Storified by Brian Empric· Fri, Mar 15 2013 18:46:48
“In the 2012 election, President Obama won 93 percent of the black vote, 71 percent of the Hispanic vote and 73 percent of the Asian vote, helping him coast to a victory over Republican Mitt Romney.”
“Democrats are already whispering about how demographics could quickly turn traditionally red states like Arizona and Texas blue. Asians and Hispanics are the fastest-rising electoral groups in the country.”
“’Our legacy is going to be that we were the RNC that actually turned the talk into action and cared most about moving the dial, not a couple of good stories that we could spin out and have a few good days here and there, but have a long-lasting change for the future of our party and our country,’ he said in an interview.”
“The chairman argues that by appealing more to minority voters, Republicans can broaden the electoral playing field. Right now, he says the GOP is too dependent on running the table in a handful of states.”
“The RNC’s Growth and Opportunity Project is taking a two-pronged approach in addressing these challenges – one that focuses on micro-targeted community-based outreach, and one that communicates a more positive broader message that voters can connect with emotionally.
“On the grassroots side, Priebus acknowledged that ‘our contacts are lousy,’ and that for too long the party has executed a ‘get out the vote effort four months before the election,’ while Democrats have cultivated long-term relationships at the local level.”
“The second initiative is improving the GOP’s message to and image with minority groups… ‘In order to start winning presidential elections, I think we have to start winning over people’s hearts,’ Priebus said.”
“I don’t think it’s something that’s going to happen in two months,” he said. “I think it could take a couple of years, two years, four years, this is a long view…”
“Each week brings a new diagnosis of the party’s woes. Karl Rove says it’s candidate quality. Mitt Romney chief strategist Stuart Stevens argues Democrats have won over minority voters through government programs like Obamacare. Some Bush White House vets say it’s the GOP’s trouble understanding how to approach a changing electorate. Techy conservatives blame the party’s inferior social media presence and outdated voter targeting and data-mining.”
“There’s a split between those who believe the party’s problem is cosmetic, those who believe it’s data-based and those who think it’s ideological and policy-based. Within those camps, there’s no common ground on what a better approach would look like.”
“[T]he Republican National Committee is moving ahead with what Chairman Reince Priebus has at times called an 'autopsy' into 2012… (Republican pollster David) Winston (@dhwinston) said he hopes and assumes that the RNC critique will ‘define what went wrong so you can get everybody focused on what the solution should look like.’”
“I think there will always be tension between moderates in the party and the conservative base, but that has existed for decades and only goes away after we win an election. It went away for a bit after Reagan, and it went away for a bit after Bush 41,” said conservative strategist Greg Mueller (@gregmcrc). “But in losing,” he added, “it’s back with some intensity.”
“Reince is ‘hamstrung, because he was a good man for the moment. … someone who would put his head down and rebuild’ the RNC, said one Priebus supporter… But ‘now it’s a problem because the party needs to start running ahead of where the congressional leadership is,’ the source added, saying Priebus needs to take his approach to running the committee to the next level to help the party navigate a path forward.”
“The state of affairs has allowed Rove to remain a strong force in the party — despite his critics sensing vulnerability after raising $300 million to run ads that failed to move the needle. He emerged from 2012 dinged up by the results, but until someone unifies the party, he will remain one of its top strategists.”
“Everyone agrees that there are several areas that must be improved upon including better messaging, engaging with minority groups, improving our digital capabilities and a multiyear sustained ground and engagement effort,” said RNC spokesman Sean Spicer (@seanspicer).
“Mueller, the conservative strategist, argued that Republicans need to focus more on the use of social media and data gathering — the latter in particular being an area where the party can fill a void.”
“There now is a growing impulse that the generational shift that is occurring at the candidate level is also needed at the consultant level,” said pollster Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls). “It won’t matter which fresh faces the GOP runs for the presidency if the same folks are pulling the strings and calling the shots.”
“Nearly four months after the election, most everybody seems to agree that something is amiss with the GOP. This consensus has provoked a stream of free advice for how Republicans can get back on their feet. Some of it is constructive and helpful… But much of the ‘advice’ amounts to a victory lap by liberal Democrats and their friends in the media, many of whom seem to think that a successful Republican party would be one that closely resembles the Democrats.”
“On the plus side of the ledger, we have the party’s strength in the states… All told, Republicans have unified control of 25 states, with 53 percent of the nation’s population. Compare that with the Democrats, who control 13 states with 30 percent of the American public… Republicans also control the House of Representatives and retain enough seats to filibuster in the Senate.”
“Finally, the Republican coalition is reasonably united. Naturally, there are fissures—notably, the divide between the so-called establishment wing of the party and the Tea Party ‘opposition.’ Nevertheless, historical perspective is appropriate here. While the media like to play up today’s divisions, the party remains generally united around a set of policy goals—tax reform and sensible deregulation to jump-start the economy, entitlement reform to solve the debt crisis, the expansion of domestic energy production, and so on.”
“When a party does not control the White House, it is largely incapable of achieving collective goals because no one person or group is ‘in charge.’ Today, no single Republican—not House speaker John Boehner, not Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, not party chairman Reince Preibus, or anyone else—has the power to induce the various factions within the party to cooperate… This means that there are limits to the kinds of reform the Republican party can undertake…”
“Another liability is President Barack Obama himself. He is not a good partner for constructive governance, even in areas where there might be agreement… How can he be trusted? At any moment, he could scuttle a deal, then hold a press conference to blame Republicans.”
“While it is fortunate that the GOP controls (the House of Representatives) because it can veto the liberal agenda, it is a perfect straw man for this president. And indeed, President Obama has used the bully pulpit masterfully, convincing the public that congressional Republicans are to blame for the breakdown in Washington governance…”
“House conservatives unfortunately are in no position to enact a conservative alternative (to Obama’s agenda). Nor, for that matter, can they even force President Obama to reject it; Senate Democrats will reliably table anything that makes Obama look bad well before it gets to his desk. However, they can stop the advance of the left. This is not nothing, considering the ambitions of the president…”
“Hindsight is 20/20, and it appears clear in retrospect that congressional Republicans made a mistake in trying to force President Obama to deal responsibly with the country’s fiscal problems. He is not interested in leading (or following) on this issue. Worse, he has used the megaphone of the presidency to cast Republicans as the irresponsible party… This is probably the GOP’s number one danger moving forward. It cannot allow President Obama to create the impression that Republicans are too radical or dangerous to govern…”
“While avoiding unproductive confrontations in Washington, Republicans should turn their attention to the states as the main arena for conservative reforms. Which state leaders have been successful? Why have they succeeded? How can these lessons be translated to the national stage? Republicans should be optimistic about their future because, with so many leaders on the state level, it is possible for the GOP to get answers to these questions between now and 2016. Put another way, the GOP is like a baseball team that just missed the playoffs, but is fortunate to have an excellent system of farm clubs.”
“Insofar as the party is capable of collective action, its efforts should focus on finding quality candidates, both for 2014 and 2016. A lot of this simply comes down to convincing the top tier of would-be Republican officeholders that the country’s problems are too dire for them to refuse the call to service…”
“The 2012 election was not only a dismal showing for the Republicans but the continuation of a dismal, 20-year trend. Out of the last six presidential elections, four have gone to the Democratic nominee, at an average yield of 327 electoral votes to 210 for the Republican. During the preceding two decades, from 1968 to 1988, Republicans won five out of six elections, averaging 417 electoral votes to the Democrats’ 113. In three of those contests, the Democrats failed to muster even 50 electoral votes.”
“The first factor is America’s changing demographics. Much has been written on this topic, but the essential datum is the long-term shrinking of those demographic groups, especially white voters, who traditionally and reliably favor the GOP: from 89 percent of the electorate in 1976 to 72 percent in 2012… In any given contest, the GOP can overcome this obstacle. Over time, however, the obstacle will grow ever larger… Republicans, in short, have a winning message for an electorate that no longer exists.”
“Another factor lies in the realm of foreign policy… With the end of the Cold War in 1989, this potent issue was largely taken off the table…”
“Then there is the quality of the candidates fielded by the two sides. Democrats have nominated two candidates—Bill Clinton and Barack Obama—endowed with formidable political skills. The former is one of the most naturally gifted politicians in modern American history; the latter is one of the most ruthlessly efficient ones. Republican presidential candidates, in contrast, have sometimes shown a marked inability to connect with the concerns of working- and middle-class voters or to convince such voters that Republican policies will help improve their prospects in life…”
“Reasonable tax rates and sound monetary policy remain important economic commitments. But America now confronts a series of challenges that have to do with globalization, stagnant wages, the loss of blue-collar jobs, exploding health-care and college costs, and the collapse of the culture of marriage.”
“As much as at any time in recent history, America needs a strong, vibrant party on the right to speak for the civilizing ideal of limited government. Barack Obama has put in place an agenda of unreconstructed progressivism that is at war, not only with Reaganism, but also with Clintonism. He has exacerbated a massive fiscal imbalance, added a poorly designed entitlement that further destabilizes the health sector, and sounded an uncertain trumpet of global leadership. If Republicans urgently need to recalibrate, and they do, it is because the stakes are so high.
“Among some party loyalists, there is a natural tendency to maintain that the GOP is simply suffering from a ‘communications problem,’ that if only Republicans spoke more loudly, more insistently, and with greater purity and passion, they would broaden their appeal and proceed to sweep national elections. But that counsel, appealing as it might be to a shrinking segment of the electorate, is surely not adequate to present circumstances. More is needed than pumping up the volume.”
Gerson & Wehner compile a list of five necessary steps to breathe new life into the GOP and enlarge its appeal while sticking to core principles:
1. Focus on the economic concerns of working-and middle-class Americans
“[M]any (working-and middle-class Americans) now regard the Republican Party as beholden to ‘millionaires and billionaires’ and as wholly out of touch with ordinary Americans.”
“In developing a response to these perceptions, Republicans should not downplay their traditional strengths. Given the feeble path of economic growth, reasonable tax rates and a rational tax code are prerequisites for future job creation at sufficient levels. Given the unsustainable path of health-oriented entitlement spending—which threatens to crowd out every other form of federal spending—some party must rise to responsibility. And given the vast potential economic advantage of newly discovered energy sources—both natural gas and shale oil—Republicans should stand for their responsible exploitation.”
“Republicans could begin by becoming visible and persistent critics of corporate welfare: the vast network of subsidies and tax breaks extended by Democratic and Republican administrations alike to wealthy and well-connected corporations. Such benefits undermine free markets and undercut the public’s confidence in American capitalism. They also increase federal spending... ‘Ending corporate welfare as we know it’: For a pro-market party, this should be a rich vein to mine.”
“America’s five largest banks hold assets equal to 60 percent of our economy, a highly dangerous concentration and source of undue political power. These mega-banks—both ‘too big to fail’ and ‘too complex to manage’—are the unnatural result of government subsidies, not market forces. By supporting the breakup of the big banks, Republicans would encourage competition and create a decentralized system more likely to survive future economic earthquakes.”
“Rather than being exclusively focused on budget numbers or individual economic rights, Republicans would be demonstrating a limited but active role for government: helping individuals attain the skills and values—the social capital—that allow them to succeed in a free economy…”
2. Welcome rising immigrant groups
“Instead of signaling that America is a closed society, which it is not and never has been, Republicans would do better to stress the assimilating power of American ideals—the power whereby strangers become neighbors and fellow citizens.”
3. Express and demonstrate a commitment to the common good
“There is an impression—exaggerated but not wholly without merit—that the GOP is hyper-individualistic. During the Republican convention, for example, we repeatedly heard about the virtues of individual liberty but almost nothing about the importance of community or social solidarity, and of the obligations and attachments we have to each other. Even Republican figures who espouse relatively moderate policy prescriptions often sound like libertarians run amok.”
“In pointing to dangers of an expanding central government, Republicans can rightly cite not only the constraints it places on individual initiative but also its crowding-out of civil society and citizen engagement…”
“American society comprises more than private individuals on the one hand, government on the other. Republicans and conservatives can and should take their policy bearings from that crucial fact.”
4. Engage vital social issues forthrightly but in a manner that is aspirational rather than alienating
“Addressing the issue of marriage and family is not optional; it is essential. Far from being a strictly private matter, the collapse of the marriage culture in America has profound public ramifications, affecting everything from welfare and education to crime, income inequality, social mobility, and the size of the state. Yet few public or political figures are even willing to acknowledge that this collapse is happening.”
“Yes, the ability of government to shape attitudes and practices regarding family life is very limited. But a critical first step is to be clear and consistent about the importance of marriage itself—as the best institution ever devised when it comes to raising children, the single best path to a life out of poverty, and something that needs to be reinforced rather than undermined by society.”
5. Harness policy views to the findings of science
“This has been effectively done on the pro-life issue, with sonograms that reveal the humanity of a developing child…”
“To acknowledge climate disruption need hardly lead one to embrace Al Gore’s policy agenda… Republicans could back an entrepreneurial approach to technical and scientific investment as opposed to the top-down approach of unwieldy government bureaucracies offering huge subsidies to favored companies such as Solyndra.”
Gerson & Wehner recognize that these five steps are “neither comprehensive nor definitive, but is intended as a starting point for discussion.”
“Its aim is to locate a means of broadening the appeal of the GOP without violating the party’s core principles of life and liberty...”
“These corrections will be the work of many hands, including governors, members of Congress, and policy entrepreneurs… This movement, right now, lacks a headquarters.”
“Any fair-minded survey of rising Republican leaders… suggests that the GOP possesses impressive political talent. Their challenge is both to refine and relaunch the Republican message, to propose policies that symbolize values and cultural understanding, to reconnect with a middle America that looks different than it once did, and to confront old attitudes, not from time to time, but every day.”
“For generations, the Republican Party had presented itself as the political vehicle for Americans whose opposition to ever-bigger government financed by ever-higher taxes makes them a ‘country class.’ Yet modern Republican leaders, with the exception of the Reagan Administration, have been partners in the expansion of government, indeed in the growth of a government-based ‘ruling class.’ They have relished that role despite their voters. Thus these leaders gradually solidified their choice to no longer represent what had been their constituency, but to openly adopt the identity of junior partners in that ruling class…”
“Increasingly the top people in government, corporations, and the media collude and demand submission as did the royal courts of old. This marks these political orphans as a ‘country class.’”
“The Republican leadership’s kinship with the socio-political class that runs modern government is deep. Country class Americans have but to glance at the Media to hear themselves insulted from on high as greedy, racist, violent, ignorant extremists. Yet far has it been from the Republican leadership to defend them. Whenever possible, the Republican Establishment has chosen candidates for office – especially the Presidency – who have ignored, soft-pedaled or given mere lip service to their voters’ identities and concerns.”
“While the ruling class is well represented by the Democratic Party, the country class is not represented politically – by the Republican Party or by any other. Well or badly, its demand for representation will be met.”
“To be represented, to trust that one’s own identity and interests are secure and advocated in high places, is to be part of the polity... No one doubts that the absence, loss, or perversion of that function divides the polity sharply between rulers and ruled.”
“Though America’s ruling class is neither as narrow as that of Communist regimes nor as broadly preclusive as that of the European Union, the Republican leadership’s preference for acting as part of the ruling class rather than as representatives of voters who feel set upon has begun to produce the sort of soft pre-emption of opposition and bitterness between rulers and ruled that occurs necessarily wherever representation is mocked.”
“Political partisanship became a more important feature of American life over the past half-century largely because the Democratic Party, which has been paramount within the U.S. government since 1932, entrenched itself as America’s ruler, and its leaders became a ruling class. This caused a Newtonian ‘opposite reaction,’ which continues to gather force.”
“In our time, the Democratic Party gave up the diversity that had characterized it since Jeffersonian times… it came to consist almost exclusively of constituencies that make up government itself or benefit from government… Democrats, formerly the party of slavery and segregation, secured the allegiance of racial minorities by unrelenting assertions that the rest of American society is racist.”
“The civilization of the ruling class does not concede that those who resist it have any moral or intellectual right, and only reluctantly any civil right, to do so. Resistance is illegitimate because it can come only from low motives. President Obama’s statement that Republican legislators – and hence the people who elect them – don’t care whether ‘seniors have decent health care…children have enough to eat’ is typical.
“Republican leaders neither parry the insults nor vilify their Democratic counterparts in comparable terms because they do not want to beat the ruling class, but to join it in solving the nation’s problems. How did they come to cut such pathetic figures?
“The Republican Party never fully adapted itself to the fact that modern big government is an interest group in and of itself, inherently at odds with the rest of society, that it creates a demand for representation by those it alienates, and hence that politicians must choose whether to represent the rulers or the ruled…”
“In sum, the closer one gets to the Republican Party’s voters, the more the Party looks like Goldwater and Reagan. The closer one gets to its top, the more it looks like the ghost of Rockefeller…”
“Whoever chooses to represent the country class might have right and reason on their side. Nevertheless they can be certain that the ruling class media will not engage those reasons but vilify the persons who voice them as ignorant, irresponsible, etc. Asserting moral-intellectual superiority, chastising and intimidating rather than persuading opponents is by no means the least of the ruling class’ powers…”
“Recent Presidential elections have shown that contemporary Establishment Republicans elicit scarce, unenthusiastic support even from longtime Republican voters because they are out of synch with their flock… This of course is what happened to the Whig party after 1850.”
“Since America’s first-past-the-post electoral system produces elections between two parties, it was natural for any and all groups who oppose the ruling class to gravitate to the Republican Party. But the Party’s leaders, reasoning that ‘they have nowhere else to go,’ refused to notice that voters were lending their votes out of allegiance to causes rather than to the Party, and that Republican candidates increasingly sought votes through the medium of groups that advocate these causes rather than through the Party Establishment…”
“A new party is likely to arise because the public holds both Republicans and Democrats responsible for the nation’s unsustainable course… One half of the population cannot continue passively to absorb insults without pushing back. When – sooner rather than later – events collapse this house of cards, it will be hard to credibly advocate a better future while bearing a label that advertises responsibility for the present.”
“Almost daily, there is a fresh op-ed or magazine piece from the class of commentators and policy intellectuals urging Republicans to show a little intellectual leg and offer some daring and innovation beyond the old standbys of cutting income taxes and spending. It’s not that the eggheads are urging moderation — it’s more like relevance. The standard plea: The GOP will rebound only when it communicates to working-class and middle-class voters how its ideas will improve their lives.”
“With few exceptions, most of the GOP leadership in Washington is following a business-as-usual strategy. The language and tactics being used in this winter’s battles with President Barack Obama are tried-and-true Republican maxims that date back to the Reagan era or before. And that, say the wonks, spells political danger and more electoral decline.”
“What irritates, and mystifies, so many conservatives is that now would be the obvious time for Republican officeholders to be a little audacious. Losing consecutive presidential elections, it would stand to reason, should prompt some ambitious GOP politician to follow the Jack Kemp model of the Carter years: stepping out of line – Kemp wasn’t even on the House Ways and Means Committee — and proposing some new ideas that could help rebrand the party.”
“[N]o other issue illustrates the ideas and chutzpah gap between the wonks and the officeholders than the matter of financial regulation… Since the election, conservative columnists from George Will to Peggy Noonan have written about the need for Republicans to take a harder line on the banks… But despite the intellectual cover offered by such columns and stories there’s been mostly just silence from Republican officeholders on one of the issues that made it easier for President Barack Obama to brand Mitt Romney as a handmaiden of Wall Street.”
“With ambitious politicians trekking to Wall Street to raise cash and frequently sending their former staffers to lobby for the banks on K Street, the ardor elected Republicans may have for cracking down on financial institutions is diminished.”
“Concord 51, the brainchild of a group of young fiscal conservatives in New York City in their late 20s, among others, is looking to mobilize Republicans under 35 into a national movement.”
“They’re building enthusiasm around a set of conservative values that are more appealing to younger voters, they say — more inclusive of gays, minorities and women — the bigger tent that the GOP needs to build if it wants to win national elections.”
“While much of the GOP’s public soul searching has been over the use of technology, how outside groups spent money and the need to draw Hispanics into the fold, Republicans also have fallen behind in drawing younger voters… Concord 51’s founders hope to change that.”
“The group has built out city chapters in Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Charlotte, Oklahoma City and Dallas and has a presence at five universities, including Fordham, Washington and Lee, and Emory. And, this year they have plans to launch in Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Boston. Their goals are as big as their ambition. Organizers plan to roll out a page on their website for young Republicans interested in running for office. If potential candidates fit the Concord 51 mold, organizers say they want to help train, support and cultivate them to run for public office.”
“The group has targeted their policy positions on fiscal responsibility, energy advancement and a strong defense. And welcomes conservatives who may have varying beliefs on social issues.”
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