The New Republican Majority

Reviewing the 2010 battlefield, RealClearPolitics' Sean Trende notes two significant facts:

1. Dems have lost rural and "Jacksonian" voters. A hundred years ago, the core of the Democratic vote was rural voters, farmers that hated capitalism and finance, particularly the finance capitalists that held their mortgages. These folks, along with the rough-and-ready Scotch-Irish from Appalachia, are gone for the Dems.
2. Dems are losing suburban and white working class voters. These folks have been the real pivot point in the electorate in the last generation, leaning towards Reagan, then Clinton, then Bush, then Obama. Now they are clearly moving away from Obama and the Democrats.

Isn't it convenient, then, for Republicans that suburban voters and the white working class are being absolutely hammered by the Great Recession? And isn't it convenient that Obamanomics really has nothing to say to these hard-hit folks?

Then there are the young voters. You have to feel sorry for the young voters. There they are, having voted just like the trusties in their government educational custodial facilities told them, and now they are utterly screwed. Do you think that maybe in two years they might be ready to vote for real Hope and Change in freedom instead of Hope and Change in big government?

Yeah. How dumb can you be, imagining that big government is going to create Hope and Change? Government is force, baby. And government is the cockpit of the special interests, all of them opposed to Change.

Think, think, think. That's the order of the day. The door is open to create a big new majority coalition. So let's all think about how to appeal to suburban voters, white working class voters, and young voters.

Job One is jobs, jobs, jobs. And we know how to do that. Cut government spending and cut income tax rates.

Then there is education. We have to help the majority of Americans escape from the liberal model of education that prepares people for jobs in the Peace Corps and a career in environmental regulation. We need to reorient education towards the dominant learning method among humans and especially among average people: learning by doing.

I say "we" but I mean "they". The conservative policy on education is that it should be driven not by educrats and edu-theorists but by education consumers: students and parents. Let us empower ordinary people to supervise their ordinary education and empower them to decide when it is time to get out of school and into the "real world" of work and training. For many people, I suspect, the moment to leave full-time education is about age 13.

Crisis is opportunity. The Obama meltdown creates the political opportunity of the century. We conservatives care about the suburban voters and the white working class. We care because we understand what a century of liberal government has done to the ordinary person, and we want ordinary people to have a free and prosperous life liberated from the dead hand of government.

Let's listen to the surburbanites. Let's listen to the white working class. Let's work with them to build an America we can all share and be proud of.