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July 2, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The hallmark of a person

Abe Novick: Up, up, and aliya

July 1, 2009

Rabbi Avi Shafran: The Road Taken

The Kosher Gourmet by Marialisa Calta: Get into the holiday spirit with these Star-Spangled desserts

June 30, 2009

Rabbi Binyomin Ginsberg: What makes a great parent?

Caroline B. Glick: Ideologue-in-Chief

June 29, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Beware of 'Caveat Emptor'

Steven Emerson: ACLU pushing for more money for Hamas

June 26, 2009

Rabbi Yoni Posnick: Learn the secret to a healthy marriage from a scriptural villain

Caroline B. Glick: Barack Obama vs. International Law

June 25, 2009

Rabbi Shimon Apisdorf: The Absurd Power of Truth

Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkle's strip: Everything's Relative

June 24, 2009

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Advancement of technology is a wake-up call for humanity

The Kosher Gourmet by Andrea Weigl: Summer on a stick: Making frozen treats can be easy, creative and fun

June 23, 2009

Martin M. Bodek: 'On Surnames': And so, We Begin

Caroline B. Glick: The Obama Effect

June 22, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Working for a corrupt firm

N. Richard Greenfield : Where are American Jews?

June 19, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Emotion v. intellect

Caroline B. Glick: Israel's rare opportunity

June 18, 2009

Jonathan Rosenblum: Sometimes it is more essential to define the nature of evil than good

Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkle's strip: Everything's Relative

June 17, 2009

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Language of Confusion

The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: Nothing pleases Dad more than a thick, juicy onion-smothered steak. Add home-Baked Potato Chips and …

June 16, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Career v. Careersism

Caroline B. Glick: Obama's losing streak and Israel

Richard Z. Chesnoff: ‘Palestinians’: Never Missing an Opportunity …

June 15, 2009

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu: How Judea and Samaria can become 'Palestine'

Daniel Pipes: Where Netanyahu's speech failed

June 12, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Some big thoughts about not acting so big

Caroline B. Glick: Obama's High Commissioner

June 11, 2009

Victor Davis Hanson: Our historically challenged President

Mitch Albom: Beware the True Believers

Lewis Grossberger: What we learn from the new Hitler photos

June 10, 2009

Mort Zuckerman: What Obama and his advisors won't -- or refuse to -- grasp about Israel and the Muslim world

The Kosher Gourmet by Steve Petusevsky Lotsa pasta: Tips, techniques and (amazing) taste

June 9, 2009

Anne Bayefsky: Obama's stunning offense to Israel and the Jewish people

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: America's first Muslim president?

June 8, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Merchant must take responsibility for careless shopper?

Mark Steyn: A superpower that feeds on mediocrity cannot survive for long on leftovers from the past

Richard Z. Chesnoff: How do you say 'kumbaya' in Arabic?

June 5, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: In quest of spirituality

Caroline B. Glick: Obama's Arabian dreams

Charles Krauthammer: The Settlements Myth

June 4, 2009

Paul Greenberg: The War Comes to Little Rock

The Kosher Gourmet by Judy Hevrdejs: Splash it on! Tap your inner jazz musician and improvise when stirring up a vinaigrette

June 3, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q. Should terrible teacher be exposed?

Jonathan Rosenblum: The Israel Lobby: Missing in Action

June 2, 2009

Dennis Prager: The Speech President Obama Won't Dare Give in Egypt

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Pressure on Israel raises war risk

Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review June 27 2008 / 24 Sivan 5768

Winning the Sam's Club voters

By Rich Lowry


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | White working-class voters typically aren't in vogue, with the political chatter tending to revolve around "soccer moms," the "youth vote" or other boutique demographic groups of the moment. But the late charge of Hillary Clinton's doomed presidential campaign made white working-class voters surprisingly fashionable.


They'll stay that way if the important new book "Grand New Party," by two young writers for The Atlantic, Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, has the impact on the political debate that it should. In an incisive analysis of the past 30 years of our politics, Douthat and Salam puncture self-comforting delusions of both the right and the left, and persuasively advocate a reorientation of the GOP to address working-class concerns.


They define working-class voters — "Sam's Club" voters, in the phrase they borrow from Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty — as that half of the electorate that lacks a college education. Neither party has been able to build a durable majority, Douthat and Salam write, because of "the refusal of America's working class to pick a side and stick with it." These voters supported Nixon in 1968, Reagan in 1980 and Gingrich in 1994 — before defecting back to the Democrats for Jimmy Carter in 1976, Bill Clinton in 1992 and Nancy Pelosi and Co. in 2006.


Their economic forebears were a pillar of FDR's New Deal coalition — understandably, in Douthat and Salam's telling, since the best of New Deal policies helped graduate them into the middle class by rewarding work and aiding economic aspiration (with Social Security benefits, the home-mortgage deduction, etc.). They came unmoored from the Democratic Party when LBJ's Great Society "cost them money and seemed to undermine their values into the bargain."


The Democrats have labored under twin misapprehensions in seeking to woo these voters back. One is that today's working class could be pulled straight out of a John Steinbeck novel. In reality, according to Douthat and Salam, a Sam's Club voter is "more likely to belong to a family that makes $60,000 a year than one that makes $30,000," and "far more likely to be working in education or health care, office administration or business services than on a farm or an assembly line."


The second is that the basket of cultural issues with which the GOP has often been able to win these voters is a mere distraction. Actually, these voters have a keen self-interest in arresting social breakdown: "Safe streets, successful marriages, cultural solidarity, and vibrant religious and civic institutions make working-class Americans more likely to be wealthy, healthy, and upwardly mobile." Marriage in particular is key. The rise in illegitimacy blights the prospects of the working class, even as the college-educated upper-middle class disproportionately benefits from the social and economic rewards of stable family life.


If they aren't the stuff of social realism, working-class anxieties are real. Can't anyone get a college education and climb in economic status? Yes, but the odds are stacked against those whose parents aren't already upper-middle class, creating an "inherited meritocracy." Douthat and Salam's worst case is a "steady degradation of everyday working-class life under the pressures of rising illegitimacy, insecurity, and stratification."


Douthat and Salam want Republicans to work to forestall this future, and to speak persuasively to working-class voters. A first step is acknowledging "the persistent unpopularity of the GOP's small-government message among the Sam's Club constituency." Douthat and Salam float an activist program geared to buttressing families and addressing working-class discontents: a $5,000-per-child tax credit; subsidies for parents providing their own child care; expanded transportation infrastructure to ease the suburban commute; etc.


The details are less important than the trajectory. Their proposals have been dismissed as "Clintonian triangulation from the right." But back in 1992, Bill Clinton's political achievement was considerable. He broke with the stale pieties of his own party, and — with new emphases and a few well-aimed policies — renovated its image. Republicans await a figure who will pick up the challenge of Grand New Party.

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