“Salted Nuts”: The “Nutters” Push Back Against The RNC Blueprint
Reflecting on the Republican National Committee’s “Growth and Opportunity Project,” Dave Weigel noted that the blueprint “is less a program of reform than a rough blueprint about how to marginalize the nutters.”
That’s clearly true. The structural reforms are intended to “marginalize the nutters” in terms of their electoral influence; the rhetorical reforms are intended to “marginalize the nutters” in terms of public perceptions of the party; and the policy reforms are intended to “marginalize the nutters” who are pushing Republicans to embrace an even more radical policy agenda.
At times, Reince Priebus and his report aren’t subtle on this, specifically criticizing “third-party groups that promote purity.”
With this in mind, the simmering intra-party “civil war” between the Republican base and the party establishment is intensifying, right on cue.
“It looks like a system of the establishment, by the establishment, and for the establishment,” said conservative P.R. executive Greg Mueller, a veteran of Pat Buchanan’s campaigns. […]
Davie Bossie, head of the conservative group Citizens United, fretted that the proposals would mean conservative grassroots candidates, already outmatched organizationally and financially against the GOP establishment on the presidential level, “even less opportunity to break through.”
“I don’t think that is a good thing for the party and I definitely don’t think it’s a good thing for the conservative movement,” said Bossie.
Rush Limbaugh wasn’t happy, either, saying Republican leaders have been “bamboozled” by focus groups. “They think they’ve gotta rebrand and it’s all predictable,” the radio host said. “They gotta reach out to minorities. They gotta moderate their tone here and moderate their tone there. And that’s not at all what they’ve gotta do. The Republican Party lost because it’s not conservative.”
This is probably going to get worse before it gets better — and for a party in transition, it’s a fight that’s probably unavoidable.
Priebus’ plan is not necessarily going to be what the party does in the near future. The RNC’s membership will need to debate and approve any changes, and that will take place over the course of several months, starting in April at the party’s spring meeting in Los Angeles. One assumes those meetings will be quite lively, with the fights playing out in public.
And here’s the kicker: that’s not necessarily a bad thing, since the Republican Party really does need to have these fights. At the presidential level, the GOP has lost the national popular vote in five of the last six elections. The electorate has elected a Democratic Senate majority for four consecutive elections. The party hasn’t been this unpopular since Watergate; its ideas are struggling for public support; and with no real leaders, it’s not even clear what the party’s core beliefs are in several key areas.
There are still about 19 months before the midterm elections and nearly three years before the party begins choosing its new standard bearer. This is, in other words, an ideal time for the party to have a knock-down, drag-out fight over what the party intends to be.
It won’t be pleasant, and some party contingents won’t be pleased with the results, but it’s arguably a worthwhile endeavor for the party’s long-term health.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, March 19, 2013
“We’re The Anti-Party”: This Really IS The GOP Message
I have always loved the story of the ad makers and dog food manufacturers arguing around the conference table. The actual makers of the dog food were convinced their product was full of all the right nutrients, pretty food coloring, right combinations of everything possible. The ad makers were really impressed with their ad campaign, the logos, colors, not to mention the exciting TV ads. The sales force was everywhere, all over the marketplace.
So, the head of the company screamed out—”why is our dog food not selling.” A wise lone voice: “the dogs don’t like it, sir, they won’t eat it.”
What the RNC has just done with their “what went wrong in 2012” report is to ignore the fact that the public isn’t buying what they’re selling. They could point to advertising, they could point to their ground game and metrics, they could cry over changing demographics, they could condemn their polling samples, and they could criticize their process of debates and summer financial problems. They could even critique their candidate.
All that might be true—to a point. But the bottom line is this: the public didn’t like the dog food, they didn’t like what they were selling, they didn’t like the message. The Republican Party became captive to the extremists, and if you followed CPAC this weekend, it was all there in full force. From Donald Trump to Sarah Palin to Ann Coulter, this is not the path to a majority.
How can a party that is perceived as anti-Black, anti-Hispanic, anti-women, anti-gay, anti-middle class, ever hope to change the basic electoral dynamic by tinkering with process and techniques? The RNC has to deal with the fundamental problem: The Message. And they are ignoring that debate within the party. They have to fight it out. They have to decide who they are. They have to confront the divergent views and decide whether the Tea Party is dominant or a more reasoned, moderate view will take hold.
Can they moderate on gay marriage and issues like abortion and women’s health? Can they hold views that are pro-environment and truly confront climate change? Can they embrace real reform on immigration and stop focusing on bigger fences? Can they support a tax system that is fairer to the middle class and isn’t stacked toward the wealthy? Can they balance their approach to taxing and spending? Fundamentally, can they stop the incessant ranting against government and demonizing people?
As long as they are the “anti-party” they will be increasingly out of touch and represent the old, angry, white males—and there are fewer and fewer of them. It is all well and good that they try and get their tactics right but, like a turtle, they won’t make progress until they stick their necks out and have that battle for the soul of their party.
By: Peter Fenn, U. S. News and World Report, March 19, 2013
“Change Even They Don’t Believe In”: The Republican Party Has Neither The Strength Nor Will To Make The Transformation It Needs.
If you follow national politics at all, you’re familiar with the Republican Party’s current predicament. Not only has the party lost the popular vote in four of the last five presidential elections, but the public turned against the GOP in two consecutive wave elections: 2006 and 2008. The Republican Party’s veto power in Congress and its substantive power in the states has everything to do with the Tea Party rebellion of 2010, which—in light of last year’s elections—looks more and more like an aberration. It’s unpopular with a wide swath of Americans, and is associated in many minds with virulent strains of homophobia, nativism, sexism, and racial prejudice.
In an effort to change perceptions and win new voters, national GOP officials have embarked on a plan of recovery and reform. The Republican National Committee commissioned an in-depth look at the party’s challenges, in order to craft and chart a new path for the party and its candidates. The RNC released its report this morning, and at a hundred pages—the product of contacts and interviews with 52,000 voters, party consultants, and elected officials—it’s a hefty document. More importantly, as NBC News notes, “it calls for drastic changes to almost every major element of the modern Republican Party.”
The GOP wants to shift from the “Grand Old Party” to the “Growth and Opportunity Party,” and to reach that goal, it makes several prescriptions, including increased outreach to women, young voters, and minorities, with a particular focus on Latinos. “We are not a policy committee, but among the steps Republicans take in the Hispanic community and beyond, we must embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform,” says the report, “If we do not, our Party’s appeal will continue to shrink to its core constituencies only.”
The report asks Republicans to back away from their hardline approach to same-sex marriage—“If our Party is not welcoming and inclusive, young people and increasingly other voters will continue to tune us out”—to better appeal to the economic aspirations of ordinary people—“Instead of connecting with voters’ concerns, we too often sound like bookkeepers”—to improve their relationship with women and promote more women candidates—“Republicans need to make a better effort at listening to female voters”—and to make serious inroads into nonwhite communities—“If we want ethnic minority voters to support Republicans, we have to engage them, and show our sincerity.”
There’s much, much more than this, but as an outline, it looks good. Republicans are saying (some of) the right things, and hopefully, they’ll begin to make the right moves. But it will take great effort to build a culture of respect toward voters who don’t normally support the GOP, and in the meantime, national party leaders will have to deal with the fact that they can’t control all Republicans at all times. Indeed, a large chunk of the party isn’t even theirs to control. American political parties are large and amorphous, with only an appearance of hierarchy. The Democratic Party of Virginia is a different beast than the Democratic Party of Florida, despite their occasionally shared goals. Moreover, national party leaders have no real control over how voters interact with local and state parties—the Democratic National Committee can’t set guidelines for state legislators and local officials.
The RNC’s reform agenda might help as it tries to rebuild its national reputation, but the GOP is still at the mercy of its more anonymous representatives: The South Carolina lawmaker who admits “It is good politics to oppose the black guy in the White House right now, especially for the Republican Party”; the Florida Lieutenant Governor who resigns after allegations of rampant corruption; the Texas Republican who accuses Planned Parenthood of tricking teens into sex and then profiting on their abortions; and the legislatures around the country that have limited reproductive rights, selectively imposed voter identification requirements, and slashed spending on the poor and vulnerable.
On its own, this doesn’t necessarily harm the GOP brand—politicians aren’t known for their cool thinking or general competence—but when combined with a national party that shows similar traits and holds similar views, it’s disastrous. The RNC’s inventory of the GOP is a good first step in trying to fix this problem by changing the Republican Party’s culture to fit the concerns of a broader swath of Americans.
At the same time, it’s hard to see how this will work—at all—without a similar change in policy. Americans haven’t just rejected the Republican Party because it’s unfriendly and unwelcoming—they’ve rejected it because it doesn’t seem to offer solutions to the nation’s problems. There needs to be something after “Repeal Obamacare,” and Republicans don’t seem to have it. And while they can try to build it, that kind of change is incredibly hard to execute. Given the GOP’s constituency—older white Americans—and its continued commitment to unsuccessful anti-government policies, it’s hard to imagine the Republican Party has either the strength or will to make the genuine transformation it needs.
By: Jamelle Bouie, The American Prospect, March 18, 2013
“Revealing Attitudes”: Reince Priebus’s Plan Recommends Not Behaving Like Reince Priebus
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus is winning accolades for the wide-ranging plan he presented Monday morning in Washington that charts a way forward for the party after its demoralizing performance in the November elections. Drafted by a five-person committee—which included former George W. Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer—the plan recommends, among other things, holding fewer presidential primary debates, to limit the drift toward comedic extremity that those events encourage, and spending $10 million on new staff to do outreach to the constituencies (women, young voters, racial and ethnic minorities) where GOP support lags.
It’s all well and good, but in reading through the report’s 99 pages I had a nagging sense that what it was recommending was directly at odds with what I remember hearing not long ago from the very people putting forward the report. To wit:
Page 7: “The Republican Party needs to stop talking to itself. We have become expert in how to provide ideological reinforcement to like-minded people, but devastatingly we have lost the ability to be persuasive with, or welcoming to, those who do not agree with us on every issue.”
@Reince: Obama sympathizes with attackers in Egypt. Sad and pathetic. (Sent on September 11, the night that four Americans were killed in Benghazi.)
Page 7: “If we are going to grow as a Party, our policies and actions must take into account that the middle class has struggled mightily and that far too many of our citizens live in poverty. To people who are flat on their back, unemployed or disabled and in need of help, they do not care if the help comes from the private sector or the government—they just want help… 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.”
@AriFleischer: I increased donations to charity in 2012. This deal limits my deductions so I, & many others, will likely donate less in 2013. (Sent in late December, in reference to the deal averting the fiscal cliff, which slightly reduced the value of the charitable deduction for high-income taxpayers.)
Page 20: “The RNC must embark on a year-round effort to engage with African American voters. The engagement must include not only persuasion based upon our Party’s principles but also a presence within community organizations… The African American community has a lot in common with the Republican Party, and it is important to share this rich history. More importantly, the Republican Party must be committed to building a lasting relationship within the African American community year-round, based on mutual respect and a spirit of caring.”
@Reince: We need to call out Obama for trying to water down the voting privileges of our military men and women in Ohio. (Sent in early August, in reference to the Obama campaign’s lawsuit attempting to allow early voting on the weekend before the election for all Ohio voters, not just members of the military and their families, an expansion that would have by far the greatest benefit for black voters in Ohio’s larger cities.)
This is not to pick on Priebus and Fleischer. There are countless similar examples to cull from other high-profile Republicans. It is just to note that the problems that the RNC says it is seeking to address cut deep, into attitudes and instincts that again and again reveal themselves even in the offhand exclamations of the party’s allegedly more sober-minded functionaries. It will take much more than focus groups and a “growth and opportunity inclusion council” to change what lies at the heart of today’s Republican Party—like, say, self-awareness.
By: Alec MacGillis, The New Republic, March 18, 2013
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