RIGHT OF CENTER: VOTERS SEE TOO CLEARLY WHAT DEMOCRATS DID

The Wall Street Journal this week published a series of articles that attempted to identify the climate in American politics that led to last month's historic election.

The last article in the series, published Wednesday, was illuminating. The premise was that the middle class is divided along gaps in income, values and lifestyles, "cleaving into the have-mores and the have-lesses." The have-lesses have become their own special interest group, and on Election Day they lashed out against all the wealthy, influential liberal elites.

No longer the country-club set and wealthy businessmen, the voters today most likely to cast their ballots for Republican -- make that conservative -- candidates are working men and homemaker women. What has happened to the Democratic Party this year that so agitated Joe Sixpack? Plenty.

As the Journal reported, "What appended was cultural backlash against a professional and managerial 'knowledge class,' cosmopolitan in outlook, that claims to speak for places like Munford (Tenn.,), but as Munford sees it, speaks mostly to itself and for itself. Politicians are only the most visible symbol of this class -- and one of the few members of it that ordinary people can reach out and topple. But the same gulf estranges Middle America from lobbyists and bankers, from consultants and artists, from journalists and academicians -- from a whole class that has come to dominate the nation's internal dialogue."

The bottom line is that this large block of voters sees too clearly what has happened during the decades of Democratic control in Washington. Despite spending trillions of dollars to implement liberal cures for society's ills, the effect has been just the opposite.

Voters have long understood that something is drastically wrong in America. Something is wrong when the welfare state grows as more people are compelled by hand-out incentives to join its ranks. Something is wrong with the continual parade of new victims, hands outstretched, seeking taxpayer-funded redress of their alleged grievances.

Remember, it was 14 years ago that Americans put in the White House a president who campaigned on the themes of smaller, less intrusive government and the paring back of social programs. It wasn't until Ronald Reagan's heir, George Bush, repudiated the Reagan Revolution and expanded government while raising taxes that the voters sought relief through a "new Democrat" in 1992. Alas, voters soon learned there is nothing new about Bill Clinton's old-Democrat policies.

But the woeful Clinton presidency and the Democrat's track record in Congress were only part of the equation that led to the GOP's November sweep. Perhaps key to the election was the Republicans' ability to convince voters that they will provide a clear alternative to business as usual in Washington. The House Republican's Contract With America was an important first step.

Unfortunately, many Democrats -- particularly in the Clinton White House -- still don't get it. In the Journal article, Labor Secretary Robert Reich concluded that the nation had witnessed "the revolt of the anxious class.

"We are on the way to becoming a two-tiered (middle class) composed of a few winners and a larger group left behind, whose anger and disillusionment is easily manipulated. Today the targets of rage are immigrants, welfare mothers, government officials, gays and an ill-defined 'counter-culture.' As the middle class continues to erode, who will be the targets tomorrow."

But who has manipulated whom, Mr. Reich? To say the "anxious class" has leveled their anger against immigrants, welfare mothers, government officials and gays manipulates election data.

Voters are venting on the politicians and bureaucrats, like Reich, who continue to propagate the myth that compassion is defined by how much tax money the American public is willing to fork over to subsidize unproductive leeches, and that tolerance is defined by whether you accept the moral equivalence of buggery and fornication to heterosexual monogamy.

I can answer Reich's final question. Tomorrow's target of the "anxious class" will be Republicans if they fail to deliver on their campaign promises of pared back government, lower taxes and less regulation. If the GOP drops the ball, you will see the emergence of a truly anxious and angry class of voters. They won't trumpet a return to liberal policies of the past. Instead, they will rise with a third- or multiple-party challenge to the status quo in Washington.

As the Journal article affirmed, the November vote showed that an "era -- political, cultural and historical -- may be coming to an end." That means another era is beginning. But it's more than a new era. It's the second American revolution. It's about time.

~Jay Eastlick is the news editor of the Southeast Missourian.