[Dialogue] Waiting to be Wooed, not Booed!

[FacilitationFla at aol.com]

Waiting to Be Wooed  
By _DAVID BROOKS_ 
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/davidbrooks/index.html?inline=nyt-per) , New York  Times
 
I’ve never been a swing voter before. For most of my adult life I’ve felt 
the  Republicans tended to have the best approaches to expand economic 
opportunity,  meet foreign threats and restore a culture of personal responsibility. 
But over  the past few years I’ve grown estranged from many Republicans, 
especially the  ones leading the House. I’m one of those suburbanites who thought the 
G.O.P.  deserved to lose the last election, and now I find myself floating 
out there in  independent-land, not a Democrat, just looking for something new. 
It’s like being the belle of the ball, because the Republicans really need to 
 woo back people like me. I hope they won’t mind if I offer a little advice 
on  how to do it. 
First, don’t listen to your consultants. Over the next few months, pollsters  
are going to pick out the key demographic groups (left-handed Catholic  
orthopedists) and offer advice on how to kiss up to those people. Majorities are  
never built that way. You end up proposing inconsequential micropolicies and  
selling your soul. 
Don’t focus on groups, focus on problems. If you have persuasive proposals to 
 address big problems, the majority coalition will build itself.  
Second, be policy-centric, not philosophy-centric. American conservatism grew 
 up out of power and has always placed great emphasis on doctrine. Today, in 
the  wake of this month’s defeat, Republicans are firing up the old debate 
among  social conservatives, free-market conservatives and others about the 
proper role  of the state. This stale, abstract debate will never lead anywhere and 
only  inhibits creative thinking.  
The Republican weakness is not a lack of grand principles, it’s a lack of  
concrete policies commensurate with the size of 21st-century problems. If they  
would shelve the doctrinal debate for a second, Republicans — while not doing  
violence to their belief in the market, traditional values or anything else — 
 could find plenty of policy ideas to deal with China and India, the 
entitlement  crisis and so on.  
Third, create a Republican Leadership Council. In the realm of ideas,  
Democrats own the center. Moderate Democrats have the Democratic Leadership  
Council, the Third Way and various cells within the Brookings Institution, such  as 
the Hamilton Project. Republican moderates are intellectual weaklings. They  
have no independent identity, so it’s no wonder centrist voters prefer Democrats 
 on one domestic issue after another.  
Fourth, support stem cell research. This has become a symbolic issue denoting 
 fundamental attitudes about science and progress. Moderates can understand 
why  somebody is anti-abortion. But opposing stem cell work seems to close off  
research that could alleviate human suffering for the sake of a theoretical  
abstraction. 
Fifth, support free trade, while responding to the downside of globalization. 
 When the industrial age kicked in, many European nations built an elaborate  
welfare state, but didn’t aggressively expand educational opportunity. 
Americans  didn’t build as big a welfare system, but, as the blogger Reihan Salam 
pointed  out recently, we spent a lot on schools to foster social mobility.  
The American way is to help people compete, not shield them from competition. 
 Today that means nurturing stable families in which children can develop the 
 social and cultural capital they need to thrive. (A significant expansion of 
the  child tax credit would ease the burden on young parents.) It means 
publicly  funded, though not necessarily publicly run, preschool programs in which  
children from disorganized homes can learn how to learn. It means radical 
school  reform: performance pay for teachers, an end to the stupid certification 
rules,  urban boarding schools where educators can set up local cultures of 
achievement,  locally run neighborhood child centers to service an array of 
health and  day-care needs.  
Sixth, spread assets. Every citizen, from birth, should have an I.R.A.-type  
savings account. The tax code should encourage personal and employer  
contributions. These accounts would enhance savings and encourage an investor  
mentality, and once Americans became comfortable with them, they could be used  as 
tools to reform Social Security and health care funding. 
Seventh, raise taxes on carbon emissions and use the revenue to make the tax  
cuts on capital gains and dividends permanent. This would spur energy 
innovation  and encourage investment more generally. 
Over the past few years, the G.O.P. has become like a company with a great  
mission statement, but no domestic policy products to sell. Now’s the time to  
get granular. And the thing to remember is, we disaffected voters are easy. We 
 want to go home with you if you’ll give us a reason. 



Cynthia N.  Vance
Strategics International Inc.
8245 SW 116 Terrace
Miami, Florida,  33156
305-378-1327; fax 305-378-9178
_http://members.aol.com/facilitationfla_ 
(http://members.aol.com/facilitationfla) 

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