"Grand New Party"

The Nightly Build...

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More Condescension from Rod Dreher

Rod Dreher, in a viewpoints article in The Dallas Morning News, psychoanalyzes people not like him -- in this case, "the poor and working class." He's got them all figured out. He says they

"tend to prefer non-squishy religion prescribing a stark moral code."

Dreher has "the elites" figured out, too. He says they

"look at working-class anxiety over illegal immigration and see only nativism. What elites don't, or won't, see is that the working classes are pressed harder by the presence of illegal immigrants, in ways that typically don't affect academics, media types or affluent suburbanites."

In an article dripping of condescension, Dreher accuses elites of ... condescension. In fact, liberals fully understand that the poor and working class are pressed hard. Some liberals are, in fact, poor. Liberal social policies - Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, food stamps, minimum wage, etc. - all help to provide a safety net for those living on the economic margins. Liberals understand that nativism is a symptom of the difficulties faced by the poor and working class, not a solution. Dividing native Americans from immigrants, whites from blacks, young from old, using wedge issues to divide Americans may win elections for Republicans, but won't hold families together.

Dreher gets around to reviewing the book, "Grand New Party" by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam. They "suggest an emerging centrist constituency that's culturally conservative but economically liberal." Douthat and Salam may be on to something, but readers will have to get it from reading the book, not from Rod Dreher's crunchy conservative pyschobabble about what motivates the poor, the working classes, and the elites.