G.O.P party-line bombast has failed to generate the level of buzz needed to effectively counter the looming Democrat invasion on the Presidency and Congress. I do admit it is a tall order overcoming an irrelevant American Idol side-show addicted to whether a black or woman might become the first to attain the Presidency. Republicans would not be playing third fiddle to a freak show if they had anything of substance for voters to chew on.
Even Drudge has been headlining Democratic races with only cursory attention paid to Republicans. If Republicans had individuals running on truly visionary policies energizing the Republican base, Drudge would not have had to assume the visage of CNN in order to stay on top of the ratings game.
Primary results to date strongly indicate that former Republican voters are disaffected or are changing parties. For example, in the bell-weather state of Missouri 808,461 votes were cast for a Democratic presidential candidate, against slightly over 550,000 votes for a Republican candidate. That Ann Coulter is ready to vote for Hillary warns of the three-alarm fire burning for years that RNC firefighters still refuse to respond to.
The relatively-even numbers between McCain, Romney, and Huckabee are not a reflection of the strength of the three candidates. None is clearly a strong candidate the base is inured to. The base is going elsewhere, voting Democrat or watching the real American Idol because this election is quickly becoming too painful to watch.
Republicans will lose in 2008 predominantly because they have no social policy agenda to run on (opposing same-sex marriage and abortion does not count as social policy because neither impacts the exploding trends of illegitimacy and non-marriage). The conservative base knows this, expects better, and hasn’t heard word one from any Republican candidate yet.
Mike Huckabee is the only candidate doing more than mouthing the oft-recited generalization about the “importance of marriageâ€Â. At a whistle stop on Monday he commented, “A government ought to undergird a family… and not undermine a mother and father’s rights to raise their own kids.†It seems that Mr. Huckabee is warming up to the political advantages of seizing social issues from the Democrats — but missed a golden opportunity to call out a federal policy change to effect this truth.
Imagine this: What would voters think if Republicans talked incessantly about the “importance of stopping terrorism†and then did nothing to stop terrorism? They would be laughed out of Washington. Voters have been laughing Republicans out of office since 1996 for failure to deal with core kitchen-table social issues that voters are extremely interested in.
I have been sending Mr. Huckabee much information on pro-marriage policy for months, with some very positive feedback from a few individuals on his staff. Since I have not heard from his new campaign management team leadership, and Mike has not been running on a “Marriage Values†or “Marriage Economy†policy slate, it appears he might not be getting what he needs to win from his campaign team.
I attempted to provide the same information to all presidential candidates. McCain and his team simply walked away from me without even accepting a paper on it at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference last spring. Calls and emails to the Romney and Ron Paul campaigns went unanswered. Thompson had no contact information and was unreachable.
Since Democrats are presenting Obama as a reincarnation of John F. Kennedy [snicker], Republicans think resurrecting Reagan will win them the Presidency. This will fly like a granite blimp on crack. The American Conservative Union will go ballistic if McCain tries to play this card at their convention [another snicker]. At least the ACU knows a joke when somebody tells one.
None of the Republican candidates are nearly Reaganesque, and it would not win the presidency if they were. From a knowledgeable view, Reagan was as dead wrong on social policy as Democrats and Republicans (then and now). Trickle-down spending combined with burgeoning welfare expenditures left America with tremendous national deficits that took years to pay down after he left office. This occurred again during the Bush years, and Republican’s don’t want to take responsibility for their mistake.
Republicans still do not understand that neither social or economic conservatives cant get what they want unless we apply trickle-down economic theory to the marriage market. A “Marriage Economy†campaign slate requires a marriage of economic and social conservatives (who for differing but parallel reasons) can collectively change America for the better via a concerted team policy effort spanning social and economic policies. When we bootstrap the marriage market and the economy simultaneously, everyone will get what the want and need, and federal spending needs will decline substantially.
Marriage is a “living†market, like any other market. The federal government spends hundreds of billions annually destroying families under a variety of programs modeled after the Carter-Mondale Act of 1974. This prototypical bill combined a program investigating how much child abuse was out there with a program entitling the finding of child abuse under every rock. It turned into a monster. The McMartin, Little Rascals, and Fells Acres false child-abuse debacles came about because of Carter-Mondale.
The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) is a 1990’s descendant of Carter-Mondale, but far more dangerous, because it does not involve programming a child. All one needs is an allegation or a statement of fear to send government machinery into warp drive. The Duke Rape Case scandal is just one of perhaps millions similar faceless cases that go one every day in family and criminal courts. Allegations and fear now runs family and criminal law and public policy in the United States, with the full endorsement of the American Bar Association Board of Governors. This has filled our prisons to the point that we have more people in prison, as a percent of population, than any other nation including Russia – an additional drag on the economy coinciding with parallel decreases in productivity.
Child support reforms are required at the federal level: billions are spent entitling states to set child support with no checks, balances, or caps on what states can order. Child support orders are out of control. In fact, even Hillary Clinton took this up in her campaign, as reported by Glenn Sacks and Mike McCormick in their articles “Hillary Clinton Proposes Reforming Child Support System to Help Dads†and “Hillary Clinton’s Youth Opportunity Agenda Will Help Low-Income Fathersâ€Â.
Unfortunately, Hillary’s plans would not restore marriage: her goal is to restore the previous welfare state directly funded by the American public – bringing in many more billions to directly destroy a free marriage market. But Hillary is pandering to the male vote, and the poor single-mother vote, hoping they won’t see the difference between permanent entitlement of non-marriage and letting the marriage market build a nation of strong families raising children naturally, ready to go to school, prepared for adulthood, energized to work hard, succeed, and make America a much more competitive player in the future order of the world.
The economic successes of Japan in the latter half of the 20th century, Korea in the 1990’s, and now China occurred because these countries refuse to socialize the marriage market. These countries achieved dominance de-socializing business, harnessing the extant human-power of their strong marriage markets, and become very strong competitors in world markets. They have a decisive advantage because corporate revenues and government resources can be nearly fully reinvested in infrastructure, education, and R&D; while America is saddled with high taxes and social expenditures that do nothing but create more social problems and attempt to cover them up.
Both Hillary and Obama have many messages on social issues. Republicans have none. On this wide scope of important voter kitchen issues, Republicans are the clear losers.
I have long recommended the Republican party apply frontal “Marriage Values†and “Marriage Economy†policy-based campaign agenda – which will unquestionably bring about another Republican Revolution — powered by the same voter concerns that brought about the Republican “family values†revolution in the early 1990’s.
I am pleased to say that leadership at Heritage and Family Research Council is listening, and has recently changed their positions on some important perspectives. Perhaps in another four to eight years conservatives will finally be ready to work together completing the two most important parts of welfare reform not handled in the 1996 welfare reforms: reducing out-of-wedlock births and improving marriage rates and retention.
Until then, the Republican Party, having become a homunculus of itself, will continue shrinking until it walks away from its self-imposed deaf-and-dumb censorship of social issues. This classic Abilene paradox cost Republicans their majorities in the House and Senate. It will cost them the Presidency and additional Congressional seats in 2008. When the GOP is sick and tired of losing and is ready to listen to the answers, we will be ready to re-engage.
Until then, the GOP might as well go fishing for voters. Those who would vote Republican are not excited about sending in third-rate candidates to not fix world-class problems. Give us first-rate candidates ready to do the job and voters will back them to the hilt.
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David R. Usher is Senior Policy Analyst for the True Equality Network, and President of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children, Missouri Coalition
