Republican - A Party In Decline

Great revealing article by David Frum of the NY Times - ”The Vanishing Republican Voter” (nytimes.com registration required). If you consider yourself affiliated with the Republican party or have at any time, I highly recommend giving this a read. A self-proclaimed conservative (author of Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again), David details the drastic growth of economic inequality in America and the effects it has had on the Republican voter.

IN SHORT, the trend to inequality is real, it is large and it is transforming American society and the American electoral map. Yet the conservative response to this trend verges somewhere between the obsolete and the irrelevant.

Conservatives need to stop denying reality. The stagnation of the incomes of middle-class Americans is a fact. And only by acknowledging facts can we respond effectively to the genuine difficulties of voters in the middle. We keep offering them cuts in their federal personal income taxes — even though two-thirds of Americans pay more in payroll taxes than in income taxes, and even though a majority of Americans now describe their federal income tax burden as reasonable.

There is also the Republican dilemna of a political party which more and more cannot provide the best solutions for the people it historically has most represented.

Another dilemma the Republican party faces is that of a political party which no longer appears to meet the needs of its core voting demographic.

And so we arrive at a weird situation in which the party that identifies itself with markets, with business and with technology cannot win the votes of those who have prospered most from markets, from business and from technology. Republicans have been badly hurt in upper America by the collapse of their onetime reputation for integrity and competence.

This article does not focus on which party is wrong or right, nor does it try to sway your vote to a specific party. It is simply the analysis of (what appears to be) a declining political party and what obstacles need to be overcome to save it.