The lastest news on illegitimacy proves decisively that Republican Welfare Reform is an abysmal failure. Welfare reform was intended to reduce illegitimacy and improve marriage rates. The opposite has occurred.
The National Center for Health Statistics now reports that in the United States:
- 37% of children are born to single mothers — a new American record.
- Out-of-wedlock births have been rising since the late 1990s.
- The U.S. teen birth rate is still the highest among industrialized countries.
- The number of unmarried-couple households with children has been climbing
And this does not include children of divorce, which is about half of children born within marriage. If you think the war in Iraq is a big deal, you haven’t been paying attention to the one going on right here in America since 1963.
The slaughter of marriage is not caused by mere culture. It is driven by feminist-centric federal policies that fund wanton destruction of marriage to the tune of 1/2-trillion annually. The culture developed around the entitlements, because folks do what money pays them to do in the short run even if it is bad for them in the long run.
I warned Republicans hundreds of times that the Personal Responsibility and Work Act of 1996 (PROWA) would cause this. I fought PROWA via all available channels to the top of the party. Not one major-league Republican “conservative” paid any attention.
After taking office, the GOP intentionally ignored the grassroots who put them in office. Republicans enacted gruesome legislation that turned the welfare state into an anti-family child support empire (with powers the old IRS never dreamed of). It forced single mothers to work, and left children to be raised by whatever happens to be walking down the street. Republicans stopped just short of seriously considering Newt Gingrich’s idea to build orphanages everywhere possible.
Republicans also quietly reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act in 2000 and 2005, over strong objections of both moderate and conservative grassroots organizations and several leaders of the party such as Phyllis Schlafly. In 2005, they even put Democrat Senator Joe Biden in charge of the hearings to wash their hands of the proceedings, and refused to allow any opposing testimony in Congressional hearings.
A decade later, the truth is out. The GOP pretends it is blind, deaf, and dumb to it. But this is just a political prophylactic to avoid dealing with the issue. This is one reason why Republican leaders continue to assert every stripe of evasive political excuse for losing the elections. Republicans were not too conservative or too liberal. They simply did the opposite of what they said they would do in 1994. The voters figured it out, and November 7th was payback time.
By burying the “family values” that brought about the landslide of 1994, the GOP drove the conservative grassroots right out of the party. Republicans betrayed the voters who sent them to Washington with a strong family values mandate. The rest is now history.
The list of family values traitors includes President Bush, Karl Rove, Trent Lott, John McCain, Newt Gingrich, Arlen Specter, then-Senator John Ashcroft, and Ken Melman. The majority of the Christian right leadership had it wrong as well: they parroted evangelical feminist slogans about “deadbeat dads” and male irresponsibility instead of testifying to the truth about how feminism has destroyed religion, fatherhood, and society.
The party got what it deserved in the 2006 races: It sold the American family to the American Bar Association, which profits massively by turning marriage into a quicksand pit full of hidden bear traps and venemous man-eating snakes. Political analysts should note there are very few single mothers (who have to “do it all” on less money), and even fewer forcibly-absent fathers (who must support two households or be incarcerated), who hold positive impressions about Republicans that lead them out of their marriages with the baited hooks of PROWA and VAWA. That is one hell of a lot of voters who are very unhappy with Republicans, folks.
Had Republicans done the right thing all along, the war would not have dragged them down. The buoyancy of ongoing social policy reforms would have positively impacted the lives of the majority of Americans. The American voter is selfish. They do not forget who helped them. If voters had a reason to be dedicated to the Republican party as a whole, it would have easily offset all other downward pressures, and could have actually lead to gains in the House and Senate.
Father-absence is a crisis of pandemic proportions in the United States. In 1980, Los Angeles police chief Darryl Gates was at a loss to explain an epidemic wave of drugs and youth gang violence in Los Angeles. What we witnessed then was the first wave of unsocialized illegitimate children of the Johnson Great Society reaching their teen years.
We are now witnessing the third generation of illegitimate children reaching adulthood. Many have no experience with married parents during their childhood. They have no roots or idea how to conduct themselves within one. They shack up instead (since that is what many of their parents did). They end up on the welfare-state roller coaster, because its the only ride they know.
This generation features new problems: massive drug abuse, poor workforce drive and integration, school shootings and violence, violent girls, and discipline problems of such commonality that Ritalin is being handed out like vitamins in our schools (courtesy of former Republican Senator John Danforth).
And, the RNC does not give a hoot about any of this, in spite of the fact that many state-level caucuses and some state leaders have been asking them to do something about this for a long time. It is as if the states have no federal-level party representation while the RNC shacked up in a motel with Hillary.
Kate Griffin, the retiring Chair of the Virginia GOP, speaks strongly about the destruction of marriage, motherhood, and society by feminists. She points out that the real victims of feminism are children. She is one of the few in the Republican party who may be ready to work on true marriage-positive policy in Washington. Perhaps it would be wise to put her up against Hillary in 2008.
My personal experiences with GOP leaders during the past year indicates the GOP still has no interest in “family values” or “family policy”. In fact, their driving interest is in walling-off or destroying anyone who even mentions the subject. This will be the subject of my next piece, which will relate the most astonishing accounts of political corruption I have ever personally witnessed.
I guarantee Republicans that the 2008 presidential candidate cannot win without a strong and very believable family values platform. I guarantee every senate and house candidate they must meet this mark or be ignored by the moderate and conservative base.
Having been lied to for a decade, the grassroots will not “go steady” with Republicans simply because they whisper sweet nothings in their ears about family values. Republicans have to prove they mean it, and with specific policy proposals, if they want the grassroots back.
Dear Mr. Rove: I suggest you frame this and hang it on your wall. “Family values are very important issues to moderate and conservative voters of both sexes. If you serve these voters up on the silver platter of intentional acquiescence to the Democrat party, your career will be forever branded and finished”.
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