At the City Journal, Tevi Troy, a Bush administration policy adviser and former deputy secretary of health and human services, has put together a really smart and accessible policy brief on how the GOP can expand it’s tent. The Tea Party momentum is great, but he argues that if Republicans zero in on five forward-looking issue areas, they can also win back the votes of professional classes — think Doctors, Wall Street, Silicon Valley and even academia. These groups have trended Democratic in recent years, but there’s a lot of evidence to show that a lot of these groups haven’t always been natural Democratic constituencies, even if we’ve come to think of them that way in recent years:
Recommended Stories
Doctors, like Wall Street execs, have a Republican history, but there are signs that they, too, are moving away from the party. From 1998 through 2006, Republicans garnered 67 percent of all campaign contributions from the American Medical Association; but by 2008, Democrats were pulling in 56 percent, and the AMA proceeded to support President Obama’s health-care overhaul. While the AMA represents only 29 percent or so of American doctors, this is a troubling development for the GOP.
In response to this opportunity, Troy has some very discussion worthy policy ideas for winning these votes back. Areas discussed include education reform, free trade, fiscal discipline, spurring innovation and encouraging more legal immigration for those with economically productive skill sets. I won’t go into a whole lot of detail, except to say that there’s a smart, conservative-friendly spin on all of these issues. Read the whole thing.
