Why Republicans Should Take Rick Santorum Seriously
By Gerald Seib, the WSJ
(snip)
Mr. Santorum has written a new book, "Blue Collar Conservatives," that shows he grasps two important realities that seem to escape many others. The first is that, outmoded stereotypes notwithstanding, blue-collar Americans, particularly working-class whites in the South and Midwest, today comprise a core element of the Republican Party. The second reality is that, because of the alienation these people feel from both the political and economic systems, the table is set for a new period of populism.
(snip)
"We Republicans have neglected to focus our policies and our rhetoric on the plight of lower-income Americans," he writes. Later, he adds: "Our focus on tax cuts for individuals not only leaves us open to the 'tax breaks for the rich' sloganeering of the Left but seems irrelevant to the nearly 50% of the population who don't pay federal income taxes today."
Democrats, Mr. Santorum argues, have alienated many working-class Americans with their focus on race-based politics, and have harmed their economic hopes by failing to recognize the extent to which the breakdown of the family structure has undermined economic prospects of blue-collar Americans. But he also argues that Republicans haven't taken advantage of the opening by offering policies that speak more directly to those blue-collar Americans in their midst. He wants tax cuts, but directed toward middle-class families and parents with young children in particular. He calls for more spending on infrastructure projects.
He argues as vehemently as any Republican for reduced regulation but also questions the effects of free-trade agreements on manufacturing workers. And he sounds like a genuine populist when discussing the takeaway from the rescue of banks after the 2007 recession: "When the average American sees that the result of systemic corruption is billions of dollars in Wall Street bailouts of the banks that caused the financial meltdown and the resulting Great Recession, with only a handful of prosecutions, the message is delivered." He acknowledges income inequality but traces it in part to effects of a technological revolution that need to be addressed: "The new economy bestows a larger share of its rewards on the educated than the industrial economy did."
Implicitly, Mr. Santorum's analysis recognizes one of the underappreciated trends in current American politics: the extent to which the two parties have undergone an identity switch Increasingly, college-educated and upper-income Americans, once assumed to be a comfortable fit as Republicans, have become core elements of the Democratic Party. Meanwhile, blue-collar whites, once the core of the Democrats, increasingly have become Republicans.
(snip)
As it happens, Hillary Clinton did well among these very blue-collar voters in her 2008 primary run for the Democratic nomination. Mr. Santorum is pleading with his party not to take them for granted now.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304422704579571881202454744
= new reply since forum marked as read
