Republican Presidential Contenders offer slogans, not proposals

So seemed the analysis by conservative commentator David Brooks on Friday's News Hour with Jim Lehrer.

Mr. Brooks appeared baffled by the approach taken by the men - particularly in a debate supposedly centered on economic conditions.

Here are some excerpts of Mr. Brooks' comments and a link to the segment.

"...it is certainly true there's a greater sense of economic anxiety among the middle class, people making $40,000 to $60,000, $70,000 a year. And those people, at least white people in that income group, are the core of the Republican Party.

The Republicans won the white working class by 23 percentage points in the 2004 election. And if you looked at that debate, you would say, what on Earth are they offering these people? Nothing. There was no conversation about what they're going through, what barriers they may have to mobility. There were no proposals, and there really are no proposals out there.

And what's striking is, you look at that debate, they're talking about the line-item veto? Well, how many people are sitting around the kitchen table thinking about that? They're talking about reducing corporate taxes. How does that touch directly to these people's lives?

It's airy-fairy. It's abstract, that kind of debate, and that's one of the reasons so many conservatives are sort of dispirited, a loss of touch with the way actual voters live."

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/%20july-dec07/bdgore_10-12.html

Later in the segment, Mr. Brooks continued:

"...objectively, living standards are going up, nobody disputes that, more cars, more TVs, bigger homes, but wages are not going up for a lot of people, and especially for men in the middle class. And so those people -- and then insecurity, for the reasons E.J. (Dionne) talked about, are also going up.

So it's sort of a complicated economic picture, but the bottom line is that we're seeing huge productivity gains. And those productivity gains are not being translated to middle-class workers with medium to low skills. So what are you going to do for those people? And what are you going to do for those people to remind them that their kids are going to have better opportunities than they have?

And, frankly, I think I don't agree with all the proposals, but the Democrats have proposals. I'm not sure the Republicans have proposals about that."

These observations are significant. It's an opportunity for Democrats to reclaim this group - which was historically loyal to them. Which candidate would be most likely to appeal to them?

In my opinion, John Edwards.