Opinion

Welfare state isn’t Bam’s edge

Recently, many conservatives have expressed worry that the growth in the percentage of Americans who pay no federal income tax will make the electorate more supportive of big government.

Paul Ryan said as much last year: “We’re coming close to a tipping point in America where we might have a net majority of takers versus makers in society and that could become very dangerous if it sets in as a permanent condition.”

As an explanation for electoral trends, though, this theory doesn’t hold up.

One major reason for the growth of the federal government in recent years has been that entitlement spending per beneficiary has increased, and so has the number of beneficiaries as people have retired. Yet senior citizens — who benefit from federal programs, on average, far more than younger people — have become more Republican over that same period.

They actually voted for John McCain over Obama in 2008 by a slightly higher margin than they did for George W. Bush over John Kerry in 2004. In 2010, their GOP margin rose even more, to a whopping 21 points. Pollster Scott Rasmussen told me that in his latest poll, Romney still leads among seniors by 19 points.

It’s true that Americans with low incomes — more and more of whom now receive food stamps and federally subsidized health insurance — have generally voted for Democrats over Republicans. But in 2010, these voters shifted toward Republicans even as food stamps, unemployment benefits and the like continued to increase.

Conservatives have even less reason for worrying about people who don’t pay federal income taxes. A major reason that the number of those people has grown is that a Republican-controlled Congress created, and the Bush administration expanded, a tax credit for parents. If there’s any evidence that middle-class parents have become more Democratic, relative to the general electorate, I haven’t seen it.

So why is Obama doing so well in the polls, if increased public dependency on government isn’t the answer?

For starters, the public at large isn’t as convinced as conservatives that he has been a dismal failure. Most people cut him some slack because of the economic crisis that began under a Republican and kept unfolding as Obama took office. They know the economy has changed direction; some think it’s done about as well as it could’ve under the circumstances.

Another reason Obama is doing well might have to do with the weakness of the Republican economic message. Republicans dwell on the heroic entrepreneur held back by taxes and regulation, which must be part of the story that a free-market party tells.

But most people don’t see themselves in that storyline, any more than they see themselves as dependents of the federal government. They don’t see Americans as divided between makers and takers. To the extent Republicans do, they’re handicapping themselves.

Ramesh Ponnuru is a senior editor at National Review. ©2012, Bloomberg News