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Posts Tagged ‘Suburbs’

Republicans need an Urban wing

by Phantom Ace ( 4 Comments › )
Filed under Headlines, Republican Party at January 24th, 2013 - 11:12 pm

Just 2 generations ago, the Republican Party was competitive in Urban and Suburban areas. Now the GOP is almost extinct in Cities and surrounding suburbs. This is one of the factors why they have lost the popular vote in 5 out of the last 6 elections and have won only 2 out of 6. This situation has enabled the Democrats to get an iron grip on certain states and have an advantage in the electoral college. The GOP has abandoned Urban areas and is suffering politically because of it.

Republicans took an all around shellacking in the 2012 elections. Part of the reason is that Democrats dominated the cities. President Obama won 69% of the big city vote, according to a New York Times exit poll analysis. Some of this is perhaps on account of the racial makeup of the cities, as blacks overwhelmingly vote Democratic. Yet it’s clear that, even among the upscale white urbanist crowd, Republican policies and candidates are finding few takers.

This bodes ill for the Republicans, but also for the future of cities. Most places suffer when under single-party rule, whether liberal or conservative. This has plagued big cities. Chicago, for example, doesn’t have a single Republican member of its city council. For a long time Republicans dominated large tracts of the suburbs.

[….]

Cities can benefit from Republican ideas on a variety of fronts. As Harvard Economist Ed Glaeser points out in City Journal, Republicans have been leaders in ideas around urban crime reduction, education reform, and privatization and rationalization of city services.

Unfortunately, Republicans have largely abandoned the urban playing field, preferring to condemn the cities as cesspools of Democratic corruption, high taxes, and decay. The Republican party today is largely driven by exurban and rural leaders, as well as populist movements like the Tea Party, with values that are not widely shared by urban dwellers. This has not only cost the party votes, but, critically, it has left it on the outside looking in on many debates, as culture is shaped in large urban centers where Republicans have little voice.

It’s well past time for Republicans to take cities seriously again. This starts with valuing urban environments, and respecting (or at least taking time to understand) the values of the people who live there. For example, urban dwellers expect and indeed require a higher level of public services than many suburban residents.

The GOP definitely needs an Urban strategy. But I highly doubt this will occur in the near term. Meanwhile Democrats can continue to enjoy their electoral dominance.

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Posted in Headlines, Republican Party | 4 Comments »

Obama Regime targets the Suburbs

by Phantom Ace ( 134 Comments › )
Filed under Barack Obama, Communism, Democratic Party, Election 2008, Elections 2010, Elections 2012, Fascism, Liberal Fascism, Progressives, Socialism at August 1st, 2012 - 2:30 pm

Ever since 1992, the year Dan Quayle attacked Murphy Brown and Pat Buchanan gave the disastrous Culture War speech at the Republican National Convention, the suburbs have been leaning Democratic. They were turned off with the attack on popular culture and the whole values agenda. Their main concern is economic and up until 1992, they were part of the political coalition that elected Eisenhower, Nixon and Reagan. Bill Clinton’s Presidency, which he governed fiscally and economically conservative after 1994, gave the Democrats credibility in the Suburbs. This new Democratic coalition helped Al Gore win the popular vote, nearly elected John Kerry and fueled Obama’s victory in 2008. But there is a new shift.

Barack Obama’s radical Progressive economic/fiscal policies have pissed away the credibility Bill Clinton won for the Democrats in the suburbs. The rise of Tea Party Republicanism, which is a return to economic/fiscal Conservatism, has attracted suburban voters. In 2010 the GOP made gains in the Suburbs and have undone the damage that Quayle and Buchanan did in 1992. Seeing this trend, Obama is now set to support anti-Suburban policies led by Building One America. The group seeks to do away with suburbs and even supports creating regional taxing authorities to redistribute the wealth from suburbs to cities.

President Obama is not a fan of America’s suburbs. Indeed, he intends to abolish them. With suburban voters set to be the swing constituency of the 2012 election, the administration’s plans for this segment of the electorate deserve scrutiny. Obama is a longtime supporter of “regionalism,” the idea that the suburbs should be folded into the cities, merging schools, housing, transportation, and above all taxation. To this end, the president has already put programs in place designed to push the country toward a sweeping social transformation in a possible second term. The goal: income equalization via a massive redistribution of suburban tax money to the cities.

[…]

The Obama administration, stocked with “regionalist” appointees, has been advancing this ambitious plan quietly for the past four years. Efforts to discourage driving and to press development into densely packed cities are justified by reference to fears of global warming. Leaders of the crusade against “sprawl” very consciously use environmental concerns as a cover for their redistributive schemes.

The centerpiece of the Obama administration’s anti-suburban plans is a little-known and seemingly modest program called the Sustainable Communities Initiative. The “regional planning grants” funded under this initiative — many of them in battleground states like Florida, Virginia, and Ohio — are set to recommend redistributive policies, as well as transportation and development plans, designed to undercut America’s suburbs. Few have noticed this because the program’s goals are muffled in the impenetrable jargon of “sustainability,” while its recommendations are to be unveiled only in a possible second Obama term.

Obama sees that if the suburbs continue their drift away from the Democrats the Republicans will dominate Presidential politics like they did 1952-1992. If he survives in November he will do it through EO and regulations push to end suburbs and fold them into cities. The god-king, like the Pharaohs of old, feels it is his right to change society. He didn’t lie when he said he would transform America.

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Posted in Barack Obama, Communism, Democratic Party, Election 2008, Elections 2010, Elections 2012, Fascism, Liberal Fascism, Progressives, Socialism | 134 Comments »

Suburbs set to abandon Democrats and return to the Republicans.

by Phantom Ace ( 192 Comments › )
Filed under Barack Obama, Economy, Elections 2010, Healthcare, Politics, Polls, Progressives, Republican Party, Socialism at September 28th, 2010 - 2:00 pm

From the Eisenhower era until the Bill Clinton administration, the Republicans owned the suburbs. Whether it was Westchester County, Long Island, Bergen County or the suburbs of LA, it was GOP territory. The people who reside in these areas were concerned with pocket book issues, anti-Communism/defense and crime. These were guaranteed Republicans areas that help fuel Nixon and Reagan’s victories of a generation ago. Then in the administration of George H.W. Bush it all changed. The Republicans stopped focusing on economic issues and became concerned with family values. Pat Buchanan’s 1992 Republican Convention speech turned off many Suburbanites who didn’t want the government to lecture them on morality.

The Democratic party saw this opportunity and starting with Bill Clinton, began to run as economic and fiscal conservatives. It worked and beginning in 1992, the suburbs began to slip from the Republicans’ grasp. In 1994, the suburbs went back to the GOP but when Monica Lewinsky and morality became what the GOP was about, they swung to the Democrats who ran Blue Dogs. Bush ran on Compassionate Conservatism in 2000 which had little to do with economic conservatism. It was Progressive style government with a focus on morality and family values, issues most suburbanites could care less about. This was part of the reason Bush lost the popular vote in 2000, as districts that went for Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford and Reagan went to Gore. In the 2000’s the Bush administration did nothing to win back these voters. Then in 2008 Barack Hussein Obama won the suburbs and there was talk of a permanent Democratic majority.

That was then, this is now! The mask has come off the Democrats and their Totalitarian Progressive agenda. The Tea Party focus on economic and fiscal issues are resonating for suburbanites. For the first time in nearly a generation, many suburbs are set to come back to the Republican party. The reason, the economy sucks and the Left has no answers!

The Paisley Shop and Genes Urban Baby Boutique sit empty along a stretch of Lancaster Avenue in Wayne, Pennsylvania, where the median home price is more than $600,000.

The vacant storefronts in the Delaware County town serve as a reminder that not even the affluent Main Line suburbs by the Schuylkill River northwest of Philadelphia are immune to the economic pressures afflicting the rest of the U.S.

“It’s hard to get business,” said Donna Martella, 46, who owns Beethoven Wraps, a gift and gourmet food shop down the street from the two shuttered stores.

Philadelphia’s once reliably Republican suburbs, which have shifted course in recent years to provide decisive support for Democrats, from Governor Ed Rendell to President Barack Obama, are in play again this year.

Read the rest: Suburban Voters Sour on Obama, Threatening Democrats’ Hold on U.S. House

A bad economy is making many suburbanites come back to their ancestral home in the Republican party. These are people who are economic and fiscal conservatives. They are soccer moms, Reagan Democrats and small businessman. Their main concerns are economic opportunity, strong national defense, Islamic colonization, crime and good governance. Suburbanites are people who just want to be left alone and don’t to be lectured about Family values from the Right or the Left’s cultural transformative Progressive agenda. In other words, it’s all about the economy and safety for these voters.

This is not a Social Conservative vs. Economic Conservative argument. Candidates like Marco Rubio and Portman are Pro Life, but their focus is on economic and security issues. To keep the suburbs, the GOP should focus on economic and fiscal issues. A good economy solves many social ills as more money in people’s pockets means less stress.  A good economy leads to more families staying intact and a better society. As Carville said, “It’s the economy stupid”! He was right and we need to remember this. The Suburbs are the GOP’s for the taking. The question is, can we keep them? We can if we focus on pocket book issues.

Election Update:  The senate is now back in play despite the fact that Fiorina is fading in California and Coon’s lead in Delaware. Republican John Raese now leads Gov. Joe Manchin in the West Virginia Senate race. In an example of the Suburbs returning to the GOP, Linda McMahon is now within 3 of AG. Richard Blumenthal in Connecticut . Republicans used to own this state back in the Eisenhower, Nixon and Regan days. They can win here again and Linda might just pull it out.

Keep your fingers crossed and vote!

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Posted in Barack Obama, Economy, Elections 2010, Healthcare, Politics, Polls, Progressives, Republican Party, Socialism | 192 Comments »