Those who want to know why Republicans will lose in 2008 should ask Senator John McCain.
Those who want to know why Republicans will lose in 2008 should ask Senator John McCain. McCain has demonstrated uncanny consistency changing the subject whenever someone asks a legitimate question on core social issues. This is the fatal shortcoming for both Senator McCain, and the G.O.P. as well.
An analysis of his speech given at the Conservative Political Action Conference last week speaks volumes regarding the prospects for a Republican victory in 2008.
The most remarkable aspect of his speech is the long list of core social kitchen-table issues important to mainstream America that are not even mentioned in his speech. The words marriage, illegitimacy, wedlock (and out-of-wedlock), gay marriage, same-sex marriage, single mother(hood), and domestic violence were missing entirely from his platform of promises.
The only word of interest — “reform” — occurs just once in his talk — albeit what he was referring to remains a mystery. Says McCain:
I will fight for the line item veto, and I will not permit any expansion whatsoever of the entitlement programs that are bankrupting us. On the contrary, I intend to reform those programs so that government is no longer in that habit of making promises to Americans it does not have the means to keep.
McCain has never weighed in on core social reform issues in the past. His complete lack of spine fighting the war on marriage, waged by our own federal government against its own people, is tantamount to pretending that the war on terror can be won by doing nothing more than promising to win it and then changing the subject to something more convenient.
Approximately one-half of Americans are trapped on the field of the war on marriage. Some demand more welfare than is economically possible, the rest are stripped to their skivvies and then locked up. It all starts with the American Bar Association, our $700-billion-per-year HHS budget, and making women think they can do better by marrying Uncle Sam instead of having a husband or marrying the father of their children.
McCain is wrong merely offering “free market solutions” as a response to Democrat’s call for socialized medicine. “Free market solutions” are essentially what we have now. The buyers who cannot afford health insurance are largely single-mothers. This structural problem must be reversed – by restoring a free marriage market. The only alternative is socialized health care. Republicans have one possible choice: take up “Marriage Values” and restore a “Marriage Economy,” or eventually give in to public opinion and Democrat demands. The fact is this: when federal government ends permanent entitlement of divorce and illegitimacy, three-quarters of our health care problems will abate naturally.
McCain is also wrong about appointing judges to the federal bench “who are intent on achieving political changes that the American people cannot be convinced to accept through the election of their representatives.” This is where Roe v. Wade came from. Activist courts are not the answer. In any event, activist courts could never undo the damage done to marriage by federal spending. It is ludicrous, and an abdication of legislative and executive constitutional responsibility, to believe that marriage would ever be put back together from the bench. In light of previous comments he has made about divorce at whistle stops, this certainly appears to be what Mr. McCain has in mind.
McCain did make a sage comment, perhaps precognizing his own loss next November: “Often elections in this country are fought within the margins of small differences.” The margin of difference between Democrats and Republicans is about as wide and deep as the Cooley dam. The abysmal lack of solutions that Republicans have offered puts them in a tremendous one-down position.
As we have seen over the past decade, Republicans will continue losing seats in Congress. The party of so-called “compassionate conservatives” without a message that actually brings about restoration of the American family – giving most everyone what they want and need – simply does not register with even the most uniformed voters. There are, however, a lot of voters who will give in to expansionist socialist cries about the poverty and health problems of children and single mothers, crime, domestic violence, violence against women, and child support arrearages. Obama’s message is honed and prepared to slice and dice any candidate the Republicans put up against him.
Social conservatives and mainstreamers brought about the “family values” landslide of 1994 by nationwide hard work of the grassroots. In 2008, the landslide is going the other way: the G.O.P. is dumping dirt on anyone who cares about “Marriage Values” and restoring a competitive “Marriage Economy” in America.
For those who still do not understand the keystone importance of establishing a “marriage economy,” let me describe it very simply. Cuba and China have strong family values. Both China and Cuba socialized business many years ago, and became very poor countries. China de-socialized business with the end of Maoism, and is now taking us to the cleaners in world markets. We are losing our competitiveness sinking under the weight of social expenditures that do little but create more social problems, taxes, and a comparatively weak work force. The key to American economic success in the 21st century depends decisively on the establishment of a “Marriage Economy.”
Political scientists and pundits who think I am incorrect about this should recognize that this article will still be here after the elections. It is better to warn them now so they have the opportunity to change course before next November. Obviously, such an awakening is quite unlikely to happen this late in the election cycle.
Perhaps after the elections, when the G.O.P. learns that it cannot win on “business as usual,” they will be falling all over themselves to find out what “Marriage Values” and the “Marriage Economy” are all about. We will be ready to work with them when they are really ready to “Change America.”
davidrusher@swbell.net
http://www.dadsnow.org/ACFC-MO/
Read more articles by David R. Usher
Y'all really ought to take a look at this article:
http://www.cato-unbound.org/2008/01/14/stephanie-coontz/the-future-of-marriage
"In Anglo-American law, a child born outside an approved marriage was a 'fillius nullius' - a child of no one, entitled to nothing. In fact, through most of history, the precondition for maintaining a strong institution of marriage was the existence of an equally strong institution of illegitimacy, which denied such children any claim on their families…
Today, when a marriage works, it delivers more benefits to its members — adults and children — than ever before. A good marriage is fairer and more fulfilling for both men and women than couples of the past could ever have imagined. Domestic violence and sexual coercion have fallen sharply. More couples share decision-making and housework than ever before. Parents devote unprecedented time and resources to their children. And men in stable marriages are far less likely to cheat on their wives than in the past.
But the same things that have made so many modern marriages more intimate, fair, and protective have simultaneously made marriage itself more optional and more contingent on successful negotiation. They have also made marriage seem less bearable when it doesn’t live up to its potential. The forces that have strengthened marriage as a personal relationship between freely-consenting adults have weakened marriage as a regulatory social institution."
Comment by Raymond Ingles | February 11, 2008
At last, someone on IC hits the bullseye. I happen to really like Huckabee, and believe he's been unfairly maligned. Nonetheless, I can sort of understand why some elitist 'pubs may not care for him. The guy ate fried squirrel in college. lol But the Huckabee phenomenon is impossible to ignore. That's why I believe he's staying in the race. Social conservative issues really matter. Abortion is a trump card. If you get that abortion is murder, no other issue could possibly compare. When I look at the usual suspect lineup the pubs offered this year, someone like Huckabee has to stand out in the crowd. Most were divorced under questionable circumstances and remarried trophy wives. Most had equivocal positions on abortion, defense of marriage amendment, human life amendment, and nomination of judges. Romney's Mormonism was not so much an issue as much as he's an obvious fake. Not to mention, every time Huckabee had a good idea, Romney stole it. Didn't do him much good, though.
I consider myself a member of Gen X, which means I came of age in the wake of the 1960s fiasco. Almost all of my friends' parents divorced by the time we were in college. Alcohol abuse wasn't even questioned. Drugs were rampant. Latchkeys were the norm. Most of the union-type factory jobs in my hometown left for down South, and latter south of the border. Church attendance was on the decline. Eventually, thanks largely to ancient philosophy, I awoke from the dream of enlightenment. But most of the people I knew from those days haven't.
Enter Barack Obama. Not just good at rhetoric, Barack gets what it means to come of age in the 80s. He's not just some spoiled Goldwater girl turned McGovern supporter. Instead of maligning women who bake cookies for their children, he laments that his mother did not have time to bake him cookies. Barack understands the life of Gen-Xers way better than Clinton and the usual suspects from the pubs. Barack just fails to recognize the cause of the decline–social and fiscal engineering that undermined the family.
The two 'pubs still standing are the only two who are not baby boomers, i.e. not completely oblivious to the world we live in today, i.e. not themselves implicit in the failing social experiment. In an arcane way, McCain is more like a member of the so-called greatest generation than a boomer. Case in point, he uses words like pork-barrel spending repeatedly. I know what it means, but I also read Milton Friedman in high school. The guy is not so far from the great depression and WWII, and even though he is today personally decadent, he has a history of demonstrated honor and dignity. Sure, he thinks the war on terror are just like WWII, but at least he doesn't equate Iraq/Afghanistan with Vietnam. In other words, McCain's delusion from reality at least has some lucky semblance with life as we know it today.
Maybe Huckabee is a few years older than I, but he gets what it's really like to raise a family today. He was the first 'pub to clearly describe the state of the economy while the other candidates were living in a delusion. Since then, they recognized the reality but not before they destroyed the Reagan Coalition.
Sorry Reaganites, the days of the military industrial complex are over. We live in a new economy. As crazy as he is, Ron Paul is right about one thing–military spending will not improve our status or our economy. We desperately need fiscal discipline.
This fiscal discipline needs to occur on all levels–federal, state, local, and family. Just as the federal government cannot improve the economy by borrowing money, families cannot improve their pocketbooks through home-equity loans and credit cards. Most American families are living on thin-air, and someday the balloon payment will come due.
The mainstream Republicans have failed to address these two issues, especially as they relate to each other. Clearly, fiscal responsibility is a Christian concept. Read Larry Burkett or Dave Ramsey. Likewise, social values are core Republican values. A Christian without sound fiscal principles is really just a slave to the culture, and a Republican without socially conservative commitments is merely a cheap liberal.
Comment by Steve W. | February 11, 2008