voters is essential for whomever wins the GOP nomination.
They need to look to Ronald Reagan’s strategy of defining a positive alternative vision to renew the American dream for them and give them the sort of hope that Obama promised in 2008 but failed to deliver is even more so.
And a strategy focusing resources in the Rust Belt would spread out the Democrats’ resources by forcing them to defend their own turf much as Republicans had to do in 2008 when Obama won.
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