Blue Collar Conservatives: Recommitting to an America That Works (5 page)

We have an obligation to deal with people’s legitimate fear during this time of great hardship, change, and uncertainty. The answer to every problem can’t be “Quit whining and buck up.” (See how that would work in your marriage!) We must articulate a reassuring vision for those who are struggling, and it must focus on the importance of work and personal dignity.

The fear and anxiety bred by the weak economy and the breakdown of the family are bad enough, but lately they have given rise to a disturbingly un-American malady—hopelessness. The monthly unemployment report in this anemic recovery
results in a partisan sparring match between Left and Right with both sides using statistics to bolster their political narratives. One number has been the most telling over the past five years—the percentage of people who have simply given up looking for work is at or near all-time highs.

People believe the American Dream is fading. It’s no surprise that people are dissatisfied with our country’s economic situation. But most people no longer expect things to get better. Indeed, in some ways—paying for college tuition, affording retirement, finding good jobs—they expect things to get worse. Are they wrong? Maybe not. Not only is our economy in a recession, but economic mobility is lagging behind many other countries.
⁷
According to a Brookings Institution report, you are about two times more likely to rise up the economic ladder in Canada or Australia than you are in America.
⁸

The one area of the country where upward mobility is comparable to these countries is the place with the strongest families and an ethic of community support—the Salt Lake City area. Thanks to the Mormon Church, marriage and family are paramount there, and the church fosters an impressive network of private-sector relief for families in economic distress.

When social scientists study the ability of people to rise out of poverty, one of their findings is so consistent that it cannot be denied or ignored: children from two-parent families who live in communities where the two-parent family is the norm have a much higher chance of succeeding.
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That doesn’t mean there aren’t thousands of heroic single mothers
doing everything they can for their children. But our appreciation for those women must not distract us from the fact that, as a rule, children do better when their mom and dad are married and living at home.

Perhaps the most troubling news about the state of the American Dream is how we define success. A 2012 survey found that “fame and fortune” are replacing “faith and family” as the central components of the American Dream.
¹⁰
If the character of George Bailey in
It
’
s a Wonderful Life
once embodied Americans’ idea of true success, he has been replaced by the latest winner of
American Idol
. Yet the greatest reward in life is not becoming a rich celebrity; it is having a family—which happens to be a much more democratic ideal. Barbara Walters, who has been a cheerleader for liberalism for decades, has admitted that her greatest regret in life is that she didn’t have more children.
¹¹
Warren Buffett, one of the richest men in the world, also recognizes the hollowness of Hollywood ideals. When a student asked him how he defined success, the brilliant investor dismissed almost out of hand his fame and financial achievements and said what matters most is “whether the people you care about most love you.”
¹²

It may be that many young people are turning their backs on the traditional American Dream in part because it seems unattainable. They make up what economists are calling a “lost generation”—millions of twenty-something college
graduates who are deep in student debt, can’t find a good job, and might never get a foot on the ladder of career, family, and homeownership. As many as six and a half million Americans between the ages of sixteen and twenty-four are neither in school nor in the workforce.
¹³
They may never recover, and their children will face even gloomier prospects.

Bigger and fatter federal entitlement programs will not bring hope to the Harrisons and their children. They don’t want food stamps. They want the dignity of a decent job and a fair shot at a better life for their kids. Hope lies in a vision of families and communities in which human beings thrive, and in policies based on that vision. I’ll have more to say later about incentives for manufacturers and small businesses, a tax system that encourages marriage and strong families, and education that is affordable and practical.

In the meantime, the Ohio town where the Harrison family lives sits on the Utica Shale, which promises well-paying jobs in the oil and gas industry for James and his sons and thousands of others. There are also powerful political forces that want to strangle that industry, and they have the sympathetic ear of the president and his party. Yet Republicans have somehow ended up as the bad guys in this story. I’m going to show you in this book how we can change that.

Ultimately, the American Dream has never really been about the dreamer. My grandfather, like millions of others,
came to America seeking a better life. But the better life he was after was for his children. In this exceptional country, he was able to nourish in his children the values of faith, family, work, freedom, service, and patriotism. He prospered here, and I thank God for the economic blessings. But my grandfather built something more important than wealth. He built a family, a spiritual legacy, and he built it to last. Over a million immigrants a year come to this country in search of the same dream, because they still believe that dream is within their grasp.

We need to remember, as we debate about policies and fight our political battles, what’s really at stake. The American Dream is about a country of prosperous communities, strong families, a decent life today, and a realistic hope for a better tomorrow. Blue collar conservatives understand that, and it’s time Republicans let them know that we do too.

CHAPTER THREE

A GOP THAT STANDS UP FOR EVERYONE

A
mericans are more pessimistic than ever. Washington is a mess. The economy has been sputtering along for years. The culture is getting even coarser. It is harder to find a good job, much less climb the ladder of success. For a working young man or woman who wants to raise a family, the search for a good spouse feels like finding a needle in a haystack, and the odds against a lasting marriage are sobering.

Though some of today’s problems are new, Americans have faced serious challenges before, and we have always prevailed.
Sometimes in the hour of crisis, we have been blessed with a great leader. Abraham Lincoln guided us through the Civil War. Franklin Roosevelt inspired us with the determination to defeat Nazism and fascism in World War II. Ronald Reagan restored our confidence after the economic, military, and political crises of the 1970s and led us to victory in the Cold War.

There is no such leader in the Oval Office now, no one who can appeal to the values that make this country great because he believes in them himself. President Obama doesn’t understand America. Maybe that’s because he was raised in a radical family, much of the time overseas, and educated by people who saw only the worst in this country. He abandoned the slogan of “hope” a long time ago. When Obama appeals to Americans, his themes are envy, resentment, and fear. He can mobilize his base on the Left with that talk, but it falls flat with everyone else.

Borrowing a page from the unhappier chapters of European history, Obama promises that the government will take care of every want and need. All the public has to do is cede control of their lives to the benevolent functionaries of the omnicompetent state. Uttering the world’s stalest political pickup line, he woos an anxious electorate: “Trust me, your leader, with more power and control because I really do care for you, 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 seem
big 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.