by Bruce Thronton<\/p>\n
<\/em>FrontPage<\/em><\/p>\n Nearly 3 months after the presidential election the Republicans are still trying to fix what they think went wrong. A popular culprit is the Republicans\u2019 alleged failure to communicate forcefully or persuasively a message that would move voters presumably receptive to conservative policies and principles. Just in the last week\u00a0Jonah Goldberg<\/a>,\u00a0Daniel Henninger<\/a>,\u00a0Ari Fleischer<\/a>,\u00a0Ross Douthat<\/a>, and\u00a0Karl Rove<\/a>\u00a0have worked variations on this theme. Yet we should remember that any act of communication comprises not just a sender and a message, but also a receiver. We need to focus on the nature of America\u2019s political \u201creceivers,\u201d the 65 million who voted for Obama in the November election, and the 93 million registered voters who didn\u2019t vote. If those voters are not receptive to the Republican message, it doesn\u2019t matter much how brilliant the messenger or the packaging of the message.<\/p>\n And that \u201cmessage\u201d has been out there for years now and constantly repeated. Only the stupid or willfully inattentive haven\u2019t heard that we face a financial abyss waiting at the end of our entitlement road, that entitlements need to be reformed, that we have an exploding debt and deficit crisis, that a \u201ctax the rich\u201d policy only produces chump-change for solving that problem, that Obama\u2019s economic policies have bloated the federal government at the expense of jobs and growth, and that Obama himself is the most left-wing, duplicitous, partisan, and incompetent president in modern history. And conservatives have identified repeatedly the bad ideology and flawed assumptions that have generated the policies that created those problems. The fact is, many voters know full well this dismal catalogue of failure, and they either don\u2019t care, or they believe the fatuous rationalizations, lies, excuses, and economic magical thinking offered by the Democrats. How else explain Obama\u2019s 55% approval rating in the latest Time\/CNN poll? Either way, repeating once again the facts demonstrating that failure and the flawed ideology that has created it, or more effectively repackaging the facts and arguments and having it delivered by an oratorical genius, is not going to cut much ice.<\/p>\n If you disagree, remember what happened to Paul Ryan last year. He identified the problem of entitlement-driven deficits and crafted a response that made a modest start at reform. But after several months of demonization by the Democrats that included an ad with a Ryan look-alike pushing an old lady in a wheelchair over a cliff, the only narrative with traction by election day was the lie that Republicans \u201cwant to end Medicare as we know it\u201d and \u201cshred the safety net\u201d and keep the \u201crich\u201d from \u201cpaying their fair share.\u201d You could have resurrected Ronald Reagan and had him deliver the counter-message and the outcome would\u2019ve been the same.<\/p>\n Or maybe you\u2019re cheered by those exit polls that reported majorities of Americans \u201cwant government to do less,\u201d and so voters are ready to support entitlement reform. But be more specific about which entitlements should be reduced and see what response you get. Someone on Medicare who will get $3 for every $1 put into the program \u2014 thus receiving taxpayer money \u2014 may be in favor of cutting back on food stamps or extended unemployment benefits, but don\u2019t even think about reducing his subsidy. Remember those AARP ads with the snarling oldsters warning, \u201cKeep your hands off my Medicare\u201d because they \u201cearned\u201d those benefits? So too with the home mortgage deduction, or agriculture subsidies, or any number of mechanisms for transferring public money to citizens and businesses. The fact is, the entitlement mentality has insidiously spread even among people who think that the \u201cgovernment does too much.\u201d As David Brooks summed up recently, \u201cMany voters have decided they like spending a lot on themselves and pushing costs onto their children and grandchildren. They have decided they like borrowing up to $1 trillion a year for tax credits, disability payments, defense contracts and the rest. They have found that the original Keynesian rationale for these deficits provides a perfect cover for permanent deficit-living. They have made it clear that they will destroy any politician who tries to stop them from cost-shifting in this way.\u201d<\/p>\n Dig deeper into the ideas behind the policies and you\u2019ll find out why the Democrats\u2019 narrative is so much more appealing to such voters than is that of the Republicans. The conservative message is predicated on beliefs about ordered liberty, self-reliance, equality of opportunity, individualism, limited government, entrepreneurship, and all those other virtues and principles that indeed have made the United States the wealthiest, freest, most open great power in all of history. But those virtues necessarily entail a tragic view of human life. Individual freedom requires as well personal responsibility and accountability for bad choices. Equality of opportunity is no guarantee of success. Talent, character, initiative, brains, and luck are not evenly distributed among people. Limiting government means individuals, families, churches, and communities must see to their own needs and wants and find some way to pay for them. Many businesses are going to fail, but that is part of capitalism\u2019s \u201ccreative destruction\u201d that has made free-market economies so successful. We can\u2019t have every good we want without paying a price or making a trade-off or accepting some level of risk. The good of driving cars, for example, costs us about 35,000 fatalities a year in road accidents. In short, a flawed human nature, the law of unforeseen consequences, and the limits of human knowledge all mean that we have to accept an imperfect world in which life isn\u2019t fair: there are no winners without losers, there\u2019s no free lunch, and we can\u2019t eat our cake and have it.<\/p>\n The progressive Democrats, in contrast to the timeless wisdom even an illiterate peasant once understood, endorse a therapeutic view of human life. People aren\u2019t responsible for their choices, for an unjust political and economic environment conditions those choices. Success doesn\u2019t result from individual hard work and brains as well as luck, but solely from the accidents of birth or access to social advantages unjustly denied to others. Equality means not equality of opportunity, but equality of result, the primary goal being the reduction of esteem-wounding income differences through the redistribution of wealth by government. Free citizens are not responsible for solving problems or managing their lives, but rather techno-elites possessing superior knowledge must be given the state\u2019s coercive power to reshape and control social and economic institutions in order to reduce the destructive consequences of failures of character or of unjust social, political, and economic institutions. Risk and trade-offs are not a permanent cost of human aspirations and actions, but can be removed from human life. The result will be a much better world in which failure is rare, all goods can be had simultaneously at minimal costs, income equality is achieved, risk is eliminated, and everybody gets to be a winner. Contrary to those cranky \u201cmean\u201d conservatives, there is such a thing as a free lunch, and we can eat our cake and still have it.<\/p>\n Given that humans, as Alexander Hamilton said, \u201care ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious,\u201d we shouldn\u2019t be surprised that the progressive promise to indulge the self-interests and selfish appetites of the citizenry is more attractive than conservative sermons about self-control and self-sacrifice. So what if history shows that every attempt to create the progressive utopia has ended in disaster and failure, so what if the math says the entitlement state ends in bankruptcy, so what if our national character is being insidiously corrupted by getting something we haven\u2019t earned but think is a human right, so what if, as Tocqueville warned 170 years ago, empowering the state to achieve these utopian boons comes at the cost of our freedom and autonomy. We want our free stuff now, and somebody else can pay the cost, whether the \u201crich\u201d or our grandchildren.<\/p>\n The great 19th-century French economist Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Bastiat once wrote:<\/p>\n When misguided public opinion honors what is despicable and despises what is honorable, punishes virtue and rewards vice, encourages what is harmful and discourages what is useful, applauds falsehood and smothers truth under indifference or insult, a nation turns its back on progress and can be restored only by the terrible lessons of catastrophe.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Better messages and better messengers are not going to overcome human nature. The melancholy truth is that our debt, deficit, and entitlement problems will not be seriously addressed until a critical mass of citizens feels the pain of these self-interested, shortsighted, catastrophic policies.<\/p>\n \u00a92013 Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Bruce Thronton FrontPage Nearly 3 months after the presidential election the Republicans are still trying to fix what they think went wrong. A popular culprit is the Republicans\u2019 alleged failure to communicate forcefully or persuasively a message that would move voters presumably receptive to conservative policies and principles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[22,31],"tags":[12,77,1026,1044,243,129,1020,67],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-9Z","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11612,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/trumps-re-election-chances-may-be-better-than-you-think\/","url_meta":{"origin":619,"position":0},"title":"Trump\u2019s Re-Election Chances May Be Better Than You Think","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 17, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness What are Donald Trump\u2019s chances for re-election in 2020? If history is any guide, pretty good. In early 1994, Bill Clinton\u2019s approval rating after two years in office hovered around a dismal 40 percent. The first midterm elections of the Clinton presidency were an\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Donald Trump\"","block_context":{"text":"Donald Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/tag\/donald-trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8377,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/republican-senators-and-the-battered-wife-syndrome\/","url_meta":{"origin":619,"position":1},"title":"Republican Senators and the Battered Wife Syndrome","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 1, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"What the confirmation of Loretta Lynch really means. by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ Front PageMagazine [1]For 6 years Barack Obama in word and deed has battered the Constitution and slapped around the Republicans. Abetted by his Luca Brasi, Harry Reid, he has run roughshod over the separation of powers and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Our Contributors"","block_context":{"text":"Our Contributors","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6883,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/2014-year-of-decision\/","url_meta":{"origin":619,"position":2},"title":"2014: Year of Decision","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 6, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/\u00a0FrontPage Magazine\u00a0 This year we will see if America is still a center-right country, or if Obama\u2019s two terms will mark a historic shift to the left. History and recent events give cause for optimism, subject, of course, to unforeseen events. The champions of big government,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10692,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-never-trump-construct\/","url_meta":{"origin":619,"position":3},"title":"The \u2018Never Trump\u2019 Construct","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 26, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review \u00a0 The president\u2019s fiercest critics still do not grasp that Trump is a symptom, not the cause of the GOP\u2019s internal strife. For all the talk of a Civil War in the Republican party over Donald Trump, 90 percent of Republicans ended up voting\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Conservatives"","block_context":{"text":"Conservatives","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/conservatives\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1426,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/moral-equivalence-is-moral-evasion\/","url_meta":{"origin":619,"position":4},"title":"Moral Equivalence Is Moral Evasion","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 25, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine The failure of the Congressional budget \u201csuper-committee\u201d to address our geometrically expanding debt and deficits should surprise no one. From the beginning the committee was political theater designed to create the illusion of action when the will to act is missing. 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