A Better Stereotype For Republicans

Voters don't think in terms of policy or facts but rather imaginary personalities (Walter Lippmann called them "stereotypes") -- that stand in their minds for a given class of people. Time was, the Republican stereotype was an elderly gent, cigar clenched in his teeth, grousing that the government won't let him turn a profit anymore. Call him the Plutocrat.

These days, the Republican stereotype is the Yahoo: a middle-aged woman, bible in one hand and flag in the other, proclaiming the need to win back the country for Jesus. Both stereotypes grossly distort the GOP and its policies. Nevertheless, the term "Republican" conjures these imaginary personalities as surely as "1950s housewife" or "Whole Foods shopper."

Republicans downscaled their brand because that's where the votes are. Wal-Mart will always draw more customers than Neiman Marcus. The downscaling worked too. From Nixon to Bush II, the GOP won by appealing to the middle and working classes. Wealthier and better educated Republicans often tired of defending the Yahoo to their uncomprehending friends and colleagues. Still, even in the age of Obama, millions of Americans identify with her.

Only suddenly, it’s not enough. In 2008, the GOP lost by six percentage points among voters earning $200,000 or more. The Democrats, meanwhile, have performed the neat trick of winning both the poorest and the richest. Consequently, the GOP is no longer competitive in states marked by larger extremes of rich and poor.

The Republican brand used to have cachet. To worship in the Episcopal Church, to have a wife in the Junior League, to vote Republican: these things were once the marks of bourgeois success. Today, not even the high bourgeois vote Republican.

The GOP needs to expand its appeal, and the most natural place to turn is to the wealthy voters that it once took for granted. To win them back, Republicans will need to refurbish their brand. It won't be easy. Stereotypes compress the blooming, buzzing confusion of the world into meaningful forms; by definition, they are incorrigible to facts. Nonetheless, Republicans can still do some things to improve their image among the wealthy and educated, without at the same time betraying their middle and working class base.

First, Republicans can again become the party of fiscal responsibility. With their tax-cutting platform and big-spending ways, recent Republicans have betrayed their party's reputation for fiscal prudence. Obama, on the other hand, has proposed budget deficits that dwarf those of even Reagan and Bush. A call for balanced budgets appeals not only to Republican constituents' sense of patriotic solidarity, but also to the upper class's sense of stewardship. (Think of Ross Perot's surprisingly broad support in 1992.) The GOP might even consider downplaying tax cuts and instead calling on every American to sacrifice for the greater good.

Second, Republicans should promise to combat economic inequality. For years, it was a given that that the Democrats, as the party of the hardworking Common Man (yet another stereotype), would lose among high-income voters. No longer. The Yahoo now triggers the status anxieties of the rich just as much as (perhaps even more than) the Common Man ever did. To assuage these anxieties, Republicans should emphasize themes of solidarity with the less fortunate -- a strategy which can also play into the very feelings of higher moral obligation that Obama so successfully manipulated in 2008. As David Frum has argued, the GOP should get serious about stagnating incomes. They should promise (in contrast to the Democrats) to reduce the kind of low-skilled immigration that depresses wages. Culture war themes have divided the wealthy from the middle class. Economic themes can reunite them.

If Republicans are going to win again, they'll need a better stereotype. It doesn't necessarily have to be flattering, but it does have to be more popular. As a start, let's begin by purging the word "elite" as a form of name-calling in our internecine squabbles.