True conservatives are generally against identity politics. Because we do not believe in picking out particular groups for special treatment, we simply do not engage in actively pursuing a group based on their ethnicity, sex, sexual preference, whatever. We need to recognize though, that a large segment of the population does indeed identify themselves as a group defined partially by these parameters.

I hate pandering. I hate the way that a group in the federal government can hold sway over a segment of the populous by promising them special treatment. I hate the divisiveness this practice causes. The Left promises us in this new administration there will be a new uniting fashion of politics yet they still promote class warfare. Today a new task force was launched to focus on the middle class. We were informed by Obamassiah that there is no conflict between labor unions and business. “Those are the old rules,” he said. So He speaks and makes it so?  Labor unions are committed to getting the most money for the least productivity; businesses to getting the most productivity for the least money. Nope, no conflict there.

This is one reason I am a conservative. I do not believe a politician, however his pectorals glisten (I am talking to you Washington Post), can speak and make it so. If there is conflict to be resolved, it is not between one class and another or one sex and its employers or one race and its oppressors. Conflict happens on an individual scale. Conflict is between one unique individual and the struggles he or she encounters during the course of the adventure we call life. Washington bureaucracy attempts to offer one-size-fits-all solutions to disparate situations involving millions of people these politicians have never met. Better for the individuals to be free to solve their own conflicts.

The Left comes from a position that there is such a thing as too much freedom. Of course, this never applies to mocked up CGI children having sex online for the pleasure of future baby rapists. The pornographers, degenerates and criminals can never have enough rights for some reason. The real danger is the freedom of a single mom to put a sign outside her house offering to do taxes cheap. The Jamaican couple braiding hair without a cosmetology license in D.C. These are the folks exercising too much freedom.

The Left claims they want to help the little guy but every choice they make benefits the behemoths. They keep the poor quiet with some welfare and food stamps and then they regulate every breath you take so that the poor will always be that way. The Left does not follow policies that will make everyone prosper. They follow policies that will allow the government to decide who will prosper and who will not. 

While I abhor identity politics, I also believe the Republican Party has done a deplorable job of recognizing that there are people in this country who do identify themselves strongly as part of a particular group, and that it is not pandering to address to those particular groups the ways in which conservative ideals will benefit them. 

It saddens me that the great hope for blacks in our nation holds the very ideals that will stop the poorest blacks from ever escaping the cycle of poverty that ensnares them. While I cannot help but feel proud for African Americans who rejoice to see Barack Obama and his family in the White House, I also recognize that the very policies he supports are the policies that will make sure the most underprivileged of his racial brethren never have the opportunities he has had. No one ever got rich off welfare. Redistribution of wealth only moves a limited quantity of cash around from one place to another. Persistently high taxes on businesses drive higher prices, reducing the purchasing power of everyone, including the poor. They also drive businesses overseas, robbing the unskilled of job opportunities here at home. The Left likes to play the “Tax the Rich” game, without ever recognizing that eventually there will not be any rich left to support these social programs. 

In contrast, allowing the rich to get richer and invest more money in jobs here at home that must be filled by unskilled workers gives the poor a chance to better themselves. More importantly, it actually creates wealth rather than moving some from here to there. The family income of Joe Shmoe is not lower because Exxon made record profits this year. If Joe happens to be a roughneck, he is glad Exxon made record profits because it means he will probably have a job next year. 

The first woman ever to become a millionaire by her own achievements (and no John Kerry, marrying money is not your own achievement) was Madame C.J. Walker. This first freeborn child in her family was born December 23, 1867 and hailed from a plantation in Delta, Louisiana. At 14 she married and at 20 she was widowed with a young daughter. She worked as a laundress, but eventually began her own line of hair care products for blacks. She died, with over 3,000 employees in her business, at the Italianate mansion she had constructed in Rockefeller’s neighborhood in New York. Tell me if you will what inner city youth faces a greater challenge than this child of slaves who became the first woman white or black to earn a million dollars? Well they do have a greater challenge, but it is not the bogeyman the Left leads you to believe it is.

The fact is that today, Madame C.J. would probably stay a laundress. How could she possibly afford to start a business? Would she have the money on her $1.50 a day laundress wages to pay a CPA to ensure she complied with the tax codes? Who would verify she was in compliance with the 75,000 (yes that is thousand) pages of codes regulating business owners in the country today? In a time when there really was institutionalized racism and there really was an effort to oppress blacks and keep them from prospering, Madame C.J. Walker had the freedom to go around the ‘man’ and put her own God-given talents to work as her own boss. Today, when the KKK is a joke to any thinking person, when there are laws, entitlements, and pandering politicians, the very interference of the government ‘for our own good’ would succeed where racists failed. Madame C.J. would have to settle for Food Stamps.

Genuine conservatives want these regulations to go away. We want the Madame C.J.s of our generation to have a clear path to prosperity, not a front row seat mired in the public dole. Where are the conservatives who will recognize that it is not pandering to express the benefits of your ideals for those people who feel the Republican Party has abandoned them? We do not need to change our beliefs, we need to change the way they are communicated. I believe there is only a very small contingent of citizens who would rather be guaranteed bread and water, than have the possibility of earning lobster dinner. We need to frame the discussion in that way and reach out to those who feel they are marginalized by our beliefs. Real conservatives are not the friend of big business, liberals and the regulatory standards that can only be met by the incredibly wealthy are. God willing the new chair of the RNC will recognize this and more importantly help us to communicate it to those who need to hear.