Whenever I read articles like this that examine the political woes of the Republican Party, I am tempted to think about how I would do things if I went over to the dark side and was tasked with rebuilding the Republican Party. You could call it ‘pity’, ’empathy’, or whatever you want, but I just want to help.
It’s clear that the Republicans are suffering from two immediate and glaring problems. First, they do not have an appealing leader (or face) of the party that can go up against President Obama. Second, they have not yet developed a policy agenda that is suitable for the new post-Bush era. The second problem is bigger than the first. After all, the Gingrich revolution was led by Gingrich, who was never a particularly appealing personality. Gingrich’s personality held his movement back, but it didn’t prevent it from taking over Congress for a twelve year period between 1995 and 2007.
Developing new policies takes time, but leadership issues can be handled at any time. It’s mind-boggling that the Republicans kept both Mitch McConnell and John Boehner as their leaders. They need to jettison both of them immediately. McConnell should be replaced by Lamar Alexander of Tennessee. Senator Alexander is already the third-ranking member of the GOP caucus, so he’s a logical replacement. Once Alexander takes control, he needs to marginalize the crazies in the caucus and encourage a shift in priorities for the ranking members of his party. The focus should not be on killing legislation, or opposing it as a bloc, but in identifying areas where bills can be successfully amended. The inclination to offer amendment after amendment without regard for their prospects of passing needs to change. The Republicans need to achieve tangible successes that they can point to, but they need to do it within the context of the expansion of government that is occurring in Washington at this time. You can call this capitulation or you can call it adaptation. Such a strategy will infuriate the Republican base, with all that implies for fundraising and enthusiasm. But the Republican base is far, far too small and unpopular for their concerns to take first place in any strategy to rebuild.
In the House, Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin is the logical choice to replace Boehner. The other option is Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, who is currently the Minority Whip. Either one would be an improvement over the ineffective and dour Boehner. Ryan and Cantor can’t do much to change the culture of their caucus, which just seems dangerously detached from the reality-based world. But they can develop a set of policies that isn’t the equivalent of asking the world to stop spinning so you can get off the ride. They absolutely must realize how the GOP’s image has been shattered in northern and suburban America, and they must move immediately to repair the damage. Extensive polling should be done for this purpose, and campaigns in 2010 should be exquisitely poll-tested for effectiveness in the north and in the suburbs. All efforts should be made to prevent the national party from undermining the message of the local challengers.
I don’t know who should replace Michael Steele, but Senator Judd Gregg wouldn’t be a bad choice. He’s retiring anyway and he might be able to assure that his appointed replacement is a Republican, as he did when he was briefly the Commerce Secretary-designee. The Republicans have to present a non-southern face if they want to be a non-southern party. They also need leaders that recognize that the old battles are now beside the point. For the foreseeable future, the federal government is going to be doing big things in energy, health care, and education, and there is no point fighting over spilled milk.
It goes without saying that the party should slowly marginalize its old messengers, like Hannity and Limbaugh. They need to project seriousness and competence, and they cannot continue to alienate suburban voters with their racially tinged, misogynistic, and intolerant rhetoric. It’s hard to learn these lessons, particularly when your party has been trimmed down to its most nutty practitioners. But these are the things that I would do if I wanted to lead the Republicans back to power and give their presidential nominee a fighting chance in 2012.
Needless to say, they should not look to Govs. Sanford, Jindal, Palin, and Barbour to lead them out of the wilderness. But practical governors like Huntsman of Utah or Crist of Florida could lead the way with practical policies.
in my link below that includes Ben Smith’s piece, Mitty is quietly building….hard at work.
Last week, Josh Marshall — TPM with a link to Ben Smith at Politico observed:
the GOP is Tapped Out– after the GOP has burned through Michael Steele and Bobby Jindal, I’m not sure they have any non-white guys left.
imho, Michael Steele would be excellent as CEO of the old Pancake House.
You seem obsessed with saving the GOP. Perhaps your dark side IS asserting itself and is desperately looking for a well paying job! Recession can lead to desperate measures! 🙂
But seriously, your post assumes that regaining power is what the GOP is currently about. From by redoubt in faraway Ireland, that doesn’t look like what’s at play. Only really serious leaders and idealists would want to be in power at a time like this and it ain’t going to get any easier any time soon.
The GOPers aren’t about that. Rush isn’t about solving real problems. It’s about emoting and emitting and ventilating your rage that the world isn’t doing your bidding: that the Lord is denying you your anointed place as the leader of the free world.
The American people were just plain wrong to elect Obama. They were duped! And some time soon, probably through even greater disasters, the Lord will teach Americans the error of their ways. It doesn’t require rational analysis, moderation, regaining control of the real world – it requires petulance and condemnation – a demonstration that you are retaining the true faith during hard times.
This isn’t about politics, even if some GOPers occasionally stray from blind belief and engage with the real world. Sorry Boo. Your advice is about as welcome as a black man at a KKK convention. GOPers are waiting for the real world to come back to them – not the other way around – and given how badly the real world is screwed – they may soon get the apocalyptic visions they so earnestly desire.
See you on the far side of the revolution. This one is going to burn.
http://blog.nj.com/njv_paul_mulshine/2009/03/rush_limbaugh.html
gregg is a great choice to head the rnc: he’s got the right ethics and the right connections.
yes by all means: put gregg in charge of the RNC. Please!
Boo, why do you try to suggest ways to the Republicans on how they can do a better job? Not that they would listen to you or any man of sense but some of the ideas you suggest might fall on fertile ground. The Republican Party is the vehicle of big business to marginalize its taxes, keep regulating powers of the national government to a minimum and to preserve and protect the ever growing wealth of the super elite. Let them hire their own experts; they don’t need nor deserve any help from we progressives.
to exercise my mind and provide you something to read.
I don’t think getting the GOP to reform itself is a bad goal at all – this country isn’t setup to run with a single-party government, and having a decent opposition party that can take the reigns when the current party becomes too corrupt/set in their ways is a good thing to have. History tells us that the Democrats can often operate quite well as their own opposition party when they’re in power, but they don’t do so good as the available option for people to turn to when it’s time to throw them out of power. For that you need a real opposition party.
That said, there’s no danger of the GOP taking BooMan’s suggestions on anything. To begin with, the very idea of marginalizing the talkers like Limbaugh, Hannity and Beck is what’s known as a non-starter. They are incapable of marginalizing those fools at this point because their voting base is too tiny. The Republicans are losing the CHAMBER OF COMMERCE vote at this point. If the Chamber of Commerce leg of the GOP stool goes away, the GOP is left with the Religious Right and the Talk-Radio nutters as their entire base. And there’s actually quite a lot of overlap between the Religious Nutters and the Talk-Radio Nutters – more than the Religious Right leadership would really like to admit to at any rate. If it came down to listening to Rush or to Dobson, well, I’d put my money on Rush being able to turn out more support these days.
BooMan’s suggestions – which basically amount to “Moderate yourselves, you idiots” – are good ones for getting the GOP back to where it could be a net positive for the country instead of a net negative. But the GOP can’t do it without committing themselves to a few decades in the wilderness rebuilding their party brand. And that isn’t going to happen. So don’t worry – BooMan can make all of the suggestions he wants and there’s about a zero percent probability that the GOP will take him up on them.
I’m actually beginning to suspect that there’s a non-zero probability that the Democrats will split into a Progressive Party and a Conservative Party here in the next decade or so – the smaller the Republican Party gets, the more the intra-caucus fighting will rise and the more likely it will be that one group will start to marginalize the other. That would be a nice result, actually, because we’d have a sane Conservative Party and a party that could move more to the left and bring us in line with the rest of the developed world politically. But that relies on the Republicans continuing to marginalize themselves and turn themselves effectively into a third party. The odds of that are pretty damn small, but they seem to be growing every time I turn around and look…
Throw them an anchor…then start over.
There is absolutely nothing the GOP can do to give their presidential nominee a fighting chance in 2012.
The steps you mention would be good ones to give them a fighting chance in 2020.
P.S. I think it is extremely valuable to look into what the other side ought to be doing to improve their lot — knowing your enemy is among the best kinds of analysis. It’s politics Sun Tzu-style.