They Think You're Stupid (12 page)

Specifically, I felt that the Clinton Health Care Plan was a job killer, a bureaucracy builder, and a non-solution to the wrong problem. The president had even acknowledged in his State of the Union address that approximately nine out of ten people were already covered with health insurance. So why not look for effective ways of providing access for the remaining 10 percent while allowing market forces to bring the cost of health care down? As I told NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw during a network television health care special, "If I have a leak in the roof and I know that the roof is leaking, I don't blow up the building to fix the leak in the roof."

In September 1994, I was informed by Oregon senator Bob Packwood, one of the leading Republican senators opposing the president's proposal, that Senate Democrats had finally given up on passing the Clinton Health Care Plan. More than ten years later, Democratic leaders are still advocating a plan to enact a nationalized health care system. Liberal Democrats have shown through the years that they will not let a little adversity or a few setbacks stop them from enacting their favorite policies. Conservatives must stay as vigilant in fighting their ill-conceived plans while educating the public about common sense solutions to the right problems.

One common sense solution signed into law by President Bush in December 2003 is the establishment of Health Savings Accounts. These accounts allow untaxed dollars to be used to buy health insurance and to pay medical expenses. More importantly, these accounts allow people to take ownership of their health insurance away from government.

The issue of same-sex marriage was a hot issue in the 2004 session of the Georgia legislature and across the nation. Eleven states featured ballot initiatives on election day that asked voters if they support a ban on legalizing same-sex unions. The initiatives passed overwhelmingly in all eleven states. Rev. Cameron Alexander, my pastor at Antioch Baptist Church in Atlanta, had a reply ready to those in his congregation who asked him his position on the same-sex marriage issue: "What part of the Bible do you want to throw out?"

If you believe in the Bible, then the issue is a moot point. We cannot separate this "civil rights issue," as the Democrats call it, from the moral issue. There is a tendency among liberals to lower a moral standard to accommodate a civil behavior. If we had done that with "All men are created equal," Black people would still be in slavery.

The difference between the civil rights struggle and the so-called gay rights struggle is that the civil rights struggle constantly moved this nation upward to live up to the ideal that "All men are created equal, endowed by their Creator." The gay rights struggle involves altering the established moral principle of marriage as the union between one man and one woman. If you begin with the moral principle that marriage is between one man and one woman, they are asking the nation to alter their moral principles to accommodate a civil behavior. When society lowers its moral ideals, it goes adrift, and it will drift into oblivion. Liberal advocates of gay marriage attempted to frame the argument in favor of their position around the civil rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s. Voters of all races and demographic backgrounds were not fooled. When people learn the facts about social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage and the negative impact they have on our nation, the Democrats lose more support for their radical agendas.
Many of the Politically Homeless Have Already Left the Plantation

Most people are not totally partisan in the sense that they only support candidates with a (D) or (R) after their names. Voters in some of the states that supported President Bush also voted for a Democratic candidate for Senate. Republican senators represent some states from the traditionally liberal Northeast. Many Republican and Democrat members of the U.S. House who hold political views across the ideological spectrum represent voters who reward their records, not their party labels.

Significant shifts in party balance at the federal level occur when senators and representatives abandon their constituencies' core values. Republicans gained four more seats in the U.S. Senate in 2004 because voters in their respective states lost trust in the Democratic leadership's ability to support mainstream values.

The Democratic Party and its surrogates launched a campaign of hate against President Bush immediately following the 2000 presidential election, yet support for the president in 2004 increased among nearly every voter demographic. Liberal media outlets, Democratic Party leaders and elected officials, Hollywood actors, musicians, writers, and columnists waged a four-year war of negative, divisive propaganda against President Bush unlike any political rhetoric we have ever seen. The more the Democrat establishment turned up the volume on their own ideas, however, the more they drove conservative voters to the polls in support of the president.

The politically homeless were energized in 2004 by their opportunity to have a voice in national policymaking decisions. Some supported Republican candidates and others supported Democrats, but they were inspired by their choices and took advantage of their opportunity to select new leadership.

Evangelical Christians are more politically active because the social issues are coming under increasing control of the courts and federal and state governments. Twenty-three percent of voters in 2004 identified themselves as White and born-again or evangelical Christians. Seventy-eight percent of these voters supported President Bush's conservative social agenda. Conservative Black, Hispanic, Jewish, and Catholic voters similarly joined the ranks of those who see the liberal Democratic social policy agenda as an attack on our nation's moral foundations.

Increasing numbers of the politically homeless from all demographics are leaving their ancestral home on the Democratic plantation. They are gradually waking up to the issues and the facts and becoming less responsive to the divisive, hollow rhetoric of the radical liberals in the Democratic Party. The process of letting go of past party affiliations, however, is slow. It will require both trustworthy leadership from national Republican Party leaders and politicians and a concerted grassroots movement across the country, driven by inspired individuals with a passion for change. The politically homeless, active at the grassroots level of political involvement, can close the great divides and force Congress and the president to be more honest and accountable to the citizens they represent.

After my town hall meeting chat with President Clinton, many people wrote to me or called expressing how happy they were to see me asking the president the right question and informing him of the errors in his calculations. Many people went on to comment that they were now inspired to write or call their own senators or representatives because they shared my views about the negative impact of his health care plan on jobs. I never expected one event to inspire so many people to speak up and to speak out.

The politically homeless spoke up and spoke out and found a temporary home in the Republican Party in the 2004 elections. Why? Many voters are just not as dumb as Democrats think, and they are a lot smarter than Republicans think. But can the Republicans keep them?

History Is Not on the Democrats' Side

• Even though Democrats claim to be the party that champions civil rights, history and the facts are not on their side. In every case, Democrats fought the hardest to deny the civil rights of the voters they now take for granted. History is clearly on the side of Republicans relative to civil rights legislation.

• The Democratic Party is losing more and more voters because it has become a coalition of people who view themselves as members of a victimized or discriminated-against group or as single-issue advocates for liberal causes. Many of the politically homeless found temporary shelter in the Republican Party on election day in 2004 when they cast their votes in support of the conservative policy agenda.

• People do not want the federal government to make their decisions for them and control their lives. The electorate has decided that it supports the party that speaks to their values of individualism and personal responsibility. But if the Republicans do not deliver, they will quickly return to minority party status.

Blacks and Conservative Democrats Have Been Taken for Granted

• Instead of moving toward the center, Democrats took their message to the ideological left in an attempt to keep what they thought was their traditional base of support.
People do not leave the political party with which they grew up because of a disagreement over one relatively minor issue. They leave when their party abandons its fundamental principles on the biggest issues and when their party offers the wrong solutions to fix them.

• The Black electorate has been taken for granted with divisive rhetoric and empty promises instead of common sense policy solutions.

• Democratic Party leaders have taken their base constituency for granted by advocating conservative policies in their home states while voting against these policies in Washington, D.C., where they think their voters are not paying attention.

Facts Don't Lie--Liars Ignore Facts

• The biggest social and economic issues are blind to race. The current federal tax code is bad for everyone. The Social Security structure is bad for everyone, and the state of the Medicare system is bad for everyone. They all have a greater impact on racial minorities and the poor.

• Presidents Kennedy, Reagan, and now George W. Bush were able to reduce taxes. In each case the actions stimulated the economy.
Democrats keep telling people tax cuts don't work and that they only benefit the rich. They choose to ignore the facts!

• Replacement of the federal tax code with the FairTax would lower the total taxes paid by everybody. It would also produce the same amount of revenue by expanding the tax base.

Many of the Politically Homeless Have Already Left the Plantation

• Significant shifts in party balance at the federal level occur when senators and representatives abandon their constituencies' core values.
Increasing numbers of the politically homeless are gradually waking up to the issues and the facts and becoming less responsive to the divisive, hollow rhetoric of the radical liberals in the Democratic Party.

Chapter Four

The Republican Party won big on Election Day in 2004 by recapturing the White House and adding to its majorities in both the U.S. House and Senate. In addition, a majority of states have Republican governors, including the four largest states of California, Florida, New York, and Texas. Given the current majority status Republicans enjoy across the nation, though, the electorate is far from unified behind any one political party or political ideology. Many of the politically homeless found a temporary home in the Republican Party in 2004, but Republicans still cannot convince many of these temporary residents to identify themselves as Republicans. This also means that there is no guarantee of future support.

We can see from the following table that an equal percentage of voters (37%) identify themselves as Democrat or Republican, but that more voters (45%) consider themselves ideologically moderate, as opposed to liberal or conservative.

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry fared nine percentage points better than Republican president George W. Bush among the self-identified moderate voters, and each candidate captured double-digit support from voters who are presumably on the opposite end of the ideological spectrum from their respective policy agendas. As we have seen in every presidential election since 1992, the 2004 outcome was far from a landslide victory for the winning candidate.

The following table illustrates the issues most important to voters in the 2004 presidential election, and for which candidate voters cast their ballot based on the issue most important to them.

We can see in the above table that the top three issues for voters in 2004 were moral values, the status of the economy and job growth, and the global war on terrorism. Of these three issues, President Bush received overwhelming support from those who view moral values and the war on terrorism as most important. Senator Kerry received the vast majority of support from voters who viewed the economy as the most important issue, which is consistent with his persistent rhetoric throughout his campaign. President Bush's campaign was clearly able to frame the election as a referendum on his leadership in winning the war on terrorism, while capitalizing on the majority of the public's opposition to legalizing same-sex marriage as a major moral issue.

What is perhaps most telling about the data in the above table is that, when given the opportunity, voters viewed the war on terrorism and U.S. military action against terrorists in Iraq as two separate issues. Voters were clearly more supportive of President Bush's overall handling of the war on terrorism than on the status of the war in Iraq. Voters also saw the status of the economy as an issue separate from how each candidate would deal with the issue of taxation.

The disconnect in voters' minds between the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq and the relationship between the status of the economy and the effect of taxes on the economy demonstrate that the Bush administration and Republican congressional leaders have done a poor job in communicating to the electorate the undeniable connections between these issues. Although the positive economic indicators were compelling during most of 2004 versus the indicators during President Clinton's reelection year of 1996, Republicans were only mildly successful at countering the negative campaign rhetoric from Democrats and liberal media outlets.

While sitting in as substitute host for Martha Zoller's popular radio talk show, Ispoke with a listener who called and said there was no way he would vote for President Bush because of the terrible state of the economy. When I asked him on what facts he had based his assessment as terrible, he responded that he had no facts. He had truly drunk every drop of the Democratic Kool-Aid.

The following table illustrates how members of various racial backgrounds voted in the 2004 presidential election. President Bush increased his percentage of support among voters in all racial backgrounds from 2000 to 2004, but he still received less than 45 percent support from all groups except Whites. In addition, Bush's support among Black voters fell short of expectations. In a poll conducted prior to the election by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, 18 percent of Blacks overall indicated they would vote for President Bush, which included 36 percent support among self-identified conservative Christian Blacks.

The polling results detailed in the above tables show that the politically homeless who took shelter in the Republican Party in 2004 were primarily White conservative voters who were energized to vote because they wanted to maintain our current leadership during war and also by the necessity to defend our nation from attacks on our moral foundations. The majority of Black, Latino, Asian, and ideologically moderate voters have still not been persuaded by the Republican Party to embrace the Republican policy agenda.

Further, many conservative Republicans were frustrated by policies enacted or advocated in President Bush's first term, particularly massive federal spending on new entitlement programs and proposals to stem the flow of illegal aliens across our borders. They were not frustrated enough to vote against President Bush, but they were still unhappy at times.

One initiative that upset many conservative supporters of President Bush was the Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003. Beginning in January 2006, all forty million Medicare patients, regardless of financial need, will be allowed to sign up for a benefit that provides reductions in the cost of their prescription medications. The cost estimates for this new Medicare entitlement top five hundred billion dollars and will surely exceed that figure throughout the life of the program. Just look at the history of the growth in Medicare costs.

In 1965, when Medicare was first enacted, it cost six billion dollars to implement. The estimated cost twenty-five years into the program (1990) was supposed to be twelve billion dollars. The actual cost in 1990 was 109 billion dollars! That's a 900 percent miss! For most conservatives, this new Medicare entitlement is directly opposite to the conservative ideology of restrained federal spending and responsible budgeting.

President Bush also upset many conservatives with his plan to allow illegal aliens to legally hold jobs in the U.S. The plan would make illegal aliens eligible for temporary legal status for six years, as long as they are employed. Presumably, they could reapply after six years. The plan would not, however, allow them to automatically become citizens at the end of any six-year period. President Bush argued that this new program would allow illegal workers who currently hold jobs to come out of hiding and participate legally in the U.S. economy, while not encouraging further illegal behavior.

Although President Bush should be commended for trying to fix a problem he inherited from decades of Congress not dealing with the issue, conservative Republicans viewed that proposal as a "shadow citizenship" plan for people who came to this country illegally. And unlike what the administration believes, conservatives believe such a plan would encourage further illegal behavior and that it amounts to granting amnesty to those here illegally.

U.S. House Majority Leader Tom Delay, a Texas Republican, stated that he has "heartfelt reservations about allowing illegal immigrants into a U.S. guest-worker program that seems to reward illegal behavior" (Ralph Z. Hallow, "GOP to finesse immigration issue,"
The Washington Times
, 23 August 2004). Many other Republican politicians shared Delay's concerns, and Bush's proposal prompted citizens across the country to mobilize in opposition and voice their objections to what they feel is the wrong solution to a grave and growing problem.

Congressional Republicans since 1994, as well as the Bush administration since 2000, have demonstrated leadership in dealing with our enemies abroad and have achieved a number of legislative victories in domestic policy, such as tax cuts, reforms in public education, and welfare reform. Unfortunately, the Republican Party and its candidates continue to suffer defeats in the public relations arena because they do not adequately connect the rationale behind their policy agendas in a language that relates to the political layperson.

The Bush administration allowed Democrats and members of liberal media outlets to separate the war on terrorism from many of the reasons the U.S. went to war against Iraqi leaders. Iraqi leaders were, in fact, sponsoring global terrorist activities and murdering millions of their own citizens. Democrats framed the war in Iraq as a search for weapons of mass destruction. When no large caches of such weapons were found, Democrats and their accomplices in the media accused Bush and the Republicans of losing the war on terrorism, making the U.S. unsafe, and prosecuting the war in Iraq to increase oil companies' profits.

Republicans have also done a poor job communicating the effects of cutting or eliminating income, dividend, and estate tax rates on producing economic growth, job creation, and individual prosperity. They mistakenly assume that most of the public understands elementary economics. They do not. Instead of framing the issue of tax cuts around the personal benefits available to individual taxpayers, such as more money in their pockets, and their companies will be less likely to lay people off from their jobs, Republicans defend tax rate reductions by arguing that federal coffers will swell and businesses will grow and hire more employees. Individuals care more about not being laid off than they do about a business growing.

While the Republicans are technically correct, Republicans must remember that businesses do not vote in elections. Leroy and Bessie Public vote in elections, and in the back of their minds is the thought that the Democrats might be right when they charge that tax cuts only benefit the rich.

The Republican Party demonstrated in 2004 that it is capable of turning out large numbers of voters who support a conservative policy agenda. It failed, however, in getting many of the politically homeless to feel comfortably at home as full-fledged Republicans.

To borrow a term popular in business and marketing, the Republican Party has a "brand identity problem" that it has not solved for many voters. You can have the best product, but if it is not perceived as the best product, you lose. If the Republicans solve their brand identity problem, they have the opportunity to persuade many of the politically homeless that their long-term economic interests, and the best interests of the entire nation, rest with the Republican agenda to protect our economic and moral foundations. The conversion will not be a revolution. But it can be a rapid evolution.

The Democratic Party has successfully convinced millions of Americans--primarily those in their favorite groups--that Republicans represent only the interests of wealthy Whites and Fortune 500 companies. Democrats accomplished this task by instilling in their members powerful feelings of jealousy rooted in a haves vs. have-nots mentality and by blaming Republicans for creating great disparities among the public in wealth and economic achievement.

Republicans have attempted to counter the Democrats' false claims and logically challenged ideology, but it takes generations to undo political beliefs more than seventy years in the making. Many of the politically homeless are not ready to support Republican candidates because Republicans have not made serious attempts to connect to voters in the traditional Democratic base and explain why their policy positions and solutions to the big issues benefit all citizens, regardless of race, religion, or economic background.