Republicans and “smart people”
Last week at the Values Voter summit in Washington DC, former senator and presidential candidate Rick Santorum threw out a startling idea.
“We will never have the elite, smart people on our side,” Santorum declared. He didn’t really mean, of course, that conservative voters are dumb, or simple-minded.
He meant that liberals — and “media elites” — are made up of eggheads and bossy parkers. You know, the kind of people who use phrases like “bossy parker.”
But Santorum’s analysis does get at a growing conundrum in the conservative movement.
As American society grows more educated (slowly), and more urban (rapidly), the GOP is finding it difficult to connect not just with ivory tower intellectuals, or minorities, but with people who live and work in our nation’s most productive communities.
The lion’s share of all productivity in the US — about two-thirds — happens in a relatively small group of about fifteen powerhouse states, with California at the top of the list and Maryland at the bottom.
I include these fifteen because all produce at least 2% of US GDP, and most are also home to important technology, government, media or cultural clusters.
Using Europe as an analogy, these are the Germanies and the Frances. The other thirty-five states (sorry, guys) are the Portugals and the Greeces, in terms of wealth production, exports, innovation, and industrial output.
And of those 15 dynamo states, nine are now reliably Democratic, producing more than 42% of everything that Americans make.
Meanwhile, only two of the heavy-lifter states — Texas and Georgia — are dependably Republican, producing just under 11% of US GDP.
What’s interesting here is that only a few presidential cycles ago, this picture looked very different. Conservatives could more or less rely on Virginia and North Carolina. Ohio also leaned toward the GOP.
And even Florida had an arguably Republican tilt, voting Democratic in presidential elections only three times since 1968.
With those states in their column, “conservative GDP” used to look far more robust, around 25% of national GDP
But now, those states are all true-purple battlegrounds. More troubling yet for Republicans, they are drifting toward the Democratic column in large part because their most productive urban and suburban communities are — you guessed it — increasingly Democratic.
Now this one statistic alone is simplistic, to be sure, and only gives part of the picture. A recent NYTimes/CBS poll found that Mitt Romney is actually leading by a sizable margin with affluent Americans.
The poll found that Mr. Obama holds an advantage of 21 percentage points over Mr. Romney among voters whose household income is under $50,000. Mr. Romney has an edge in higher income groups, including leading Mr. Obama by 16 percentage points among voters whose household income is more than $100,000.
So Republicans are, obviously, still attracting a lot of successful, productive and — dare I say it — really smart voters. But one of the things that we’ve learned in recent years is that prosperity and growth appear to be happening more and more often in clusters.
Millionaires matter, but so do big collections of well-trained, motivated rank-and-file workers. And increasingly, people who gather in those kinds of places tend to vote for people with policies more like Barack Obama’s than Mitt Romney’s.
What does this all mean in policy terms, and in the framing of American elections? Maybe a lot.
Some moderate Republicans have suggested that the GOP will have to bend its platform in the future to appeal more to urbanites and to minorities.
But maybe a more palatable approach for conservatives would be to set a goal of winning more campaigns in the nation’s most affluent, productive communities.
Saying, “Let’s appeal to Hispanics” may sound like pandering.
But saying, “Let’s rally around those ideas that appeal to smart voters, regardless of race, who produce most of the goods and services in America” — that sounds like a bedrock Republican principle.
Tags: election12
Interesting. Especially since there seems to be contradiction between the places producing all that wealth trending Democratic, and the holders of the wealth, voting Republican. Wish you would explain that a bit more.
Maybe an overwhelming majority of wealthy Republicans in “red” states ?
Older suburbanites, of course, tend this way. My sister lives in an established Chicago suburban county that will probably go for Romney, though Chicago, and Illinois, will not.
$100 K seems kind of low bar for “prosperous” Two established teachers, or correctional officers, make that in this state (and in most of NYS, that does not make one upper-middle -class!)
Wish you had linked to a list of the dynamic states. Ours must be on it, but our region, and about 85% of the state, would not be.
Please explain “bossy parker” Never heard of it.
A Google search brings me back to this story.
(Is Bossy related to Nosey? Lots of Google hits for Nosey….)
As to the substance of this essay, I’m still hung up on Santorum’s comment or — more precisely — the spectacle of his audience cheering wildly when they heard it. It seems to me that some extraordinarily powerful grooming was required to create a receptive audience for such a comment.
Still…Patty Hearst helped rob a bank. I guess such grooming is entirely possible.
His wing of the GOP doesn’t want smart people around. I think he’s right. I don’t think he has anything to worry about.
I expect the smart people within the Republican Party to gravitate toward somebody serious and responsible, rather than Santorum and his ilk.
Who does make up the Republican Party today? We see these two views, is it the elite educated business and professional classes or is it middle to lower middle class rural socially conservative voters?
It seems that the Democratic Party may not get the utlra rich, but they seem to be getting wall street and silicon valley.
It is the elite educated business and professional classes (and let’s not leave out people born to wealth) who are willing to pay for disinformation campaigns to keep the masses ignorant by using “conservative” social issues, bias against the poor, jingoism and voodoo economics to mask their primary aim of keeping the wealthy from paying their fair share of taxes.
The reason that the Democratic Party gets some of Wall Street and silicon valley is that there are some rich folk out there who realize that “conservative” economic policy is killing the nation’s economic engine.
“So Republicans are, obviously, still attracting a lot of successful, productive and — dare I say it — really smart voters.”
And Obama is targeting, dare I say it, really dumb voters.
He wants the kind who believe that he can raise the oceans, keep unemployment under 8%, and cut the national debt in half.
I’ve heard “nosy parker” which is a meddlesome person, but not bossy parker.
I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it. John Stuart Mills
I disagree with Mills. I know a lot of really intelligent conservative people. Most of them believe the President was born in the USA and that the President is not a muslim. But at the same time, most of them don’t accept the scientific evidence for climate change (none of them are young Earthers thankfully).
Interestingly, when one compares likely voters by education level, Obama is most popular (in comparison to Romney) among people who have a postgraduate college education – Ph.D.s, M.D.s, LL.D.s and the like. These are JDM’s ‘dumb voters’. They prefer Obama over Romney 56% to 40%, according to Gallup.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/154559/US-Presidential-Election-Center.aspx?ref=interactive
I would suggest that it isn’t what people know but the trend in the way we think.
More Americans are turning away from traditional belief and instead basing their worldview on what is observable. Y’know: demonstrable. And that’s the stuff of science.
In fact, lots of successful people have noticed that doing research and gathering information – whether you’re a retailer or physics professor – produces better results than rubbing crystals and mumbling non-sensically.
Politics, though, remain an emotional enterprise.
In a speech during Adlai Stevenson’s Presidential campaign in 1952, a member of the audience shouted, “You have the support of every thinking American!”
Stevenson shot back, “That’s not good enough! I need a majority!”
And because I really loathe Rick Santorum for his seething bigotry, I will add that he has become the thinking man’s Easter Bunny.
PNE, you’re misreading Mills: he’s not suggesting that you won’t find intelligent conservatives, he’s saying that you won’t find many stupid people who are not conservative.
Your quote, stripped down, reads “…stupid people are generally Conservative.”
This is kind of a strange discussion. I know some brilliant liberals, I know some liberals who seem to be idiots. Same goes for conservatives.
I think it is interesting to look at the urbanization trend that Brian hints at. People who live in urban areas are more likely to value government and what it does for people. Kind of the “water comes from the tap” and “food comes from the store” kind of mentality. They rely on government a little more that in a rural setting to keep things in order. Where people who live in rural areas tend to feel like they are kind of “out there” on their own. So they don’t care as much about government even if they need it. These are the “water comes from my well” and “food comes from my fields” kind of mentality.
I think a more urbanized society will be one more tolerant of government “help” or “intervention” depending on how you look at it. Maybe that is why we are seeing things turning bluer?
We are becoming more urban, dare I say, more like our European ancestors. It only took us a few hundred years to get back to some of what we thought we were escaping.
More Americans are turning away from traditional belief and instead basing their worldview on what is observable. Y’know: demonstrable. And that’s the stuff of science.
Problem is, turning away from truth because you have defined it as traditional may get you in trouble.
For example, when people wish to deny the writings of the Founders which included plenty of references to God for his guidance and blessing, that is not turning away from tradition because it’s science – it’s turning away from the truth.
I agree with JDM here. Except for JDM and Larry, In-Boxers are dumb as a box of rocks.
Kathy, not sure what you are referring to specifically but something isn’t “truth” just because someone wrote it. It’s the old adage “I believe everything I read”. I wrote it down, then I read it, so it must be true.
The founders, being like us Americans, had no interest in us reading what they wrote and treating it is as “gospel”. We specifically wrote a constitution that could evolve as we evolve as a society.
What “truth” are you referring to and how are we turning away from it?
oa, now cut it out with the personal attacks….. I have caught you sharing with us again!
Kathy, your use of the word “truth” doesn’t jibe with mine.
And this gets right at the heart of Santorum’s speech and Brian’s blog post.
You’re using “truth” as another word for opinion or belief.
And being guided by god is being guided by theology – or someone else’s belief. You can do that. I just don’t recommend it.
I say we should be guided by what has been proven to work. In our current economic situation, that means following the course taken by Reagan and Clinton: raising taxes. It worked during their administrations and it can work now.
I say this because it’s been demonstrated. If you have proof that the GOP plan of cutting taxes has ever led to job increases, I’d love to see it. Seriously.
This is the difference: Democrats want to pass economic policies that have worked in the past. Republicans want to pass policies that have been tried, but failed – but they BELIEVE these policies will work if we just try it one more time.
Who’s turning away from the truth in this scenario? It ain’t me. And it ain’t the Democrats.
“If you have proof that the GOP plan of cutting taxes has ever led to job increases, I’d love to see it. Seriously. ”
It’s not worth pointing out. It was pretty obvious and you didn’t seem to notice.
wj if you look at the work done in the past, largely by Friedman, Lucas, etc, Nobel prize winning economists, and most of the Chicago school of conservative economics; they would indeed favor lowering some taxes to increase employment.
However I think today a good case can be made that it is not some sort of total policy plan that always works. I would caution though that there is sound academic research behind lower tax rates as positive for economic growth and employment.
How did the demographics actually end up looking for the last presidential election on income levels and voting?
Other obvious observations include this report out today:
Obama increased debt $3 for every $1 increase in the economy.
–> added $5.23 trillion in debt vs. $1.68 trillion to the economy
–> 50% increase in debt vs. 12% increase in economic output
And unemployment is over 8% (over 11% if the tally was done honestly).
And meanwhile, Uncle Ben is printing more funny money.
You’re using “truth” as another word for opinion or belief.
No, there is truth which cannot be altered or changed. It exists despite anyone’s opinion or belief.
wj, the only problem with the argument is that the democrats have a plan that actually calls for cutting taxes (and also probably preserving some of the loopholes that currently exist). So far I have only heard about raising taxes on the wealthy (while lowering taxes on the middle class) which will barely move the needle, if do anything. Are there other plans on raising taxes that the democrats have shared with you but not with the rest of us?
Kathy, so if by “truth” you mean that we have some inalienable rights that were bestowed by “the creator” (God if you prefer) that form the basis of the nations foundation then fine. The rest is left to us to decide.
If that isn’t what you are referring to could you please be more specific on the “truth”. We used to have a guy at our hunting club that we called “the truth” whatever he said was true it didn’t matter what anyone else thought. I couldn’t stand that guy!
Obviously, the President believes that lowering some taxes works as he lowered the payroll tax and fought to keep it lowered.
It theoretically it made no difference than what is his case for lowering the payroll tax?
I do think the thing that is now statistically in question is cutting taxes on small or actually tiny percentages of very wealthy people provide some sort of economic boost the economy? I would say that the evidence so far is that it does not. I don’t know if it hurts that much? But taxes are just one tool, I think the Republicans are sometimes obsessed with taxes.
jdm and wj have been talking about job increases, but in a closely related matter, it should be pointed out that the evidence that tax cuts for the wealthy spur economic growth is really poor. from a recent david leonhardt article:
very nice chart at the link.
and here’s andrew sullivan, who is generally kind of innumerate but happens to be right in this case, piling on:
indulgent polemics aside, i do think the point should be made that tax policy has some subtlety to it. it’s not like all tax cuts are good, or all are bad. it matters how you structure them, whom they fall upon, things like that. life is complicated. but broadly speaking, the kind of tax cuts championed by conservatives have not performed well. it would be nice if some of our conservative friends could own up to that.
What “truth” are you referring to and how are we turning away from it?
wj said more Americans are turning away from tradition. Using the word tradition can be a front for saying I don’t want to hear the truth.
I am fully aware of how the Constitution was written. But what do you do with the following quotes from George Washington?
Inaugural Address: “The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained.”
Farewell Address: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness.”
I am not suggesting Christian tyranny. The Founders would not have created a nation like the one they declared our independence from. However, Washington’s quotes (and countless others) are apparent. This is the truth. To turn away from this “traditional belief” in the name of progress is a big mistake.
You can still have progress yet be anchored to fundamental principles.
Yikes! No, Paul. I am not like that guy.
“I am fully aware of how the Constitution was written. But what do you do with the following quotes from George Washington?”
You don’t do anything with them… they were George Washington’s personal thoughts.
There is absolutely nothing else to extrapolate out from that, and nothing in this regard has changed in our country. People, including our Presidents, can still have and express personal thoughts about religion.
Some would argue, and I am among them, that the public expression of personal thoughts about religion has actually increased since our founding. The insertion of religious phrases into our pledge, and onto our money, are just the most obvious examples.
“…the public expression of personal thoughts about religion has actually increased since our founding.”
And not just after, but long after. “Under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, and In God We Trust replaced E pluibus unum on our banknotes in 1956. So if you’re interested in real tradition, Kathy, we should go back to the originals.
And let us not forget that Jesus instructed that prayer should be done in private: one should not make a show of one’s religion.
The president didn’t lower any taxes. He shifted the withholding tables so that people would owe more at the end of the year, but the same amount.
The mythical lowering taxes on the middle-class is double-talk. He always says it in the same breath as raising taxes on the wealthy.
You can’t “lower” taxes on people who pay no federal income tax. He talks about redistributing the taxes on the wealthy as a tax “cut” to the middle-class, but it is not. It is redistribution.
Furthermore, since FICA and Medicare are applied to the “middle-class”, he has no problem increasing those. That is a tax increase, just in a different line on your paystub.
Back to the president wanting his constituency to be as dumb as possible.
Is bossy parker the cow that nosey parker milks?
I’m guessing that there are lots of smart people represented through all income groups but that the higher income level voters tend to have higher education levels on average.
Speaking of conservatives being dumb, did you see the video of Romney speaking to wealthy donors that has surfaced in which he expresses his disdain for half of American voters saying that those voters will likely support President Obama because they believe they are “entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.”
As one commenter put it: “You can shoot yourself in the foot. You can put your foot in your mouth. But it takes a special talent to put your foot in your mouth, and THEN shoot yourself in the foot!”
Well Romney’s spokesman did say that his campaign wouldn’t be bound by fact-checkers (and by implication, facts). So given that smart people tend to place a higher value on actual facts, Santorum is probably right.
krugman, on the video walker linked to:
But from the You Can’t Fool All The People All The Time department comes this:
“But in data we have recently collected, the Tea Party ranks lower [in approval ratings] than any of the 23 other groups we asked about — lower than both Republicans and Democrats. It is even less popular than much maligned groups like “atheists” and “Muslims.” Interestingly, one group that approaches it in unpopularity is the Christian Right.” (Crashing the Tea Party
JDM, I’m a tax preparer. You do not understand how those small tax cuts that were structured through the withholding tables worked. There were corresponding small tax credits that kept people from paying more. I don’t remember any of my clients having to pay more because of those tax cuts.
My biggest concern with the direction of the Republican party is that it appears that the results of scientific research are now subordinated to personal opinion about how nature “should” work. Evolution, climate change, and the workings of a woman’s reproductive system are examples. I believe that respect for and interest in science is on the decline in the country. Unless our culture takes a different tack, we will not be able to sustain our lead in technology. Poof – there goes American exceptionalism, which is based as much on technological innovation as entrepreneurial skills and grit. That’s going to drive away all the smart people I know.
Tax policy has only a marginal impact on the economy. The real determinant over the past half century has been cheap energy costs. Nine of the past ten recessions have been triggered by a spike in oil prices. When prices come down, the economy does well. Prices shot up during the Iranian Hostage Crisis. During the Reagan-Thatcher era the North Sea and Alaskan oil fields came online and undercut OPEC pricing. Supply side policy had very little to do with any economic improvement. T
There just seems to be no reasoning with the liberal taliban here. By the way, Walker, before you go on again about stupid people, it”s Mill, John Stuart Mill.
I haven’t seen a lot of actual reasoning coming from the conservatives here. Maybe I missed it.
You’re right about Mill though.
Larry: if you’re going to engage in cheap ad hominem in lieu of an actual argument, at least use proper capitalization.
DBW: that’s probably the most intelligent, coherent point in this thread.
But you know following the Obama economic logic, if we didn’t have the Bush tax cuts things would have been even worse!
The things could have been worse argument is a great one and well perfected by this President. I mean come on we have over 8% unemployment a souring debt and well things could be worse.
I love it. (And actually they could be worse)
Kathy, I did not mean you were like “the truth”. The term “truth” in this context just reminded me of that. That guy was actually probably a decent fella I just could not stand him.
Even if you help found the greatest country on earth you still don’t get to say that everything you say is the “truth”.
Brian,
I used the term “liberal taliban” not to indicate moderate members of the Afghan militant group but to denote people of liberal political orientation who do not admit the legitimacy of any philosophy but their own; so in that sense, I believe my usage was correct. I could be wrong though, given my conservative background and its mutual exclusivity with being “smart”. While I’m at it, did you miss tootightmike’s recent characterization of Romney as a “prick”? Now, that’s really a “cheap ad hominem” and I’m surprised you didn’t call him out on it.
It is interesting that the term “Taliban” refers to a group of supposed “students” who swept out of Pushtun regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan in the mid-90’s trying to drive the various factions of the Afghan civil war out of power. These “students” were probably nearly 100% illiterate and if they had any education at all it was a perfunctory religious education where they learned the Koran by rote memorization in Arabic – a language probably none of them spoke with any fluency if at all.
They were, in fact, not tremendously philosophical at all. But I think Larry is basically correct in his usage.
Hey! Speaking of smart guys, Romney now thinks that almost half of American voters “believe they are victims.”
What Romney apparently hasn’t figured out is that they think of themselves as “American voters.”
JDM, I like you. Partly because you make this so easy:
Other obvious observations include this report out today:
Obama increased debt $3 for every $1 increase in the economy.
added $5.23 trillion in debt vs. $1.68 trillion to the economy
50% increase in debt vs. 12% increase in economic output
Yep. That’s the cost of the stimulus, which was structured stupidly as tax cuts – not money paid out to people, as it was in the 1930s. Obama essentially let mostly wealthier Americans keep $800 billion. It did some good, but very little. The increased debt is a symptom of the Bush tax cuts.
Mervel and others make a good point that cutting steep taxes – like those around 70% – did help drive up employment, but that was a very different time. Cutting Mitt Romney’s taxes from 30+ to 13 percent ain’t doin’ doodley squat.
And, honestly, I don’t know how anyone can rationalize a 13% tax rate for a man who has more than $200 million. Or how General Electric can make billions – literally billions of dollars in a year – but pays 0 (zero) taxes.
This post began looking at the perspectives of “educated elites” (“bossy parkers?” seriously?) v. the “home-spun wisdom” gleaned from family and theology.
My argument for basing our policies on the demonstrable – not the theoretical (even if it is the “considered” opinion of economists) – depends on math. So, here’s some more:
If the 400 wealthiest families in America were still being taxed at 1996 levels, 30,000 more people would be employed today. They’d be teachers, cops, firefighters and other public employees. And those jobs would support thousands of other jobs in bakeries, auto plants, dry cleaners and home remodeling (contractors).
We know this. Really. We KNOW this.
I’m not saying everyone should be taxed more. But you know what? NO ONE is saying that. All I’m saying – and lots of people have been saying this: Why aren’t we looking at the tax rates from 1996? Seriously. What’s wrong with those tax rates?
They worked.
The partisan divide Santorum is celebrating(?) isn’t about religion or emotion or politics or values or any of that crap. Because none of that stuff matters all that much. Seriously. Look how hard the Right has to work to maintain the appearance of an agitated electorate. From Fox News to nearly every AM radio station and the loony web sites – they all talk about the imminent collapse of America due to the actions of a fictional president.
But all that nonsense only obscures what the divide is really about, which is math.
Conservatives don’t want Americans to look at the basic numbers.
Santorum’s right. Smart people won’t support the GOP – at least not their idiotic and punishing fiscal policies – because we know arithmetic and we know how to use it.