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Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game? by Pat Shortridge on National Review Online

At a time when Americans are darn-near panicked about their jobs, their savings, the value of their houses, the value of their retirement plans, the constant squeeze on their pocketbooks, they are naturally focused on the biggest of big issues. This is an election where the old stand-bys — abortion, gay marriage, guns, et al. — are not going to matter as much.

Some on the Right wonder why Republican politicians aren’t talking about the usual issues. Easy: Voters aren’t talking about them. They aren’t talking about liberal staples like education or the environment either. Voters are talking about the fundamentals.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan wasn’t campaigning on Billy Carter or the killer rabbit. With the misery index through the roof and the Soviets on the march, he was campaigning on the economy and a strong America. He knew intuitively what Americans were concerned about; he knew what needed to be done and he focused on it incessantly. And he won in a landslide.

The problem with Republican candidates today is that they seem dangerously out of touch. All this talk of bipartisanship and bringing people together is insane. Bring whom together to do what? The current crowd in Washington with their bottom-feeding approval ratings? People don’t want them “brought together”; they want them run out of town on a rail. They want someone to be held accountable for the scandalous incompetence that has brought us to where we are today.

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