Blue Collar Conservatives: Recommitting to an America That Works Read Online Free Page B

and of course I know what is best.” In tough times, people who feel economically vulnerable—the poor, minorities, and single women—have decided to stay with their date.
    For Obama, there’s no such thing as the “loyal opposition,” only the enemy that must be identified and “punished.” Call them conservatives, Tea Partiers, libertarians, or the religious Right, this president has them in his crosshairs in virtually every speech he gives. And his administration doesn’t shrink from using the coercive power of the federal government to make the point.
    Americans are beginning to see how brutally the Democrats are willing to exercise their power, whether it’s the use of the Internal Revenue Service to harass political opponents, the subversion of the Senate filibuster as a check on majoritarian tyranny, or the abuse of executive orders to thwart the constitutional role of Congress. Yet as scandal follows scandal, Republicans fail to persuade the American people that they are more trustworthy than the Democrats, and the federal government settles deeper into dysfunction.
    Americans have had it, and they want real leadership that understands them and what it will take to get America going again.

    All they got from the election of 2012 was a clinic in the divide-and-conquer politics of the Left. President Obama was reelected because he rallied his base of minorities, single women, and youth by painting a picture of Mitt Romney as a heartless rich guy who had made millions by putting everyday Americans out of work. That coalition might not seembig enough to win a national election, and if this were 1980 that would be true. Had Romney received the same percentage of the vote of every ethnic group that Ronald Reagan received in 1980 (when the Gipper carried forty-eight states against Jimmy Carter), Romney probably would have suffered an even bigger loss to Obama.
    The Democrats are masters of demography, and with the eager help of the media they bombard the public with the message of the Republican war against women, the young, the poor, and immigrants. Republicans, they say, represent only the rich; they don’t care about the folks trying to climb out of poverty. So far, it has worked—in spite of a miserable economy that hurts those very groups more than any other, the Democrats have managed to solidify their base.
    This message is ceaseless, overhyped, and cynical, but is any of it true? Let’s hit the hanging curve ball first. Do Republicans really care less about the person at the bottom of the ladder than Democrats do? To be painfully honest, I would have to say in some ways “yes.” There are some in my party who have taken the ideal of individualism to such an extreme that they have forgotten the obligation to look out for our fellow man. The rhetoric is often harsh and gives the all-too-willing media an opportunity to tar all Republicans with the same brush. That is not my Republican Party. In fact, in 2005 I wrote a book titled It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good . We must not cede the moral high ground onpromoting the common good or the issue of caring for the less fortunate to a party whose own misguided policies have trapped so many in a life of poverty and despair.
    We Republicans have neglected to focus our policies and our rhetoric on the plight of lower-income Americans. For thirty years our theme has been that the Reagan tax cuts transformed the American economy and further tax cuts will make it even better. While I believe that’s true, our critics on the Left have a couple of valid points.
    First, when Reagan cut rates in the early 1980s, the top rate was 70 percent; today it is slightly under 40 percent. 1 The impact on the economy of further cuts will therefore not be as dramatic. At the same time, the drag on the economy of the current rate of taxation is not as severe as it was in 1980. Reagan’s economic policy responded to the problems confronting America at the time: