What's the logic of Kansas

Kevin Drum has an excellent review of Grand New Party, a book by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam outlining how the GOP could try to better appeal to the working clas. I haven’t read it, and don’t really intend to as while I enjoy the writers I’m not really the target audience here.

That said, they do make some interesting points, notably a counter to Thomas Frank’s argument that the GOP manages to trick lower income voters into going against their economic interest by supporting social conservativism.

If [working class] were as poorly off as they were in the 1930s, abortion and gay rights wouldn’t mean much to them, but as long these voters are comfortable—not rich, maybe, but not too badly off, either—then why not vote for the party that represents their social values?

This is especially true, Douthat and Salam argue, since maintenance of traditional social values has more economic value to the working class than it does to the college-educated middle class. In the well-off suburbs, divorce is rare, crime is low, and kids mostly don’t have children out of wedlock. What’s more, when those things do happen, the better-off classes have the resources to deal with them. To the upper middle class, then, the constellation of issues revolving around the breakdown of the traditional family seems a distant concern...

But as Douthat and Salam point out, doesn’t it make sense that the people who are most often face-to-face with these problems are also the ones who are most concerned about them? Put that way, of course it does. What’s more, things like divorce, single-parent families, and teen pregnancy incur costs that are harder to deal with the poorer you are, so to a large extent, when working class whites vote for socially conservative Republicans they’re also voting their economic self-interest.

I think the trade-off being made is that traditional values restrict the freedom of women in exchange for increasing the economic stability of the family unit. The shared interests model of marriage is really the premium model, if you’re lower on the economic totem pole you might find the old opposite attracts specialization model much more practical. There’s no real economic benefit to oppressing gays, but that is more of a side-cost of the support structure of traditional religion. The trade offs don’t seem advantageous to me, but at least I can see the logic.

On the liberal side, we can probably find ways to address these concerns without resorting to patriarchy. I tend to think we should find a way to subsidize child care in a way that is also appealing to stay at home mothers. That said, we’re not offering a return to the old ways, so we’re just going to lose some of this demographic.

Comments

[Reene]

The problem is, none of that "traditional social values" stuff works. The proven method to reduce teen pregnancy is via comprehensive sex education and availability of contraception. The proven method to prevent divorce is to delay marriage and make sure both partners are financially stable. Etc etc. Social conservatism isn't just a preference - it just plain doesn't work. The "lib'rul" values of education, equality, etc result in more stable families. Too lazy to include citations, but it's been proven over and over.

[Richard]

If you read one book this year, you should read Grand New Party. As a candidate for Congress (running in the AZ-04 Sept. 2 GOP primary), I think this book is a must for every Republican and lots of Democrats. Future generations will live under Son of Sam’s Club Republicanism.

[Richard]

If you read one book this year, you should read Grand New Party. As a candidate for Congress (running in the AZ-04 Sept. 2 GOP primary), I think this book is a must for every Republican and lots of Democrats. Future generations will live under Son of Sam’s Club Republicanism.