The Vanishing Republican Voter

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: The Vanishing Republican Voter
By DAVID FRUM
Published: September 5, 2008

....My fellow conservatives and Republicans have tended not to worry very much about the widening of income inequalities. As long as there exists equality of opportunity — as long as everybody’s income is rising — who cares if some people get rich faster than others? Societies that try too hard to enforce equality deny important freedoms and inhibit wealth-creating enterprise. Individuals who worry overmuch about inequality can succumb to life-distorting envy and resentment.

All true! But something else is true, too: As America becomes more unequal, it also becomes less Republican. The trends we have dismissed are ending by devouring us....

***

Fairfax’s Democratic preference is typical of upper America. In 2000, Al Gore beat George Bush, 56-39, among the 4 percent of voters who identified themselves as “upper class.” America’s wealthiest ZIP codes are a roll call of Democratic strongholds: Sagaponack, N.Y.; Aspen, Colo.; Marin County, Calif.; the near North Side of Chicago; Beacon Hill in Boston. (Palm Beach, at least, remains securely Republican.) There is a long list of reasons for this anti-Republican tilt among the affluent: social issues, the environment, an ever more internationalist elite’s distaste for the Republican Party’s assertive nationalism. Maybe the most important reason, however, can be reduced to the two words: “Robert Rubin.” By returning to the center on economic matters in the 1990s, the Democrats emancipated higher-income and socially moderate voters to vote with their values rather than with their pocketbooks.

Republicans still claim the support of the upper-middle, but by dwindling margins. Democrats increased their share of the vote among those earning more than $100,000 by 9 percentage points between 1994 and 1998. Between 1998 and 2006, Democrats increased their share of this upper-middle-class vote by 3 more points.

Till now, conservative strength in the vast American middle more than compensated for any losses at the top and for the immigration-driven expansion of the bottom. Indeed, the Democratic tilt of the very richest Americans could be exploited as a powerful conservative recruiting tool. Resentment of “elites” is a major theme of conservative talk radio. “Who’s looking out for you?” demands Bill O’Reilly, as he excoriates “media elites” who vacation in the Hamptons, Aspen and the Virginia horse country.

But O’Reilly’s question has recoiled upon its onetime beneficiaries. Who is looking out for the Fox-viewing public? For most of the Bush administration, G.D.P. grew strongly, the stock market boomed, new jobs were created. But the ordinary person experienced little benefit. The median household income, which rose in the ’90s, had only just caught up to its 2000 level when the expansion ended in 2007....

(David Frum, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of “Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again.”)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/magazine/07Inequality-t.html?_r=1&oref=login&pagewanted=all

[Oreillynsf]

1. So true...

This is the force that'll put us over the top.