If people suspect you don’t care about them, they will rarely follow you, no matter how right your solutions may sound.

Conservatism Is Compassionate

By Mark Rodgers and Jedd Medefind

If people suspect you don't care about them, they will rarely follow you, no matter how right your solutions may sound. Therein lies the challenge – and promise – for conservatives.

In the aftermath of last week's elections in Virginia and New Jersey, much has been said about what the results portend for Republicans in the next election cycle. But let's not lose sight of the lessons learned only last year.

After the shellshock of the 2012 election wore off, the Republican National Committee released their “Growth and Opportunity Project” report, which rightly observed that “the perception that the GOP does not care about people is doing great harm to the Party and its candidates on the federal level, especially in presidential years. It is a major deficiency that must be addressed.” Wisdom offered by Aristotle over 2,000 years ago helps us grasp the severity of this problem.

Aristotle observed that what draws people to trust and follow a leader hinges on three main elements: competence (do they know what they're doing?), integrity (are they trustworthy?), and goodwill (do they really care about people like me?). 

According to Aristotle, the importance of one far outstrips the others: goodwill.

If people suspect you don’t care about them, they will rarely follow you, no matter how right your solutions may sound.

That’s bad news for today’s Republicans.

In the 2012 presidential election, GOP standard bearer Mitt Romney polled 20 points behind his opponent on perceptions of the candidates’ “caring about average people.” In another poll, only 33 percent believed Romney “cares about people like me.” Aristotle would have needed no other data to predict the election’s outcome.

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