:Posted on 12/11/2006 2:49:12 PM PST by Paul Ross
Phyllis Schlafly
:
Middle class will look for a friend in either partyBy Phyllis Schlafly, Townhall Forum
Monday, November 27, 2006
The best post-mortem on the 2006 election came from that perennial politician, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass. He said, "People want to know who's on their side. Whether it's health care or wages or retirement issues, they want to have someone on their side."
The biggest electoral bloc of the "they" who are seeking friends is the middle class, which includes people variously labeled blue-collar workers, skilled workers or Reagan Democrats. They are the swing voters, often called the moveables.
President Ronald Reagan's victories absolutely depended on their support. But Presidents Bush I and II kicked them away from the Republican Party, particularly on the issue of jobs.
Did the 2006 election teach Republicans that it is smart to be friends of the middle class? Have Republicans realized that jobs were second only to the unpopular war as the issue of 2006, and will surely be the No. 1 issue in 2008? George W. Bush carried Ohio in 2004 because the marriage amendment brought out the values voters. But Democrats can play that game, too: In 2006, the Ohio referendum on increasing the minimum wage raised the jobs issue, passed by 57 percent, and helped to bury Republican candidates.
Ohio has lost its manufacturing base. Some of the good jobs went to plants that were outsourced overseas and some disappeared in the tsunami of cheap Chinese goods as Wal-Mart replaced small businesses and left behind towns with empty streets and boarded-up windows.
Incumbent Republican Sen. Mike DeWine was badly defeated by Rep. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, who had led the congressional fight against CAFTA and wrote a book called "The Myths of Free Trade" (New Press, $16). Brown's TV ads showing him standing in front of a "plant closed" sign were powerful.
Almost every Republican member of Congress who bit the dust in the 2006 election had been an enthusiastic booster of the globalists' agenda: North American Free Trade Agreement, Central American Free Trade Agreement, World Trade Organization, Fast Track, permanent normal trading relations and free trade agreements with countries most Americans never heard of. Republicans were badly on the defensive in the face of Democrat ads touting the issue of jobs. The United States has lost more than 3 million manufacturing jobs since George W. Bush became president in 2000. The U.S. trade deficit hit a record high of $717 billion last year, and is expected to be even higher this year.
The middle class is not placated by feel-good talk that the stock market has climbed to a record high, or that unemployment is at a record low, or that the gross domestic product is growing. Unemployment statistics don't count the guys who lost $50,000 jobs in manufacturing and are now working $25,000 jobs in retail, but job-growth figures happily do count the wives who have been involuntarily forced into the labor force just to keep groceries on the table. The middle class is not placated by glib slogans that free trade is good for the economy and that protectionism is a nasty word. Common sense tells them that there is no such thing as a free lunch and, yes indeed, they do expect friends in government and industry to protect U.S. jobs against unfair competition from foreigners who work for 30 cents an hour.
Phyllis hits the nail on the head.
I saw some interesting MSM play on the popped housing bubble, where they tried to spin it that it wasn't that bad, that housing prices had "only" dropped 2%. What they neglect in their putative analysis is to assess how many of those homes are actually fully mortgaged, and they can't go down.
This is the inevitable outcome predicted by those who saw all these debts mushrooming, with consumers banking on their houses going up to keep their spending afloat via re-fi's and other home loans such as the exotics which are also ballooning now. They are already stunted in flexibility. Foreclosures could be right around the corner...and in view of the record numbers locally thereto, it would not be surprising.
Then there are those who do have flexibility...who have seen the market collapse, and had already steeply discounted quality properties...those capable of doing so have been desperately seeking renters to yank them off the market.
And hopefully it isn't some drunk.....
"What they neglect in their putative analysis is to assess how many of those homes are actually fully mortgaged", and they can't go down."
All those Di-tech 125% loans are coming home to roost.
Oh that will keep more jobs in Ohio....NOT!
Joe Sixpack will look for a friend in either party--to put another point on the one Schaffly makes so well. Joe is the one who takes a beating from the GOP elites--
It calls for pointing rather starkly that the Xlintons are just as guilty as the Bush's...isolating both so-called centrist malefactors ... We can't not notice that the Xlintons are poised to be returned to the White House in '08....further perpetuating these same failed policies.
We can really make hay with this...here is a posting from a Liberal source which really did a surprisingly good job of roasting Robert Rubin...
December 7th, 2006 at 8:40 pmSix Questions for Robert Rubin by The Nation
Robert Rubin, the former Treasury secretary and Citigroup executive, meets Wednesday with the House Democratic Caucus to begin educating its new members on the politically correct way to think about the economy. “Fiscal responsibility” is his standard theme and no doubt some freshmen will want to hear his views on trade and globalization and other large concerns.
A political friend asked me: If you were in the room, what would you ask? So I gave him a list of challenging questions. These might or might not get passed along to House members. It seems unlikely, in any case, that freshly-elected Democrats would be so impertinent to ask them of the party's most esteemed economic authority.
1. Your central message is “fiscal responsibility”–balancing the federal budget–but is it really a good idea to cut spending or, for that matter, raise taxes now when the national economy is heading into recession? Won’t that make things worse, withdrawing economic stimulus at the very moment when more may be needed?
2. On globalization, you told The Nation magazine last summer you don’t think the reform ideas of your Hamilton Project will halt the global convergence of wages that is pulling down wages and incomes in America. If that’s the reality, shouldn’t we be exploring stronger measures to reform the trading system and defuse this explosive situation?
3. You blame our swollen trade deficits almost entirely on the nation’s low savings rate. Given that American families are up to their eyeballs in debt, how can you expect them to increase their savings? If that’s the case, shouldn’t you just tell people the straight truth? Their standard of living is going to fall. There’s no way to avoid it, based on your precriptions.
4. You suggest that balancing the federal budget will also reduce our trade deficits, but studies by the Federal Reserve and the IMF both conclude the impact of fiscal balance is trivial. As the Clinton administration balanced the federal budget in the late 1990s, the US trade deficit was simultaneously exploding. Our current accounts deficit grew from 1.6 percent to 4.2 percent of GDP–despite Clinton’s balanced budget. Japan ran huge budget deficits throughout the 1990s, yet its huge trade surpluses continued regardless. Given those facts, how can you argue the opposite?
5. Why does the business-financial establishment insist on securing elaborate rules in trade agreements to protect the rights of capital and investors, but claims any rules to insure the rights of labor and workers would be “protectionist” and mess up the system? Don’t we need rules for both labor and capital to create a stable, balanced trading system?
6. Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and other leading financial houses are taking major ownership positions in Chinese banks and financial firms. How does this color your advice to Congress on American economic policy toward China?
You mean in their lane!
Indeed, she does. She further elaborated on the next page, which inadvertantly got omitted here:
Americans relish competition, as our national fixation on sports contests proves every day. But the globalists have destroyed a level playing field and, in addition, have subordinated us to an umpire (aka the World Trade Organization) that is biased against us.Well, she has called out the Bushes fairly and squarely.Globalist policies have encouraged U.S. employers to use near-slave labor in Asia, whose products are then guaranteed duty-free or low-tariff re-entry to the United States. Those products are then sold here for prices that are cheap by U.S. standards but are marked up as much as 80 percent.
Globalist policies also allow discrimination against U.S. manufacturers by the Value Added Tax racket, whereby foreign governments subsidize their products both coming and going. For example, German automobiles cost 16 percent less in the United States than the same car sold in Germany, and U.S. automobiles cost 16 percent more in Germany than the same car bought in the United States. House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., plans to shift the dialogue on Capitol Hill to worker's pay, college tuition, health care costs and other issues that touch ordinary families. Her solutions are all bad economics and very expensive, but they will enable her to pose as a friend of the middle class.
All six U.S. senators thought to be planning a run for the Democratic nomination for president voted against the Central American Free Trade Agreement. The issue would be dramatically joined if the Democratic nominee were opposed, for example, by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who supported NAFTA, CAFTA, WTO and permanent normal trading relations for China.
Will Republicans continue to follow George W. Bush in his post-election travels to solicit even more Asian products made by cheap labor and subsidized by their governments? Or will Republicans get smart on the jobs issue and re-establish their friendship with the Reagan Democrats?
Phyllis Schlafly is a national leader of the pro-family movement, a nationally syndicated columnist and author of Feminist Fantasies.
I expect they will run for cover ducking the issue altogether...and avoiding anything like a debate over the facts. But if they do react...I would be surprised if they didn't start a sniping name-calling campaign. It seems to be their modus operandi.
I will post it in couple minutes. Thanx
I went and heard Mrs. Schlafly speak last Spring (? - might have been Fall). I learned much of her history, about which I had been ignorant.
She's an amazing lady, one we fail to listen carefully to, at our peril.
Bush also benefited from the still-salient (in '04) issue of national security. That and a hard-working GOTV effort carried the state for Bush in '04. But, it was a close thing. Bush did worse in Ohio in '04 than he did against Gore in 2000. In '06, when the national security issue had been supplanted by the unpopularity of Iraq, the anger over loss of jobs came home to roost for Republican, and they got their a$$e$ handed to them on a plate, absolutely slaughtered.
People still remember in '04 when Bush had absolute idiots like John Snow and Gregory Mankiw coming here and giving speeches extolling the benefits of globalism and "free" trade, in effect telling people who were in fear for their jobs or actually out of work how good it was to be implementing policies that led to their job losses. How stupid is that? They're going to an area of the country that arguably has been hardest-hit by jobs losses from outsourcing, and they're telling people that this is a good thing? People looked around at the suffering of their families and the loss of their livelihoods and thought, gee, why should I support these guys any longer? I've voted for them for the last 16 years and what has it gained me?
The GOP is in trouble nationally because it is in danger of losing the voting bloc that has traditionally been its most reliable: solid, middle-class, working stiffs who play by the rules, work hard and honestly at their jobs, and try to build a better life and future for their families. When you have a perception that one party, the one you have voted for all the years, no longer shares your concerns for that or takes actions that threaten your economic well-being, you are inclined to look elsewhere.
I fear that the GOP no longer has an economic message that resonates with middle class working folks. And that begins with jobs. Tax cuts are all well and good, when you are working and paying taxes and bringing home income. A rising stock market is fine, as long as you have disposable income to invest and steady employment and a retirement fund/pension plan that benefits from a rising market. But without a job in the first place, all of those wonderful things go away. The message being touted by GOP candidates in the last election, globalism, international markets, "free trade", offshoring jobs, outsourcing work to cheaper labor markets to benefit the bottom lines of corporations, generally went over like a lead balloon with people who are concerned about meeting the expenses of day-to-day life, as well as providing a future for their loved ones.
That said, I am under no illusions that the 'Rats will effectively address these issues. They may make them work. But they'll talk a good line and do tremendously effective campaign ads, like Sherrod Brown did here, and people, by and large, will tune in to it because that is what they want to hear more than a message that seems to say, "screw you, you're on your own, and T.S. Eliot about you and your family".
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