Ideas for a Republican Resurgence: Understanding the True Roots of Poverty

The wealthy, of course, have a lot of financial cushions to protect themselves from irresponsible decisions. The rest of us, however, need to be careful and cautious if we are going to thrive and leave some wealth behind for our children and grandchildren. In my view, neither "redistribution" or "trickle down" is going to reduce poverty caused by bad decisions among poor and middle class individuals.

If Republicans are going to regain power, they are going to need to do it by pursuing ideas that are realistic, will pay-off, and which Democrats cannot afford to endorse because it harms their political base. Accordingly, the issue of school choice is ideal for Republicans because the public schools are a disaster and Democrats cannot embrace real reform because of their ties to the teacher unions. Just because McCain lost doesn't mean that he was wrong to suggest school choice was the Civil Rights issue of our century.

Another hot idea is to fight any attempts to rollback welfare reform and efforts to encourage single motherhood. Ann Coulter has some great stuff in her new book, Guilty, that documents the damage done by single mothers. Attacking single motherhood makes the case that our economic prosperity will advance through changes in behavior at the personal level. Our heros ought to be married couples that adopt, couples that stay together for the sake of the children, and folks that repair their marriages as they become clean and sober. Whenever, Obama tries to lean on the single motherhood issue...he gets blow-back from Rev. Jackson...who fathered an out-of-wedlock child with his mistress.

Finally, I'm 100% against any effort to blame the U.S. for poverty in developing nations. These countries tolerate child labor and don't enforce compulsory schoolng. We can dump all the money we want on them, but we won't see any change in prosperity until they clean up their own behavior. Stopping child labor is one of the keys to becoming a civilized society...we should insist on this now as a precondition for any aid we provide overseas.