The Conservatives' Secular Problem: Lovin' Low Wages

The Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol (part of Thursday's Big Con Face-Off [1], RSVP now! [2]) today published online this from Irwin Stelzer, warning fellow conservatives [3] of horrible developments ahead:

...part of the Democratic party's tilt in favor of "the little guy," [is] to raise the minimum hourly wage from $5.15 to $7.25.

That is designed to help directly the 5.6 million workers (4 percent of the workforce) now earning less than $7.25 per hour, and indirectly the 7.4 million (6 percent of the workforce) earning close to that wage whose pay would also go up. To them, the recent election has mattered. As it will for those whose jobs disappear because they are not profitable workers at the new, higher wages.

This is more evidence the conservatives' secular problem persists.

Their problem winning secular voters does not just stem from positions on social issues, but also from failure to address the broad range of substantive concerns [4] of secular voters, and many religious voters as well.

Like wages. Eighty percent of Americans [5] believed it's way past due to raise the minimum wage, and in November they voted out the conservatives who sat on their hands.

Stelzer desperately tries to turn the minimum wage into an "Us vs. Them" [6] issue. (Only the stinky poor will benefit! Your businesses will be destroyed!)

But that argument was lost long ago.

He ends by turning wages, and other economic issues, into a right-wing rallying cry -- "the choice is between supply-siders and redistributionists. These elections matter."

That cry will only deepen the conservative secular problem.