CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICAN ‘REFORMOCONS’ “One recent morning [2015] at the Jefferson Hotel, in Washington, D.C.,

Peter Wehner, a conservative writer who served as an adviser for the past
three Republican Presidents, described his party's problems over a bowl of
oatmeal. He said, ‘We got clobbered in 2012’- the fifth Presidential election
out of the past six in which the Republican candidate lost the popular vote.
‘There's a demographic problem. White votes are going down two points every
year. We're out of touch with the middle class.’ Mitt Romney- whose very hair
embodies wealthy privilege - was nominated at a national convention, in Tampa,
that became an Ayn Rand-style celebration of business executives, the heroic ‘makers.

“During the campaign, Romney wrote off forty-seven per cent of the
country - the ‘takers’- as government parasites. He went on to lose badly to
President Barack Obama, whom Republicans had regarded as an obvious failure,
a target as vulnerable as Jimmy Carter. In the shock of that defeat, Wehner said,
some conservatives realized that ‘there was a need for a policy agenda that reaches
the middle class.’ He added, ‘This was not a blinding insight.’”

Packer, George, “The Republican Class War,” pp: 26-34, The New Yorker,
November 9, 2015.