Kate is right that the Arthur Brooks article is interesting, but I would come at it from a different direction. I think that the economic challenge conservatives (to the extent they were embodied in the 2008 Republican field) face is not that they seem to be uninterested in the poor. It is that they seem uninterested in anybody other than the wealthy. Henry Olsen described this perception of Republicans as the people who say that if you give management more leverage and lower taxes, then maybe they won’t close down your factory for a little while longer.
The problem isn’t so much the lack of a an agenda for the poor. It is (as Ramesh Ponnuru had pointed out) the lack of an emphasized agenda for the middle and working-classes. No amount of talk about the free markets and entrepreneurs is going to fix that if the only thing people hear about your actual political program is that you plan to cut taxes on high earners. That message is that the Republicans are offering direct benefits to high earners and are only promising you the miraculous indirect results of lower taxes on Mitt Romney. It should be no surprise if people are skeptical.
Taxes on high earners are a legitimate issue, but non-high earners have their own concerns that need direct policy responses. What if you lose your job and you end up spending several years working a bunch of different part time jobs? you put in more than forty hours a week, but none of those gigs give you health insurance. What do Republicans offer people in that situation? There is an app for that. What if you have a preexisting condition and no health insurance. Conservatives have suggested policy alternatives that are cheaper than Obamacare. Republicans say they are pro-work and pro-family, so why aren’t they out there supporting tax reforms that would improve the work incentives of parents (especially at the lower end of the income scale) while making the tax code more pro-growth?
March 5th, 2013 | 12:37 pm
This, a thousand times this. Ponnuru is absolutely right. In the post-Bush era Republicans have acted like every voter fits into one of two stereotypes. Either a hard working independent businessman weighed down by regulations and taxes, or a lazy bum living off the government. In truth, most people want a fairly normal, regular job, where they can work 40-60 hours a week, make a decent living, and go home to their families.
Conservatives should have a lot to say to those voters about the importance, value, and dignity of work, and on the importance of stopping work at the end of the day to spend time with their families. But republicans seem to have little interest in these voters.
I don’t think the Republicans will come off as big losers in the sequester battle, because I think it will turn out to be much ado about nothing. But they would have been in much better position had they not focused so much on their unwillingness to change any government policy toward the super rich.
And there’s an easy policy fix staring Republicans in the face. Raise the child tax credit, stop the bias in the tax/welfare code against marriage, and offer an individual credit for health insurance. IMHO opinion, part of what drives the opposition to these ideas from some republicans is the utopian idea of a flat tax. While that might be better in theory, there’s no chance of passing it in practice. So why not use it to foster a genuinely conservative idea – the preservation of the nuclear family?
March 5th, 2013 | 1:35 pm
Pete and Caleb are right about the failure of the Republicans and conservative intellectuals like Arthur Brooks to address the problems of the middle class – which is where Republican votes actually come from. What I think is being overlooked, however, is that the focus on improving the prospects of the poor demonstrated by Brooks is intended to rehabilitate the image of Republicans and conservatism in the eyes of highly educated wealthy and higher upper middle class voters, who have been defecting to the Democrats since the 80s. I assume that a man as smart as Brooks realizes (although perhaps Jack Kemp, who also talked a lot about the poor in his day, did not) that the GOP is not going to revive itself with the votes from public-housing tenants. Presumably, Brooks is hoping that the theme of capitalism-helps-the-poor (with which I agree, as a factual matter) will help staunch the GOP’s hemorrhaging of affluent voters to the Dems.
My cynical view is that the hope is pretty forlorn. Brooks is naive if he thinks that high-income people who vote for the Democrats really care about improving the lives of the poor. What those affluent voters really care about is making themselves look superficially “noble” by conforming to the views of their peers that government should offer more material “care” and “support” to the disadvantaged – programs that, whatever their merit, do nothing to lessen dependency, or to help people move up the socio-economic ladder. And, no matter how much the GOP talks about helping the poor, affluent voters who claim to care about this will always find other reasons to reject Republicans (e.g., abortion, the environment, the teaching of “creationism” in the public schools – you name it).
March 5th, 2013 | 2:22 pm
cabeb (great to hear from you) and djf, two great comments. you really have to be concerned for the family guy, and not just suck up to the affluent sophisticates who accuse you of lacking compassion.
March 5th, 2013 | 2:36 pm
We have to address the poor who are neither monolithically stupid nor usually without ambition. Poverty can be permanent, as in lasting across generations, but that is actually rare. Poverty is usually temporary, at least in the US. We want to see as many of the poor as possible become middle class and we can speak to that. I do speak to that in my community college classrooms that are full of people trying to rise in their circumstances.
Middle class people tend to vote for Republicans because they want to continue prospering and to prosper more. The poor do not always vote for Democrats, which seems to drive some folks of the Left absolutely nuts. The wealthiest people tend vote Democrat. I don’t know what to do about the latter, but since they are the smaller potential voting pool, who cares?
March 6th, 2013 | 7:34 am
Peter-thanks. I just found you guys here actually. FYI, I’ve assigned your Aliens in America to my class on American Political Traditions. It’s appropriately interesting and confounding to my students.
DJF – I was clearer in an earlier post that I accidentally deleted. I didn’t mean to criticize Brooks. I think the work he is doing is excellent. I heard him at Acton last summer and in my opinion, he was on the mark. My issue is with the bigger money republicans, and libertarians. They don’t want to talk constructively about either the poor or middle class.
As a matter of policy, the country desperately needs conservative solutions to middle class issues, like education, marriage, the tax burden on married couples, and health care. Solutions on those issues would also be, IMHO, very politically popular with the Republican’s base.
Also as a matter of policy, the country desperately needs conservative solutions to the problems of the working (and non-working) poor, including continued solutions to welfare, permanent government handouts, and a tax system that actually punishes single moms if they get married. Solutions on those issues would be less politically popular with the Republican base, but I don’t think they’d be unpopular. They might also A) draw in some poorer voters and B) help some hipster bobos see conservatives in a better light.
Or we could just keep arguing for cutting taxes on the rich, because that’s been working so well…
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