RSS Feed MenuYou know what? That sounds like an interesting speech that Newt Gingrich gave the Maryland Republican party last night.
“No administration in modern times has failed younger blacks more than the Obama administration,” Gingrich said. He explained that “in May, we had 41 percent unemployment among black teenagers in America.”
That means if Republicans can put on a brave face, they might be able to turn the African American vote their way. “Think of the social catastrophe of 41 percent of a community not being able to find a job. But we have to have the courage to walk into that neighborhood, to talk to that preacher, to visit that small business, to talk to that mother. And we have to have a convincing case that we actually know how to create jobs.”
“The morning they believe that, you’re going to see margins in percents you never dreamed of decide there’s a better future,” Gingrich said. “It takes courage, it takes hard work, it takes discipline and it’s doable.
“I will bet you there is not a single precinct in this state in which the majority will pick for their children food stamps over paychecks,” he said.
As so often with Gingrich, what is true and right is fused to what is absurd and false. It’s true, this recession has wreaked social havoc on poorer Americans. The Center for Immigration Studies tallied some numbers in their most recent release:
- In the first quarter of 2011, the standard unemployment rate (referred to as U-3) for U.S.-born workers who have not completed high school was 22 percent.
- Using the broader measure of unemployment (referred to as U-6), that includes those who want to work but have not looked in the last four weeks and those forced to work part-time, the rate for U.S.-born workers who have not completed high school was 34.6 percent.
- The U-6 unemployment rate for U.S.-born workers who have only a high school education, but no additional schooling, is 21.5 percent. The situation for younger workers with only a high school education is even worse.
- Looking at all less-educated U.S.-born adults (ages 18 to 65), 26.9 million were not working in the first quarter of 2011. Less-educated is defined as having either failed to complete high school or having only a high school education. If we include all less-educated adult citizens, both U.S.-born and naturalized, 28.7 million were not working in the first quarter of 2011.
- The above figures do not include the 7.2 million American teenagers (16-17) not working. It also does not include the 17.1 million working-age citizens with some college, but not a bachelor’s degree, who are not working.
We are living through the longest period of extended unemployment since World War II. This unemployment is occurring in a society without very much of a social safety net for working age people. The result is a social catastrophe.
So far, Newt Gingrich is making sense. He’s making sense too when he asserts that the social catastrophe creates a political opportunity for a party that can bring forward practical ideas to revive economic growth.
But here’s where he stops making sense: Conservatives cannot recognize — or refuse to acknowledge — that non-conservatives do not share their disdain for President Obama and are therefore unlikely to be impressed by overstated criticisms.
Non-Republicans do not agree that Obama “made it worse.” They agree that Obama “failed to make it better.” That may seem like a small difference, but it’s a hugely important one.
Some practical implications from these findings:
- Rush Limbaugh may speak of the Bush years as the good old days, but that is a highly unusual and unaccepted point of view. Republicans remain a party of economic failure in most voters eyes. Voters may be dissatisfied with Obama’s effectiveness, but they will only reject him if they are offered a superior alternative. For now, the GOP alternative remains even worse than the Obama status quo.
- Given that minority voters in particular do not blame Obama for the bad economy – in fact, continue to respect and admire him – the mood of raging Republican contempt for the president almost guarantees that we will speak about him in ways that deny us any audience for our policy message.
- That is, assuming we had a policy message calculated to appeal to them. But even if the door were open, how would a platform of tighter money, big benefit cuts, and upper-income tax cuts appeal to hard-pressed voters, African-Americans being some of the hardest-pressed of all?
NRA Liberal // Jun 24, 2011 at 7:21 pm
“,,,That means if Republicans can put on a brave face, they might be able to turn the African American vote their way….”
Yeah, that’ll happen, around the same time that retired oil company execs in the suburbs of Houston start voting Democrat.
jakester // Jun 24, 2011 at 10:31 pm
I heard Hannity and Niger Innis try to turn this issue into EPA regulations versus unemployed black youth.
jakester // Jun 24, 2011 at 10:33 pm
I don’t have a pathological hatred of Obama, but I am not impressed by him either and wouldn’t mind someone else. But the same goes for all those GOP hopefuls.
Houndentenor // Jun 24, 2011 at 11:22 pm
This may be how these things play out now. The right overstated its case against Clinton (claims the Clintons had people murdered, etc.), the left against Bush and now the right again overstating claims against Obama. The result is sympathy among those in the middle.
Arms Merchant // Jun 25, 2011 at 12:23 am
Am I missing something? Your excerpt from the speech has one assertion, “No administration in modern times has failed younger blacks more than the Obama administration,” and a bunch of stats, none of which refute the 41% figure (BTW, the Puget Sound Business Journal says unemployment among black teens in Washington state is 40.7% according to a study by the pro-business Employment Policy Institute). That seems reasonable compared to the other stats you present.
http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2011/06/13/washington-state-teen-unemployment.html
OK, so Gingrich is not overstating the problem. Is he overstating when he said the Administration has failed young people [on the employment front] more than any other in recent times?
Well, how could paying off banksters, union cronies and public employees in a useless “stimulus,” picking winners and losers in the mortgage market, imposing crushing new regulations that won’t do anything to control health spending or rein in Fanny or Freddy, doubling the national debt, doing nothing to staunch the borrowing/printing of new trillions annually, threatening to “punish our enemies,” and starting a new, expensive, unauthorized war NOT undermine business confidence and stable expectations?
Hell, under those circumstances, I wouldn’t hire anyone either.
nhthinker // Jun 25, 2011 at 8:01 am
Frum get is wrong again.
Overall, Americans consume much more per capita than their equivalents in Asia.
This is basically caused by the glory days of the 1950s when American workers were many times more productive than their equivalents in Asia.
Americans came to believe that Americans deserved more and spent without understanding of competitive productivity.
Over the past 60 years, American politicians worried about pandering to different voters and assumed some sort of large politically spending would continue to allow Americans to consume at a much higher rate than the average “middle-income” world citizen. (This is not a recent Bush versus Obama issue: they both doubled down on government overspending that increased the inefficiency of Americans compared to the competitors of the 22nd century.)
Frum continues with the pandering: What is the government doing FOR African-Americans? What is the government doing FOR illegal aliens?
Government is supposed to be concerned about “general welfare”- government to be used by all citizens, not special interest pandering to a voting block.
Frum has devolved into just a pandering political “strategist”- he is no longer the man espousing principles instead of politics that William F Buckley found so inspiring.
ggore // Jun 25, 2011 at 10:17 am
Everything Newt says is “Never has there been”, “the worst in our country’s history”, “Never have we seen”, “worst ever”, etc etc etc when referring to Obama. Anyone with a sane mind knows this is not true, not me, nor any other potential voter, so to try and pin Obama with those monikers is just turning off voters as it has every other time he has used those expressions.
The Bush years WERE the start of this Great Recession, and yes I do not believe Obama has made things much better himself, but unless I read the Constitution wrong, legislation is done by Congress, not the President, so I place some good portion of the bame firmly in their laps as they have not been able to get anything meaningful done on their own because of their silly partisan squabbling, be it right or wrong in anyone’s eyes.
When you hamstring the stimulus programs by never actually giving OUT the majority of the money, you cannot come back later and complain that the stimulus did not work!
When you deregulate the oil & gas markets so that speculators can come in and buy up the entire supply, run up the price based on NOTHING but that speculation which causes what little recovery the economy has made to come to a screeching halt, you cannot then blame Obama for releasing some of the Strategic Reserve in order to drive some of those speculators out of the market and get gas prices to go down a little in an effort to jumpstart the economy again. Demand for oil/gas is DOWN, people, there was NO reason for gas prices to be skyrocketing like they were, but Republicans saw this as a great way to blame Obama for not doing more for the economy, and the sensible voters among us see right through that ploy!
politicalfan // Jun 26, 2011 at 1:26 am
Demand for oil/gas is DOWN, people, there was NO reason for gas prices to be skyrocketing like they were, but Republicans saw this as a great way to blame Obama for not doing more for the economy, and the sensible voters among us see right through that ploy!
Bush got blamed for a lot of things as well if we’re to be honest. If we didn’t have to sit through the series of tit for tats, we might actually get something done. Do they recycle this stuff every 4 years?
http://articles.cnn.com/2008-07-17/politics/congress.oil_1_drilling-anwr-pelosi?_s=PM:POLITICS
(‘Two oil men’ to blame for high gas prices, Pelosi says).
http://www.factcheck.org/2011/03/is-obama-to-blame-for-4-gasoline/
(“Is Obama to blame for $4 gasoline?”)
http://money.cnn.com/2011/06/24/news/economy/gdp/index.htm
Where does Newt come in to this equation? (Unemployment and higher inflation).
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