How bad was the Bush economy?

With the way Obama campaigned against it, you would think it was the worst ever.  But check these figures:

While there has been some inflation over the past 12 years, the exit poll demographics show that the fastest growing group of voters in America has been those making over $100,000 a year in income. In 1996, only 9 percent of the electorate said their family income was that high. Last week it had grown to 26 percent — more than one in four voters. And those making over $75,000 are up to 15 percent from 9 percent. Put another way, more than 40 percent of those voting earned over $75,000, making this the highest-income electorate in history.

The poorest segment of the electorate, those making under $15,000, has shrunk from 11 percent to 6 percent over the past dozen years. And those making $15,000 to $30,000 annually — the working poor — also shrunk from 23 percent to 12 percent of the electorate.

Half as many voters are “poor,” and half as many are “working poor.”  The percentage making over $100,000 a year has tripled.

Steele: “Listen. Adapt. Be Positive.”

Michael Steele writes:

Republicans once said that the opportunities this nation has to offer rest not in government but rather in the hands of individuals. Over the past decade or so, however, we Republicans lost our way. The disparity between our rhetoric and our action grew until our credibility snapped. It wasn’t the fault of our ideals. It was the failure of our leadership.

. . .

True, the country has changed and our party must adapt. However, it is wrong to believe we must change our principles or become conservative-lite. After all, the voters did not suddenly become liberal; but they have lost any sense of confidence that the Republican Party holds the answers to their problems.

Most Americans today see a Republican Party that defines itself by what it is against rather than what it is for. We can tell you why public schools aren’t working, but not articulate a compelling vision for how we’ll better educate children. We’re well equipped to rail against tax increases; but can’t begin to explain how we’ll help the poor. We exclude far better than we welcome.

Things were different as recently as 20 years ago. Back then, Ronald Reagan made it cool to be a Republican — it wasn’t just his specific policies, but the timeless truths he so eloquently gave voice to, and upon which his policies were based. That’s the Republican Party we must re-establish.

We must articulate a positive vision for America’s future that speaks to Americans’ hopes, concerns and needs. It’s time to stop defining ourselves by what we are not, and tell voters what we believe, how we’ll lead, and where we’ll go; how we Republicans will make America better; how we’ll make their families more prosperous, their children better educated, their parents more secure, and all of us healthier, safer and stronger.

Our challenge lies not in beating Democrats, but in uniting around a message that solidifies our ranks and attracts new people to our cause. We have to listen to what Americans are telling us about their hopes, desires and needs, and then translate that message into proposals for meaningful action squarely grounded on the values we Republicans have always stood for.

Our faith in the power and ingenuity of the individual to build a nation through hard work, personal responsibility and self-discipline is our uniting principle. That is the sacred ground upon which our Republican Party was built. For the sake of all Americans, it is the ground we must reclaim.

DeMint Signals Change in Senate

In an interview with Human Events, Senator Jim DeMint (R – SC) said that he hopes Senate Republicans will show leadership for conservative principles:

“We have a shortage of courage, and we also have a shortage of vision based on our core principles” . . . “A few of us need to step up and try to lead and hope that folks will come with us. I believe that most of the Republicans, the large majority, would follow a conservative plan and agenda if we had the leadership to go that way. But we have not had that.”

DeMint says he will return to Washington early and meet with Senators Tom Coburn (R-Ok) and Jeff Sessions (R-Ala) to work on building a consensus within the Republican Caucus and “see where the resistance is coming from.”

DeMint intends to make changes to the Senate Republican leadership, including a two-year moratorium on earmarks.  DeMint anticipates a lame-duck session in which the Democrats will propose a spending spree.  All eyes will probably be on the Republican Senate minority and whether it blocks the spending.

“This will be a good test to see if we can hold our party together on some big issues, particularly the spending issues,” DeMint said. “I think it’s going to tell us a lot about our leadership and what kind of capital, if any, they bring back to our minority status.”

In the upcoming Congress, when Democrats present a leftist agenda, DeMint plans to propose “freedom” alternatives:

“If we don’t have positive, freedom-oriented solutions on the table when we face this move left by the Democrats, then we’re just going to be naysayers and obstructionists,” DeMint said. “We’re not going to be real leaders.”

Oh Ralphie, what brought you to this lowly state?

For Ralphie, it was “soap poisoning.” 

Deroy Murdock answers the question for the Republican Party:

The GOP has been laid low, thanks to politicians who swapped their principles for power and lost both. . . .

Comrade George W. Bush has spearheaded the most aggressive federal expansion since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. As a delivery system for socialism, he has been the most effective Trojan Horse since that pine steed rolled into Troy.

When Bush arrived, Washington consumed 18.4 percent of Gross Domestic Product. Uncle Sam now devours 22.5 percent of the economy, reported Jon Ward in the October 19 Washington Times. “The country has gone from a $128 billion budget surplus when Mr. Bush took office to a deficit of at least $732 billion in fiscal 2009,” Ward writes. “No president since FDR — who offered a New Deal to pull the nation out of the Great Depression and then fought World War II — has presided over as rapid a growth in government when measured as a percentage of the total economy.”

Murdock names more names, saying that Karl Rove, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Roy Blunt, Ted Stevens, Trent Lott, Dennis Hastert, Tom DeLay, Newt Gingrich and even Bill Frist should sit on the back row or fade into obscurity.  He continues:

Instead, Americans should listen to Republicans who courageously advance pro-market principles today. Senators Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn would make outstanding GOP honchos. House Republicans should elevate Jeff Flake, Mike Pence, Jeb Hensarling, and John Shadegg to key positions. Governors Mark Sanford of South Carolina and Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal are attractive young reformers with lots to offer through at least 2012. Ditto former Maryland lieutenant governor Michael Steele, author of 2008’s best slogan: “Drill, baby, drill!”

John McCain and Sarah Palin campaigned energetically while advocating lower spending and tax cuts. Alas, the bailout fiasco cut them off at the knees. They otherwise might have prevailed, and deserve praise for trying to do the right thing.

Once the GOP’s detritus is dislodged, rebuilding can begin. The best way Republicans can redeem themselves is to ask daily: “What would Reagan do?”

Reaganism is not Dead

Scott Rasmussen writes an interesting comparison of Obama and Reagan.  For me, the most interesting part of the article contained the following polling numbers:

Few Americans supported the bailout, and a majority of voters were more concerned that the government would do too much rather than too little.  In terms of getting the economy going again, 58% said that more tax cuts would better stimulate the economy than new government spending.

A Rasmussen survey conducted Oct. 2 found that 59% agreed with the sentiment expressed by Reagan in his first inaugural address: “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Just 28% disagreed with this sentiment.  That survey also found that 44% of Obama voters agreed with Reagan’s assessment (40% did not).  And McCain voters overwhelmingly supported the Gipper.

. . . Consider that 43% of voters view it as a positive to describe a candidate as being like Reagan, while just 26% consider it a negative.  Being compared to Reagan rates higher among voters than being called “conservative,” “moderate,” “liberal” or “progressive.”  Except among Democrats, that is.  Fifty-one percent of Democrats view that Reagan comparison as a negative.

If the Republican Party is going to be successful, it must re-embrace economic conservatism.  That is where most Americans are.

“Big government conservatism”

Here is an interesting entry from the Cato Institute about “big government conservatism,” including the following observation:

Bush and the Republicans promised choice, freedom, reform, and a restrained federal government. They delivered massive overspending, the biggest expansion of entitlements in 40 years, centralization of education, a floundering war, an imperial presidency, civil liberties abuses, the intrusion of the federal government into social issues and personal freedoms, and finally a $700 billion bailout of Wall Street that just kept on growing in the last month of the campaign. Voters who believed in limited government had every reason to reject that record.

It’s interesting how the writer defines “big government conservatism”:

Big-government conservatism, a toxic combination of the religious right and the neoconservatives, lost badly on Tuesday.

The writer continues:

Fifty-nine percent of voters call themselves “fiscally conservative and socially liberal,” and that’s a rich vein the Republican party is ignoring. If Obama governs as a centrist, he may make it very difficult for the Republicans to recover. But a candidate in either party who presented himself as a product of the social freedom of the Sixties and the economic freedom of the Eighties would be tapping into a market that both parties have yet to nail down.

Also contained in the article is this link to an interesting analysis of “independent” voters.

I think the author’s definition of “big government conservatism” may be a bit off.  Out-of-control and ever-growing government spending and programs would be the biggest component of what I believe drove conservatives crazy during the Bush administration, with the recent nationalization of companies and industries being more than most could handle.  What do you think?

Republican appeal to “professionals”

I’ve seen several commentaries recently on what Republicans can do to increase their appeal to “professionals.”  Here is a sampling:

Harold Meyerson writes:

Six years ago, John Judis and Ruy Teixeira argued in their book “The Emerging Democratic Majority” that the political transformation of professionals — among the most Republican of voting blocs during the Eisenhower era, and today among the most Democratic — was a decisive factor in pushing the nation toward the Democratic Party, as was the steady Democratic drift of female voters. In an article published on the New Republic’s Web site Wednesday, Judis noted that Obama carried all of the 19 states with the highest percentage of voters who have an advanced degree. Obama’s strength in such Southern states as Virginia and North Carolina is partly the result of increased African American turnout, but it is also a consequence of the large numbers of highly educated professionals who’ve moved to those states over the past two decades.

David Frum makes a similar argument but goes farther, suggesting that to appeal to college graduates Republicans must abandon socially conservative positions:

A generation ago, Republicans dominated among college graduates. In 1984 and 1988, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush won states like California, Pennsylvania and Connecticut – states that have been “blue” for a generation. (America’s least educated state, West Virginia, went for Michael Dukakis in 1988.)

Those days are long gone. Since 1988, Democrats have become more conservative on economics – and Republicans have become more conservative on social issues.

College-educated Americans have come to believe that their money is safe with Democrats – but that their values are under threat from Republicans. And there are more and more of these college-educated Americans all the time.

So the question for the GOP is: Will it pursue them? To do so will involve painful change, on issues ranging from the environment to abortion. And it will involve potentially even more painful changes of style and tone: toward a future that is less overtly religious, less negligent with policy, and less polarizing on social issues. That’s a future that leaves little room for Sarah Palin – but the only hope for a Republican recovery.

Frum’s analysis has drawn some interesting responses, like this one, which provides a more comprehensive analysis of how the Republican Party can appeal to voters on both economic and social issues, and this one, which is a bit more intuitive and less analytical.  What do you think?