Let me specify a seemingly cynical, self-serving definition of quality from the GOP standpoint: Quality births are those that are likely to lead to more Republican votes, both now and in the next generation. Out-of-wedlock births tend to leave women stranded in Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” and put their children on the fast track for a life of voting for tax-and-spend politicians. Single mothers vote GOP far less than married mothers (just as single men vote Republican less than married men). And their offspring are more likely to grow up on welfare and thus become natural Democrats.
You might think that the Republican brain trust would carefully monitor illegitimacy trends as a serious threat to preserving the GOP’s putative 53 percent. Yet barely anyone on the conservative side has acknowledged how badly this crucial marker went off the rails during the second Bush Administration, much less analyzed how Bush’s policies were complicit.
