Schlafly: Where did Reagan Votes Go in '08?

Talk is cheap. This free-market libertarian would like to know.

Reagan's 1980 and 1984 victories were based on a coalition of three different groups. He attracted the fiscal-integrity/limited-government conservatives who had not given up since Barry Goldwater's campaign, the social conservatives who newly came into the political process to be active against the Equal Rights Amendment and abortion, and the Reagan Democrats (mostly blue-collar, Catholic and/or Irish) who sought a change from the stagflation of the Jimmy Carter years.

In 2008, the first two groups shrank because of lessened enthusiasm for the Republican candidate. Sarah Palin brought new life to the Party, but it wasn't enough.

Schlafly goes to to imply what Taxman and I have said all along. People in power are always thrown out when the going gets tough, but secondly, Republicans haven't been acting like Republicans, either for the past eight years or in this election cycle.

Neither Democrats nor Republicans offered any good solution to the challenge of a depressed economy, but John McCain was particularly insensitive. In the presidential TV debates before the Michigan primary, he brushed off economic questions by pontificating that manufacturing jobs are gone forever and workers should go to a community college and get retrained.

He repeatedly reminded voters that he is the "biggest free-trader" they'll ever meet, a line that may resonate with a few libertarian think tanks but is a poke in the eye to blue-collar guys whose jobs have gone overseas to Chinese working for 30 cents an hour.

I married into a family of union workers for whom this is a penultimate, if not the pinnacle. McCain's comments are more than an eye poke to hardworking families who have lost their jobs, health care, and retirement as of late. Admittedly, I'm a take-care-of-yourself-because-at-the-end-of-the-day-no-one-else-will (no matter what they say) kind of gal, I think these people deserve to have the promises that were made to them honored.

The young people who voted 2-to-1 for Obama were another group that Republicans lost in 2008. They are the generation that has come out of the public schools since they have been teaching political correctness, multiculturalism, diversity, William Ayers-style "social-justice," self-esteem and other nonsense instead of reading, math, and American history.

It's time for the conservative movement to restore parents' rights over public-school curriculum and not leave it up to the anti-parent, pro-diversity policies endorsed by the National Education Association.

Conservatives had the chance to dismantle the Department of Education in 1996, but cowtowed, and blew it. Big time. Those in higher education and those who employ workers directly out of high school know it, but I suspect that most still have their heads in the sand and believe that "our" public schools are somehow "different," or even "good" when up to 40% of college undergraduates need some form of remediation of basic skills.

The third group that Republicans lost in 2008 was unmarried women. By a colossal 40+ point spread, unmarried women voted for Barack Obama by 70-to-29 percent.

One explanation is economic: the women who cast off husbands look to Big Brother Government to support them. They vote for the party that promises more benefits from the Welfare State.

The other explanation is social: the feminists have carried on a 40-year campaign to destroy marriage and what they deride as the patriarchy. They want to replace it with a matriarchy.

In the 1970s, the feminists achieved unilateral divorce-on-demand from state legislatures, unilateral abortion-on-demand from the courts, and unilateral control over children in the welfare class by taxpayer handouts to women that made husbands and fathers unnecessary. ...

The United States today has 24 million children growing up in a household without their own father, and 17 million of those are in mother-headed households. Why is anybody surprised that the dissolution of marriage, depriving kids of their own fathers, and the widespread acceptance of matriarchy, produces eager supporters of Obama's promise to "spread the wealth around"?

I volunteer in two schools where I have the privilege of reading to, doing art with, and supporting children, many of whom are minority and fatherless. I have seen, firsthand, how young children, particularly sons, need their fathers in their lives, day in and day out. I am reminded of the value of a strong, mature father in the lives of boys, and am thankful that there are male principals willing to stand in the gap for these boys.

Overwhelmingly, the 50- and 60-something divorcees of the 1970s in my life, who are facing their golden years alone, voted for Obama.

If Republicans want to win future elections, they will have to field candidates who defend U.S. jobs, parents' rights in public schools, and the institution of marriage.

If there is one thing in which I take solace, I'm comforted in history: After Carter came Reagan. Maybe there is hope.