GOP LOSING WORKING CLASS

I thought Rod Dreher had a very perceptive article in the Dallas Morning News describing how the Republican Party has really not done anything to maintain and gain support among working class Americans. He uses a book by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, rand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream, to support his case.

They show that the most reliable Republican voters are actually more socially conservative, suspicious of big business and favor a larger government role in helping families manage economic risk than the GOP's stale rhetoric would allow.

Mike Huckabee's surprising success in the GOP primaries, to say nothing of Barack Obama's skill in peeling away some conservatives by feinting rightward on culture and religion, suggests an emerging centrist constituency that's culturally conservative but economically liberal.

What does the Republican Party have to offer these voters? The tried-and-true tax-cut litany is as stale as anything Walter Mondale had to say in 1984. Free-market clichés may suit GOP money men and radio talkers, but they do not satisfy working-class voters for whom the changing economic order undermines family stability.