Republican Re-Branding
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As has been pretty well reported this morning, a bunch of GOP elders are about to head off around the country to hold town meetings in the name of re-branding their battered party.
This is probably a good idea. The pols involved in the effort have issued a very grown-up sounding statement about how the forums are more than an opportunity to be “disagreeable,” a nice change from the profoundly unserious tone of their first 100 days in opposition. It’s easy enough to mock the composition of their National Council for a New America–between Jeb Bush, John McCain, and lobbyist-turned-Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, it combines such unsavory brand values as the Bush dynasty’s serial incompetence, the McCain campaign’s loser snarl, and the DC fatcat’s greasy back-slapping–but you go reinvent your party with the pols you have, not the ones you wish you had (like Arlen Specter).
All the same, it feels a bit like the Republicans are still moving through some basic, predictable DABDA chain of political grief. Stage one involves blaming the media (or other conspiratorial actors). The NCNA, I think, means that stage is over. Unfortunately for Republicans, it simply means that an equally fruitless stage two is just beginning. In this stage, the defeated party claims that it’s real problem is that it never got its message out. As Jeb puts it:
“One of the things that’s constantly stated by the Obama administration spokesman is that the Republicans are the ‘party of no,’ and that the conservatives don’t have ideas,” said former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, whose brother, President George W. Bush, many blame for the party’s unpopularity. “But conservatives, in general, have not done a great job on putting forward their ideas.”
Do you believe that? I don’t. I think the Republicans have been very good at getting their message out: Less taxes. Less regulation. Less spending. Less restraints on US power abroad. Those are the big principles, and I think most voters are pretty clear about them. They just don’t necessarily like them all that much these days. As for the wonkier details–how to marry those principles with, say, a push for broader health coverage–GOP pols have spent a significant amount of time explaining where they stand over the last year. It’s not like McCain never mentioned his tax-cutting, regulation-easing, deduction-ending health plan last fall, after all. It’s simply that the electorate either didn’t like the plan or didn’t believe it could be pulled off.
But “we need to change the views that make people not like us” is for a later stage of political mourning.
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Yes, the Republicans have been very good at getting their message out:
But when they talk their talk they tend to be dogmatic, there are few shades of gray, few opportunities to compromise away from the Conservative base.
And when they tried to walk their talk, it was near total disaster.
There is a real need for Republican values and principles among many voters. But there are also other needs spread across the political spectrum. We can’t blame people for rejecting a party that had control of Congress and the White House for six of the last eight years, yet couldn’t or wouldn’t make their philosophy work.
Ugh…so negative and partisan. The NYT must be missing a columnist right about now.
It’s not their fiscal policies that are driving voters away en masse, though certainly that is part of it. Sane people don’t get bent out of shape over fiscal policy. It’s the fact that the GOP’s social agenda is now built on the beliefs of the religious right and that for all practical purposes the GOP is the white man’s party, the angry white man’s party! America just doesn’t look like the GOP anymore and those that control the GOP just don’t get it.
Mr. Schaffer, I am sorry, but you do not understand. McCain can follow Spector as far as I am concerned. Those people you mentioned, such as Jeb Bush and Haley Barbour, are not the Republican “brand.” Your are right in the sense that the party is searching for a brand, but those of us out here in the trenches alreadyhave a brand called Conservatism, and it is a brand of IDEAs. Some of these ideas are: (1) the Constitution can be changed legally only by the amendment process; (2) the government should stay out of private enterprise and peoples lives as much as possible; (3) it is the government’s responsibility to control our borders; (4) a weak American foreign policy is to our enemies like blood in the water is to a shark.
Etc. That is what we are for. If you want to know what we are against, read “Rules for Radicals.” Obama has.
Des may I be so bold as to suggest you read up on the history of the Whig Party.
In response to another comment. See in context »Oh, your so friggin clever, mr shaffer.
there’s no substance to your piece, just a gloating, vacuous screed.
Since you set the tone, let me surmise you’re a wimpy little journalism major (shit for brains being the entrance requirement). You’ve never made anything, managed anything, fixed anything–just somehow scratch a out living whining about how bad everything is or was. And finding a way to be enchanted.
try being a true analyst, scholar, critic rather than a slobbering sycophant.
Wow Michael, you’ve certainly provoked some ire! Repugs sure do make for sore losers.
Once again Brian your comment is empty and insulting
In response to another comment. See in context »