Sunday, November 18, 2012

DOUTHAT: DEMS AREN'T MOOCHERS WHO WANT FREE STUFF! THEY'RE DESPERATE LOSERS WHO NEED FREE STUFF!

Mitt Romney thinks Obama voters are moochers who just want free gifts, but Ross Douthat isn't that sort of conservative -- he's appalled at this way of thinking:
This is a crisis that the Republican Party often badly misunderstands, casting Democratic-leaning voters as lazy moochers or spoiled children seeking "gifts" (as a certain former Republican presidential nominee would have it) rather than recognizing the reality....
"The reality"? And what is "the reality," according to Douthat? It's that Democratic voters don't want free stuff -- they're miserable, poorly socialized, dependent people who desperately need free stuff!
Consider the Hispanic vote. Are Democrats winning Hispanics because they put forward a more welcoming face than Republicans do...? Yes, up to a point. But they're also winning recent immigrants because those immigrants often aren't assimilating successfully -- or worse, are assimilating downward, thanks to rising out-of-wedlock birthrates and high dropout rates. The Democratic edge among Hispanics depends heavily on these darker trends: the weaker that families and communities are, the more necessary government support inevitably seems.

Likewise with the growing number of unmarried Americans, especially unmarried women. Yes, social issues like abortion help explain why these voters lean Democratic. But the more important explanation is that single life is generally more insecure and chaotic than married life, and single life with children -- which is now commonplace for women under 30 -- is almost impossible to navigate without the support the welfare state provides.
Or sometimes they're just poor and miserable:
Or consider the secular vote, which has been growing swiftly and tilts heavily toward Democrats. The liberal image of a non-churchgoing American is probably the "spiritual but not religious" seeker, or the bright young atheist reading Richard Dawkins. But the typical unchurched American is just as often an underemployed working-class man, whose secularism is less an intellectual choice than a symptom of his disconnection from community in general.
Douthat understands these voters. He feels their pain. He acknowledges that they have real needs.

But do you know what they really need? No, not free stuff:
It's not a coincidence that the economic era that many liberals pine for -- the great, egalitarian post-World War II boom -- was an era that social conservatives remember fondly as well: a time of leaping church attendance, rising marriage rates and birthrates, and widespread civic renewal and engagement.
Obama voters need to be freed from "the old left-wing suspicion of faith and domesticity," so we can return to the post-World War II era! Why, after all, was America so prosperous after World War II? It couldn't possibly have been the massive infrastructure spending, or the GI Bill, or the jobs created by the military buildup, or the strong union movement, or the progressive tax rates, or the pent-up consumer demand after near two decades of depression and war, or the fact that our industrial capacity, unlike that of the Europeans, was intact.

No, it must have been the churchgoing and the heterosexual marriage.

(And the bowling leagues. I think that's what Douthat means by "widespread civic renewal and engagement.")

They're what made America rich! So, Obama voters, in addition to joining a bowling league, go to church and stop having out-of-wedlock, non-procreative sex! That's said not out of contempt, but out of love!

Yeah, this is a much more welcoming message for the GOP, isn't it?

13 comments:

Victor said...

I'm not a religious man, so let me offer up a secular prayer:
"Please, oh Great Flying Spaghetti Monster, rid us of these smug, insipid, pontificating, religious, Conservatives!

Loose upon them a plague of irrelevancy..."

Ooooops! Too late!

Of course, my prayer won't be answered until Douthat, and his hero, David Brooks, lose their prime real estate on the NY Times Op-ed page. Until then, we have to suffer these fools - but NOT gladly.

Never Ben Better said...

Great FSM -- could that insufferable blowhard be any more patronizing?

Dark Avenger said...

If Mr. Douthat wants to find a moocher getting something for nothing, he can look in the mirror.

Kathy said...

I agree with him that "widespread civic renewal and engagement" are very important, but I doubt my idea of civic renewal and engagement is the same as his.

M. Bouffant said...

single life with children -- which is now commonplace for women under 30
Citation please, Mr D. Hell, I might settle for a more precise word than "commonplace."

Not a one of these scolds will admit that economic security is the most important factor in keeping families together, & in forming families to begin w/.

aimai said...

Douthat is lying about what liberals believe,as usual. The 1950's is only a "high water mark" for us all for some version of "all" which is rather limited by today's broader standards. For example, it was a great time to be a heterosexual white male, or an affiliate of a white male (his spouse, his children, one of his employees). It was not, in fact the best time to be any other kind of person. That's because all the benefits of government intervention which Steve pointed out: survivor's benefits (for soldiers), social security (for some workers), the GI Bill, public schools, new roads (for some neighborhoods), new bridges (for some neighborhoods) accrued to white males and their dependents. The big exceptions were the Post Office, eventually the army as it eventually became more truly desegregated, and some public works projects--but again the benefits largely accrued to men, and to women who entered the teaching profession precisely because other jobs were closed to them.

I'd like a period of high government investment in roads, bridges, education, and the environment and I'd like it in a fully modern sense--evenly distributed across the social landscape and taking into account single women as well as single men, married women as well as married men, the young and the old, gay and straight and all ethnicities and religious communities. I don't want to leave a vacuum of need that religious communities and often dysfunctional families can move in and exploit.

So: no, Mr. Douthat, women do not prefer the tender mercies of an abusive marriage over a sufficient safety net that they can get out and become self supporting. We'd rather have good full time jobs for everyone than depend on the luck of our choice for spouse.

aimai

Eric Dondero said...

We Republicans just need to divorce ourselves from blue state moocher America. There's no hope. The country commited suicide on Nov. 6 by reelecting this Marxist Muslim to the White House.

Secession? Yes. But it takes too long.

Libertarians and conservatives can do something more immediate:

If you're an employer, fire any employees you have who voted Obama.

If you work for an Obama supporting boss or company, quit.

De-friend anyone you know who voted for that socialist slimeball.

Vow never to speak to any of your relatives again, who voted Democrat. They are the enemy of real Americans, and should be treated as such.

Don't buy any products made in blue state America.

Don't spend any entertainment dollars on blue state entertainment.

Grin said...



omg that was a Priceless rant. Good luck with your vision for america Eric.

Steve M. said...

So that's what guys like you do when your fifteen minutes of fame run out, Eric -- you comment at my blog?

aimai said...

Its like a sighting of a meteor, Steve, or a fabulous, mythical, creature like a hippogriff. I didn't think it was really Eric Dondero himself himself. I mean--he's cut us all off so what is he doing still communicating with liberals? If this is what cutting them off looks like he must be calling all his liberal friends like an old fashioned phone stalker and breathing hard into the phone before slamming it down. If he had any liberal friends. His family have probably already put him on phone block, just to get some peace and quiet.

aimai

Never Ben Better said...


Reads like a cut-and-paste from the real Dondero "Goodbye cruel world" hissy fit. Probably some third-rate troll who thinks he's ever so clever.

Sure is entertaining to watch 'em wallow in their outraged misery, though I do get tired of scraping exploded brains off the screen.

Victor said...

I hear Somalia is nice this time of year.
ALL year, matter of fact!

PQuincy said...

Oddly enough, this was Brooks's line in his column last week, too...with a version that said we're not getting married any more, or having children, because we all want to work harder and kids are such a bother.

Apparently, neither Brooks nor Douthat has heard of the demographic transition, considered the role of social insurance, or paused to reflect that raising kids is actually lots of work -- work done almost exclusively by women.

More good advice, in short, for an America made up exclusively of white heterosexual men...