David Frum: Securing the Republican Advantage
political sociologists Leslie McCall and Jeff Manza found that those with college but not postgrad degrees exhibited more marked opposition than any other educational grouping to government spending, and to policies that promised to redistribute income from the rich to the poor.
.. Those parties base themselves squarely upon the interests and values of middle-class voters: people with families, jobs, and savings; people typically more anxious to preserve what they have than excited by grand visions of change.
.. Be a party for people of conservative temperament, even more than conservative ideology. Quit threatening to shut down the government, default on contracts, or blow up institutions. Don’t keep company with people who fantasize about deploying their basement arsenals to wage war on the government of the United States. “I’m a conservative, but I’m not a nut about it,” said the elder George H.W. Bush. Good advice then, good advice now.
.. Honor those who work for wages. Not everybody is cut out to run a business. Those who are do not constitute some superior stratum of humanity. The cult of the entrepreneur in the 2012 campaign excluded and often insulted tens of millions of Americans, who appreciate job creators—but who also insist on respect for their different kind of work and their different contribution.
.. If not wealthy when they enter office, leading politicians rapidly become wealthy after they leave. It’s been a long time since Harry Truman returned to the same house from which he came.
.. Isolation inspires leaders to hire consultants and focus groups to tell them what ordinary people feel, since they themselves don’t know and can’t guess.