Posted on 03/12/2009 6:22:14 PM PDT by yongin
The news that Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston have canceled their engagement doesn’t come as very much of a surprise. The arrangement looked from the start like an election-season pretense. With the election decently behind us, the pretense can be dropped.
Now Bristol and her baby can recede into private life for the next 3 years or so. But as she goes, Republicans and conservatives need to think seriously about the lesson she has taught us – or more precisely, about the illusion she has punctured.
Many conservatives carry in their heads a mental image of American society that’s a generation out of date. They imagine the existence of a huge class of socially conservative downscale voters, ready to vote Republican because of abortion and gay marriage.
The story of Bristol Palin should help puncture this illusion.
Take a look at Table A17 in this report by the Educational Testing Service. Of children born to white women with a college degree, only 8% were born out of wedlock. But of children born to white women who did not finish college, 28% were born outside of marriage. Of children born to white women who stopped their education after high school, 42.1% were out of wedlock. And of births to white women like Bristol Palin, who have not completed high school, almost 61% were out of wedlock.
And all of these rates continue to rise at a brisk pace.
The numbers for Hispanic women are even starker. Of children born to Hispanic women with some college, 38.6% are born out of wedlock. Of children born to Hispanic women who stop at high school, 48.6% were born out of wedlock.
Black numbers higher still.
It may still be true, as Patrick Buchanan promises, that there remain many socially conservative voters who are “white, working- and middle-class, Catholic, small-town, rural, unionized, middle-age and seniors, and surviving on less than $50,000 a year.” But the key fact about those voters is tucked into the middle of that sequence of descriptors: “middle-aged and seniors.” Younger white downscale voters are a very different story. It is marriage that creates culturally conservative voters – and young downscale Americans are not getting married. When they do marry, they do not stay married: While divorce rates among the college educated have declined sharply since the 1970s, divorce rates among high school graduates remain ominously high.
The socially conservative downscale voter is increasingly becoming a mirage – and a Republican politics based on that mirage will only lead us deeper into the desert.
One comment from Frum’s site.
Chekote wrote: The best lesson from Bristol was when she said that abstinence only sex education is not “realistic”. To me, it is not a question of upscale or downscale voters anymore. It is about the fact that social issues are not electoral winners and the sooner the GOP recognizes that the better. Obama won a majority of Catholics despite his stance on abortion. Blacks and Latinos voted heavily for Proposition 8, yet supported Democrats overwhelmingly. If we want to expand the party, we need to push social issues to the back burner.
Sursum Corda
Mr. Frum, who is paying you, Planned Parenthood?
How about making a moral stand for courage, integrity and timeless PRINCIPLES?!?
This person shouldn’t put pen to paper - he demonstrates his ignorance when he does.
Personally I don’t want to see any young people get married because of a child. It can be a miserable experience for the child if the parents don’t get along. I lived in that situation till I was 14 years old and my parents were smart enough to get a divorce.
That said, Bristol won’t be living on welfare with the child and I suspect dad will still play a big part in the child’s life.
I never thought they’d get married, and they didn’t. It’s a shame that her daughter was so disrespectful to herself (by getting pregnant while unmarried) and to her parents for putting on the charade just to stumble through the election.
Can’t imagine what the sharkfest will be with the RIM regarding this “breakup,” what with the nasty-pants at MSNBC, etc. Another chunk of meat to chew on to discredit a very lovely and highly qualified governor.
They would like that. Republicans do not win when they become Democrat lite. We just tried it with our PResidential Candidate who inspired the base about as much as they would be watching mold grow on Jello. It wasn’t until the Social conservative stepped in that there was anything to fight for.
I guess it won’t be long before we see Frum go after Trig Palin. I think the Obama Tingler has got to him.
Frum, otoh, envisions a Republican base that's as socially liberal as the Donkey base. ...in his dreams.
The basic problem is that Frum is pro-abortion. Starting from that, one cannot expect him to treat the pro-life position with any real respect. Any he has shown before is simply pretence.
I have developed such a repugnance for Frum that I can’t even bring myself to click through to his site.
Imagine viewing issues of what is good and bad for society, for young people, for our country only in terms of whether it is a winning election issue; whether it will get you into power.
We all know the damage that Cultural Marxism has done to this society. Vichy conservatives like Frum are all but useless in reversing that destruction.
I find it worse than pathetic that this intellectual runt thinks he has any right to comment on the life of the daughter of Gov. Palin. I can virtually guarantee that no one is interested in hearing his opinion unless it is one of his Neo-Marxist buddies.
Why is this the business of any person in America, other than the families of those involved.
The John Edwards’ affair, far more serious and pertinent, got the 10-foot-pole treatment from the media. There was a candidate for president, cheating on his cancer-stricken wife and lying about it. Ah, but he had Democratic immunity.
I'm not sure the two are connected. There are plenty of CINOs for whom (their misunderstanding of) Catholic social teaching outweighs Catholic teaching on the sanctity of life.
In other words, by inclination they are liberals, and they struggle to find a way to remain Catholic or a rationalization for doing so while voting and living liberal.
I don't think it was social issues that won this one for O'Bummer. I think it was a waffling Republican party which didn't know or was unable to articulate what it stood for.
The guy starts off with some statements that he can not possibly know are true but he treats them as if they were. Just plain dishonesty.
One little girl regardless of who her Mother is, is not proof on anything.
I couldn’t agree with you more. Why is the private life of the Gorernor’s daughter any of this turd’s business, other than to ingratiate himself by sucking up with the left media so he can be held up as a critical “conservative” (not). Frum is a king without a kingdom, a leader without followers, a commentator without an audience, a writer without talent.
HIs premise is wrong. Specifically, he believes that a poor white woman who has a child out of wedlock won’t be conservative. That’s like saying that nobody who has had an abortion can be anti-abortion, nobody who has had sex out of wedlock can think it’s a bad idea, nobody that has seen pornography can support censoring obscenities, and so on. None of that’s true.
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