The Message

Let's grant to David Frum that politics is a game of addition. Who do we add to Joe the Plumber to make a winning coalition? If we go after wealthy coastal voters, we have to be able to demonstrate greater credibility on economic issues than the Democrats. Depending on what happens in the Obama Administration, I suspect that might be very plausible soon enough.

I don't think it will work to shave the values issues. Politically speaking, the differences are too wide, as Ross points out. Not only that, there's nothing we can deliver on anyway. For the bluebloods and the bobos, much of the values conflict (environmentalism in particular) is an attempt to maintain superior social status over the red state bourgeios and those that represent them, ie, the Palins. Given that the Palins are exactly the sort of people who keeping us from being a typical useless Euroweenie country, we gotta have their back. And if it were up to me, this is exactly the argument I'd make to the bluebloods. For whatever is wrong with the USA, it should be clear that it's in better shape than the major Western European countries, every which way it's possible to measure.