Jay Reding.com

Ross Douthat sees the GOP as the party of the middle class. With Barack Obama virtually assured the Democratic nomination, that seems quite possible, as Obama has yet to close the deal with middle-class voters.

However, this presents both a challenge and an opportunity for the GOP. The Republicans can’t win on populism, partially because the Democrats are better at sounding populist themes and partially because populist public policy is just bad public policy. The GOP has to reach out to the middle class, but they have to do that on their own terms. Just attacking the Democrats just will not cut it, not in an election cycle where a culture of political arrogance has so damaged the GOP brand.

What the Republicans need to do is relatively straightforward: they need to admit that “compassionate conservatism” was a failure and start running on “competent conservatism.” American attitudes towards government are as cynical as ever, and for good reason. The Democrats will try to hang all those failures on President Bush. The Republicans have to use the failure of the Democratic Congress to make the point that the problems with American government run deeper that who is in office.

Sen. McCain is well-positioned to make those arguments, but the leadership of the GOP is not. They want to play politics as usual in a time when playing politics as usual is political suicide. The GOP has to be a party dedicated at every level towards reforming American government. That means having a party leadership that can credibly deliver that message. With only a few exceptions, the GOP does not have the leadership they need to win.

The way to victory in 2008 is for the GOP to recapture the Reagan message: more government does not help the working classes, American strength can be victorious in a turbulent and dangerous world, and the values upon which this country was founded are values which are as vital now as they have ever been. That message works because it appeals to the essential values of the American experience. If the GOP wants to win the middle class (as well as the independents they need to win) they have to give voters a compelling reason to vote for the Republican Party beyond attacking the Democrats. If they can’t offer a competing vision backed with substantive policy, then they will risk a repeat of the 2006 bloodbath, and this time, the stakes are much higher.

Even though the whole “bitter-gate” brouhaha is starting to become old news, there are two perspectives on the scandal worth examining. The first comes from Jonah Goldberg, who sees this as less about “elitism” and more about Obama’s distorted worldview:

I agree with Rich entirely. I don’t mind him saying that small town blue collar workers are bitter over lost jobs. I think that’s objectively true in some cases and perfectly defensible as a general statement. The offending word here is “cling.” It’s a word drenched in haughtiness and condescension. We cling to rocks when we are caught in a current. Obama’s imagery suggests that because the economic tide is receding these people are clinging to God and guns, presumably to compensate for the undertow. But he also suggests that if the economic tide were rising these same people would let go of God and guns and ride the currents to happier and more progressive lands where everyone thinks like Obama. In his telling Pennsylvania was once Belgium on the Susquehanna — cheese parties, Sam Harris book clubs etc — and it can be again if only these people get good enough jobs to lay down their guns and bibles. As just about everyone has observed by now, this is a fundamentally Marxist way of looking at the world and Obama deserves to be called on it.

Goldberg defends “elitism” (more on that later), but does a good job of arguing that the real substance here is not that Obama is an elite, but that he’s an elite with a condescending attitude towards Middle America.

On a similar vein, former McCain 2000 communications director Dan Schnur has an interesting squib in The New York Times on the same issue:

The more important issue than Senator Obama’s choice of words, though, is the world view underneath them. By using a voter’s adverse economic circumstances to rationalize his cultural beliefs, Barack Obama has reintroduced what has been a defining question in American politics for more than a generation: Why do so many working-class voters cast their ballots on social and values-based issues like gun ownership, abortion and same-sex marriage rather than on economic policy prescriptions?

These voters — known as “the silent majority” in the 1970s, as “Reagan Democrats” in the ’80s, and as “values voters” during the last two election cycles — have long been one of the most sought-after prizes in national elections. But with the exception of the occasional Southerner on the ticket, Democratic presidential candidates and their advisers have been continually vexed by the unwillingness of blue-collar Americans to more reliably vote their economic interests.

In his book “What’s the Matter With Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America,” Thomas Frank articulates essentially the same case that Senator Obama has made in recent days. Mr. Frank complains that Republicans have deceived blue-collar Kansans — and their colleagues in other states — into voting against their own economic interests by distracting them into a conversation about traditional values and cultural concerns. Both Senator Obama and Mr. Frank seem to be saying that economic policy should be more important to voters than social and cultural questions. . . .

The mistake that Senator Obama and Mr. Frank both make is that they assume that only the values of culturally conservative voters require justification. An environmentally conscious, pro-stem cell bond trader who votes Democratic is lauded for selflessness and open-mindedness. A gun-owning, church-going factory worker who supports Republican candidates, on the other hand, must be the victim of partisan deception. This double standard is at the heart of the Democratic challenge in national elections: rather than diminish these cultural beliefs as a byproduct of economic discomfort, a more experienced and open-minded candidate would recognize and respect the foundations on which these values are based.

That analysis is exactly right. The issue is that Barack Obama is an elite. We want leaders to be elites. The issue is that Barack Obama is an elitist. We don’t want our leaders to think that because they are elites that they have the right to rule over the rest of us. Again, this goes back to the American values observed by de Tocqueville 200 years ago: Americans are deeply (small-d) democratic. There’s a reason why we tend to elect Presidents we’d like to have a beer with: because we have an ingrained suspicion of aristocracy and people who put on aristocratic airs. The last President to display such values was probably John F. Kennedy and he barely won, and then only one because of his immense personal charisma. Obama is at least superficially like Kennedy, but Kennedy never insulted the voters he needed to win over as Obama did.

Schnur gets it right: what Democrats must understand is that social voters aren’t voting irrationally, they simply have different priorities. The successful Democrats in the last few years have almost always won when they’ve at least acknowledged and accepted the concerns of values voters. Even setting aside the major argument that Democratic economic policies are really good for the American workers, the Democrats can’t win if they’re not willing to engage with values voters on their own level. Condescending to them hasn’t worked in the past and it won’t work now. People don’t believe in God, go hunting, or worry about this country’s culture because they’re worried about their economic prospects and feel disengaged from politics, they care about those things because to them those things are truly important.

Goldberg’s crack about Obama having a Marxist worldview isn’t that far off the mark. The Democrats are looking at this election through the lens of economic determinism, and Obama’s comments are to the effect that he really believes that “religion is the opiate of the people.” It may certainly be true that voters are feeling bitter—but if the Democrats think that patronizing them will make them any less bitter, they should fully expect not to have any chance of winning some of the key states they’ll need to take the White House in 2008.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller managed to put his foot firmly in his mouth today, forcing a subsequent flurry of retractions and apologies. Sen. Rockefeller comment?

“McCain was a fighter pilot, who dropped laser-guided missiles from 35,000 feet. He was long gone when they hit,” Rockefeller told the newspaper, which published the article on the interview Tuesday. “What happened when they [the missiles] get to the ground? He doesn’t know. You have to care about the lives of people. McCain never gets into those issues,” he is quoted saying.

Sen. Rockefeller is not only issuing a smear, but he’s also clearly has no idea about what actually happened in Vietnam. For one, Sen. McCain was shot down when his plane was at a very low altitude—4,500 feet. The purpose of flying that low? To avoid collateral damage to civilians.

Laser-guided “missiles” were not invented until long after the end of Vietnam.

Sen. McCain, of course, spent years as a POW at the Hanoi Hilton. Undoubtedly he was quite well aware of what was happening on the ground.

This kind of lazy, offensive, and stupid slur is only the beginning of the sort of smears we can expect to see throughout this election season. We’ve heard for years how supposedly some sinister Republican operatives smeared McCain in the 2000 South Carolina race—by November, all those attacks will likely seem tame in comparison.

Not only that, but radio shock jock Ed Schultz accused Sen. McCain of being a “warmonger” in the presence of Sen. Obama during the North Dakota Democratic Convention. That smear is already the predominant one flying around the extremist left-wing blogosphere. The problem with that smear is that Sen. McCain knows more than anyone what the horrors of war really are, having been tortured nearly to death several times while a POW—and not only that, it’s hard to argue that Sen. McCain doesn’t care about the troops when one of them is his son, and another is likely to serve in Iraq soon. If that’s the plan of attack that the Democrats will have, expect the American people to see them as the desperate and disgusting smears that they are.

Do the Democrats honestly think that this sort of juvenile rhetoric actually persuades people? Or that it doesn’t persuade them to think less of those who use it? If the Democrats want to attack McCain on substance for his support of the war, that’s one thing. That’s a legitimate argument to make. But so far we have Sen. Rockefeller’s ignorant smear, Ed Schultz’ “warmonger” slur, and the Obama campaign constantly misleading the American public by saying that McCain wants there to be “100 years” of war in Iraq. None of those attacks are factual, all of them are misleading, and none of them have an ounce of substance to them.

If this is going to be the sort of rhetoric we can expect throughout this election campaign, then it will signal a return to politics as usual and the rhetoric of personal destruction rather than the substance that America deserves.

UPDATE: The Columbia Journalism Review has a piece on why Obama is distorting McCain’s “100 years” comment.

One of the joys of the Internet is that there are some really smart people who have access to a lot of data that can be combined in ingenious ways—and this very detailed examination of geography and voting trends in the Democratic race makes a fascinating argument. Overlaying the voting patterns of the Clinton/Obama race with a map of Appalachia, it’s quite clear that there’s a trend: Appalachian voters overwhelmingly support Clinton.

That means something in terms of the upcoming contests. The states that are coming up: Pennsylvania, Indiana, North Carolina, and Kentucky are all states that make up the main part of the Appalachian region. They’re perfect territory for Hillary: largely white, economically distressed, and made up of voters who are more concerned about issues like national security. Could she win 60% in those states? The author of this analysis thinks it’s very possible.

Despite the general loathing of the Clinton machine, the reality of the race is that neither Obama nor Hillary can claim that they have the race in the bag. Obama is ahead, but not enough that he won’t likely have to use the superdelegates to get enough to win. He’s ahead in the popular vote, but if you take out Cook County, Illinois where his home base is, he’s not ahead by all that much: and it’s quite possible that Hillary could pull ahead.

As much as some Democrats would like Hillary to step aside, it doesn’t make sense for her to do now, at least as far as the electoral math is concerned. The Obama campaign does not have this race locked up, and they’re about to fight on some very inhospitable territory. Hillary Clinton will not let this race go until it is clear that she cannot win, and that may not be until she steps out onto the convention floor.

Matt Drudge has the full text of Barack Obama’s speech on the Rev. Wright affair. As is typical with an Obama speech, it has some excellent rhetoric:

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

Rhetorically, Obama is putting himself firmly in the American story, despite his multicultural background. It’s an effective technique, and it’s one that Obama has used and will continue to use to reach out to the various groups that make up his coalition.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Sounds like a disavowal, right? Except that it isn’t:

Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

Rhetorically, this is brilliant stuff. But like everything else that Obama says, once one gets past the wonderful words, the message itself is largely meaningless. Sen. Obama admits that Rev. Wright is a racist with a deeply disturbing view of America. Yet he won’t back down from him (any more than he already has). On one hand, he thinks that this country needs to have a conversation about race—on the other, he is siding with people who preach a gospel of racial division.

Sen. Obama just can’t have it both ways.

Finally, Obama ends with the sort of populist flourish that could have come from any of John Edwards’ speeches. He argues that Rev. Wright is wrong for seeing all the bad in America, and then he ends his speech by arguing that despite all the progress we’ve made, America is still in the doldrums. The final story about “Ashley” the campaign volunteer is the sort of overwrought and blatantly emotional story we’ve heard countless times before—and almost all these stories turn out to be something other than what is presented.

I will give the Senator this: this is a very well-crafted speech. Sen. Obama is a gifted wordsmith, and it seems like his words are more or less his own. The problem is that there’s no substance to his messages. To borrow from Cicero, he’s full of oratio, but he’s lacking in the ratio. He can generate much emotion, but he lacks in logic.

I don’t think this speech will ultimately help him. He is trying to stake a brave political ground, but in the end his message ends up being schizophrenic. He admits he disagreed with Wright, but not once did he think that he should stand up for his own country. If Barack Obama cannot defend his own country from his own pastor, how can he expect us to believe he’ll defend this nation abroad? When the President of Iran calls the United States “the Great Satan” will Obama be as passive as he was when Rev. Wright accused the US of creating AIDS? If our allies denigrate this nation, will Obama have the courage to defend us? Or will he go along with the crowd as he did at Trinity?

The damage to Obama has been done. He isn’t helping himself by condemning Rev. Wright, but only so far. He had this opportunity to have his Sister Souljah moment, and he failed to do so. He had an opportunity to clearly stand up for his country, and he failed to do so. The reality is that whatever Sen. Obama does now is too late: his time to take a stand was when Rev. Wright was making those statements. He could have stood up and defended his country against the kind of attacks that Rev. Wright was launching. Yet when Rev. Wright said that America deserved attack, that we created AIDS, that we should say “God damn America” instead of “God bless America,” Barack Obama sat passively by and let those assertions go unchallenged. That says enough about the character of the man.

His speech may be filled with lofty rhetoric, but it is far too late to make the difference. The American people have begun to see a new Barack Obama—not the charismatic reformer, but the man who sat by while his country was slandered and did nothing. A man who can’t stand by his country against someone like Rev. Wright cannot be expected to stand by his country against far more pernicious attacks. The damage has been done, and while Obama’s efforts at damage control are formidable, he can’t undo his own past.