Republicans: Listen Before You Talk

Republicans talk too much
about business owners and entrepreneurs, but that is more a symptom
than a disease. The Republicans’ real problem is not one of talking, but of listening.

Take Mitt Romney: Whenever he was in an environment where he
felt safe, Romney would always go back to the complaints, resentments and
struggles he had heard about from business owners. Romney had developed an
instinctive sense of this group’s priorities. He had taken the time to
learn how this group thought. Romney seemed to make no such effort to understand
the priorities of people who were at or just under the earnings median. Romney’s
real problem wasn’t what he was saying. The problem was who he was listening to—or
rather who he 
wasn’t listening to.

Ronald
Reagan is called a great communicator (and rightly so), but “great
communicator” often seems reduced to “great talker”. That is a reason why
Reagan was so misunderestimated by his contemporary liberal opponents. It is
also why his present-day conservative admirers can’t seem to replicate
Reagan’s appeal to the persuadable voters of our time. Mario Cuomo was a great
talker. Ted Cruz is a great talker. But neither is in Reagan’s league as a communicator.

Reagan
had developed a lifelong habit of listening to the people he hoped to
persuade. As described in Reagan, In His
Own Hand, before he figured out how to win over an audience,
Reagan tried to get a sense of the priorities and worldviews of the
constituency he was trying to win over.

That was why Mario Cuomo could not counter Reagan’s appeal. It
wasn’t just a talking contest. Reagan had listened to what the “Reagan
Democrats” had been thinking. Cuomo could have listened, too, but that would
have meant being exposed to a lot of opinions about taxes, crime, and
welfare that Cuomo did not want to hear. The result was a 1984 Democratic
National Convention speech that seemed to have been delivered from another world.
Liberal journalists wanted to live on that world, but most people didn’t.
It was pretty good talking, but it was not good communicating. (By the same
token, Ted Cruz is a great talker, but Cruz actually got a slightly
smaller share of the popular vote in Texas than the no-so-great talking Mitt
Romney.)

It is fine that Republicans like Eric Cantor wants to talk more about the middle-class, but talking
should be heavily supplemented with listening to what persuadable voters
already believe and what their priorities are. There are a few resources
to help get Republicans started. There is Henry Olsen on the priorities of
non-evangelical working-class whites. The College
Republicans
produced a
nuanced report on the opinions, priorities, and media consumption habits of
young voters. Trying to find a better speaker (or a better speech) to win over
voters who are at or just under the median is starting at the wrong end of the
problem. It starts with listening and finding the common ground.