National Review Waking Up To Reality

This is good news. A couple people sent me a link to an article written by Ramesh Ponnuru and Yuval Levin (P&L) at National Review. What’s interesting about it is that while they still make some of the mistakes commonly made on the right, they seem to be catching up to things I’ve been saying here for quite some time. This is an important step for conservatism

As you will recall, I’ve been talking about income inequality as a huge issue conservatives are missing. I’ve also pointed out that conservatives have a tin ear when it comes to the public, and that the conservative "agenda" (what there is of it) is meaningless to the public, i.e. the public is not the one acting irrationally or stupidly. Pointing this out has led to lots of bad blood and the loss of several readers who are happier drinking the Kool-Aid of talk radio. Good for them. Well, the conservative world is starting to wake up to what I've been saying. Indeed, check out this quote to get a flavor of this National Review article:

“Republicans could do better: If they took better account of what worries Americans today and why, they would see that the Democrats’ obsession with inequality could leave the GOP with a great opportunity to offer the public an appealing, constructive, conservative economic agenda.”

Those are my points: conservatives have lost touch with average Americans, they don’t offer a worthwhile agenda, and they are blind to an issue that is becoming huge. There’s more too. P&L note that the Democrats have managed to sell the public on the idea that they care about the public whereas Republicans don’t, but P&L blame the right for this: “this success has had more to do with Republicans’ lack of understanding of (and at times discomfort with) the public’s economic concerns than with the strengths of the Democrats’ arguments.”

BINGO!

How long have I been saying this? The problem is that the right does not understand or care about the public’s concerns -- instead, they mock the public. And what do P&L recommend? Well, they engage in a lengthy discussion in which they highlight some areas where the right can win the public. Here are some of their quotes:

● “Voters are worried about stagnating wages, inadequate mobility out of poverty and through the middle class, weak growth, and the high costs of raising a family.”

● “People worry that the cost of health insurance is too high, putting coverage out of reach for too many and depressing wages.”

● “Higher education is another source of great anxiety in American life: Will we able to afford it for our kids, and will it leave them with an unbearable debt burden?”

● “The cost of raising a family is another issue where conservatives can offer potentially popular reforms.”

● “To stand a chance of being enacted, the agenda conservatives offer must speak directly to the needs and wishes of middle-class voters.”

Sound familiar? These are same points I've been making since December 2012. Seriously, go back and look. While others have been arguing that we just need to up the hate against gays, Mexicans, women and Obama... and have been trying to dismiss their failure by calling the public "low information voters," I've been making the point that conservatives are the ones who need to start offering something that people outside the fringe will want. Now P&L are making that very same point.

Interestingly, P&L reached these conclusions despite continuing to make some of the common mistakes that continue to cripple conservative thinking. Specifically:

● They use the wrong data to delude themselves into thinking that income equality is about greed rather than pain. What they do is use the nominal data, which results in them admitting that incomes at the top grew a lot more than incomes at the bottom, but then they claim that all incomes rose: “Everyone’s incomes grew, but those of the wealthy grew more, leaving America’s wealth more concentrated at the top.” Hence, they see income inequality as being about greed. But this isn’t true. If you factor in inflation, which you must, then everyone from the middle class on down lost income during that period. So while they claim the “most prominent plank of the left’s inequality argument” is disproven, they are wrong. The reality is that people are concerned because their incomes have been falling, not because they are upset that the rich are doing better than they are.

● They are still comparing income inequality to “growth,” as if growth is a proxy for the economic security of the public. As I’ve pointed out before, growth and economic security have proven themselves to be unrelated. To really understand the problem, conservatives need to start focusing on jobs and income, not growth, because it is jobs and income that are vanishing even as economic growth soars.

● They take the same wrong approach conservatives take regarding other issues, particularly scientific, and they conclude that while there is evidence to show that income inequality is a problem, it’s not conclusively proven. No one cares about “conclusively proven” because there is no such thing in life... asking for conclusive proof is a delaying tactic.

● Fourth, they have wrongly interpreted the polls. They point out that polls show “income inequality” as being a relatively low concern of the public compared to other issues. But as I pointed out the other day, that misunderstands the nature of polling, and it misidentifies the actual issue.

Indeed, building on this last point, even as they dismiss the idea that “income inequality” is something that does or should concern the public, they then conclude that the base elements of income inequality (vanishing jobs, shrinking incomes, loss of upward mobility) are concerns of the public. That's arguing form over substance on their part.

It would be nice if P&L could finally look beyond the years of propaganda they have ingested, but frankly, I’ll take what they have given here and be happy with it: this is a good start. Conservatives need to realize that until they grasp the concerns of the middle class and start offering solutions for those, the middle class will continue to look elsewhere for solutions. Articles like the one by P&L are a huge step in the right direction because they shatter the idea that the public is at fault for conservative failures and that a platform aimed at addressing the pet peeves of the fringe can succeed. Said differently, this is the kind of article people like P&L should have been writing since December 2012 to send conservatives in the right direction. They didn’t, but at least they are starting to now... and that's a good thing.