We Should Still Like Ike
From Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush, the Republican Party has assiduously courted the core of the old Roosevelt coalition: poor, white, working-class voters — mostly rural, often elderly, sometimes sparsely educated and frequently fundamentalist. But in so doing, Republican presidential candidates have shortchanged a vital component of their party: the Eisenhower Republicans.
These are the affluent, well-educated, mostly white suburbanites and exurbanites who once dominated Republican politics. Fiscally conservative but socially progressive, they catapulted Wendell Willkie to the Republican nomination in 1940 and then rode to victory on the coattails of Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952. They believe in rule of law at home and collective security abroad, and they cringe at the mantra that Washington is the problem, not the solution.… Seguir leyendo »