A Conservative Intellectual Warns The GOP Against Mentioning Inequality

Ramesh Ponnuru explains why the GOP has been using rising inequality as weapon against Obama.

Republicans are taking up inequality as an issue now for three reasons. It provides a way of attacking Mr. Obama’s economic record even as unemployment rates drop. It gives them an opportunity to deploy rhetoric usually associated with liberals against him and his party. And Republicans have grown increasingly aware, since their defeat in the 2012 election, that their party has a damaging reputation for caring only about the economic interests of the rich.

Ponnuru claims that President Obama has shifted his rhetoric away from inequality to the problem of social mobility.  He argues that the electorate cares more about improving their living standards than it does about the rich getting richer.  The GOP ought to do the same thing.  If Ponnuru had his way, politicians in both parties would never mention the problem of rising income inequality.