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GOP Losing Sight Of History, Middle Class

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By DAVID BROOKS

Published: October 14, 2007

Alexander Hamilton was an ambitious young striver, and he created an economy where people like him could rise and succeed. He used government to rouse the energies of the merchant class, to widen the circle of property owners and to dissolve the constraints on commerce and mobility.
Abraham Lincoln was another ambitious young striver. As a young politician, he championed roads, canals and banks so enterprising farm boys like himself could ascend and prosper. While he was president, the Republican Party passed the Homestead Act, which gave people access to property they could enrich and develop. It passed the Land Grant College Act, so the ambitious would have access to knowledge. It passed railroad legislation to open vistas for the young and aspiring.
Margaret Thatcher was another young striver. When she became prime minister, she gave the British working class access to homes and property so that they would become more industrious and independent.

You'd think that in this and every election, the Republicans would want to continue this tradition. You'd think that they'd start every election by putting themselves at the kitchen tables of middle-class families with ambitious kids. Their first questions would be: What are the barriers to their mobility? What concrete help do these people need to realize their dreams?

Yet at the Republican economic debate in Michigan this week, there was no talk of that. The candidates declared their fealty to general principles: free trade, lower taxes and reduced spending. They talked a lot about the line-item veto and the Chinese currency. But there was almost nothing that touched concretely on the lives of the ambitious working-class parents who are the backbone of the GOP.

Sometimes the candidates seemed more concerned with massaging the pleasure buttons of the Club for Growth than addressing the real concerns of the middle class. They talked far more about cutting corporate taxes, for example, than about a child tax credit for struggling families.

At other times, they sounded as if they were running for a ceremonial post. The person who is elected president will need concrete proposals, but the GOP contenders scarcely have them. Mike Huckabee has some sketchy plans. John McCain answered one element of middle-class anxiety on Thursday with his new health care plan. Others seem to have decided concrete proposals are for geeks.

In this way, the Republican Party has abandoned the Hamiltonian ground. It has lost intimate contact with the working-class dreamer who longs to make good.

David Brooks is a columnist for The New York Times.

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