Ultimately, however, the Beltway Republicans are losing Middle America because they are ideologically incapable of addressing two great concerns: economic insecurity and the perception that we are losing the America that we grew up in.
Economic insecurity is traceable to NAFTA-GATT globalization, under which it makes economic sense for U.S. companies to close factories here, build plants in China and export back to the United States. Manufacturing now accounts for less than 10 percent of all U.S. jobs.
Social insecurity is traceable to mass immigration, legal and illegal, which has brought in scores of millions who are altering the character of communities and competing with U.S. workers by offering their services for far less pay.
These are the twin causes of death of the Reagan coalition, and as long as the Republican Party is hooked on K Street cash, it will not address either, and thus pass, blissfully addicted, from this earth. – Patrick J. Buchanan