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"A comprehensive, collaborative elections resource."
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The Republican Future - Three Choices
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Party
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| Contributor | RP |
| Last Edited | RP Feb 26, 2009 01:50pm |
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| Category | Commentary |
| News Date | Wednesday, February 25, 2009 07:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | The Republican base is mostly white evangelical Christians--vastly different than the coalition that Ronald Reagan inherited (and transformed) in 1980. The GOP must understand this fact in order to decide how to expand its coalition. Options for growth include appealing to the educated affluent, the working-class nonevangelical faithful, or minorities.
There are many ways to rebuild that majority by adapting Reagan's 1977 playbook to the modern playing field. Conservatives can compete with Obama and the Democrats for votes among the mass educated affluent. Such an attempt could focus on social issues that unite people of various religious persuasions and economic issues that emphasize limiting government's growth while reforming the public sector to make it more responsive to individual needs.
They can also try to add working class Catholics and members of other faiths to the white evangelical base. A move in this direction could emphasize social issues that unite these disparate faiths and, crucially, use rhetoric that is cross-denominational. It would also require greater openness to the economic worries of the lower-middle and working classes, which include high payroll and property taxes and stagnant formal wages (rising health care costs are soaking up these workers' productivity gains).
Conservatives can also court the growing non-white portion of the electorate. This group is split between lower-skilled Latino workers and higher-skilled Asian immigrants, making the task complicated. But whatever the economic and social issues such outreach would employ, it will be difficult to make a serious play for these voters with an immigration platform that is perceived as restrictionist and exclusionary.
Each of these targets of opportunity presents challenges. But the challenge was no less for FDR as he built a coalition including blacks yearning for freedom and white segregationists, prohibitionist Baptists and wet Catholics looking for a good beer. |
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