Jenifer Rubin (AKA the Jewish Athena) has a great short post calling Obama’s victory “impressive” but not a landslide. While she contends “It is no consolation to Republicans who lost to say it could have been worse. But it really could have:”
This suggests that if the Republicans manage to get their act together, by recruiting better candidates and coming up with a competitive and distinctive message, they can get back in the game. That’s what Republicans did between 1976 and 1980 and between 1964 and 1968. And in each of those cases they were even further in the hole than they are now.
She’s right. We need to better articulate our message. And we need effective messengers.
While Republicans did win the White House after those two four-year cycles, they didn’t between 1992 and 1996, but still the party did manage to rebuilt in that period. Our success was thwarted because of our lackluster presidential nominee in 1996 and the then-Democratic incumbent co-opting our issue.
Great leadership at the RNC helped us get back on message from 1976 to 1980 as it did from 1992 to 1994. After losing his bid for reelection to the Senate from Tennessee in ’76, Bill Brock took the helm of the RNC. Sixteen years later, Haley Barbour (now Governor of Mississippi) did the same thing.
Under Brock’s leadership, we went from 38 seats in the Senate in 1977 to 53 in 1981. The GOP picked up 12 seats alone in 1980. Under Barbour, we won both Houses of Congress in 1994 and even expanded our Senate majority (by two seats) in 1996 despite Clinton’s reelection.
Right now, we need to find someone like Brock or Barbour to help rebuild the GOP, someone able to get our message out today’s media. How about Fred Thompson? Maybe Newt Gingrich?
Message is only part of the solution. Organization is another, and the state-level GOP is positively decrepit.
The GOP needs to build state-level organizations in red states that are still dominated in the state legislatures and in their congressional delegations by Democrats: e.g. Mississippi, West Virginia, the Dakotas, Alabama.
The GOP needs to build state-level organizations in western states they are losing because of idiot Californians (sorry ILC and GPW) who move out of California because Democrats have ruined it, and then keep voting Democrats where they settle. (Ditto idiot refugees from New York and Massachusetts that move to North Carolina and Florida).
Finally, The GOP needs to build organizations in the rust-belt states: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin… to educate people and create alternatives to the Democrats.
The message can be quite simple to summarize: Conservatism = common sense.
How that translates into policy is simple. Government shouldn’t spend more than it takes it. Government programs that don’t work should be ended or fixed. The US has to be strong and willing to fight so other countries won’t mess with us. Businesses should be encouraged to grow and hire people, not be punished when they do so.
The ‘Contract with America’ was a common sense platform. But since then, Republicans have turned away from common sense. If they learn common sense again, they will provide a stark contrast with the clown college that is the Democrat caucus.
Fred Thomson… are you kidding? Did you pay attention to his campaign… or whatever that was?
First order of business is to dump all of thee blue blood Republicans who are spending more time tearing apart Sarah Palin now than they ever did tearing into Obama about Ayers, Wright, Khalidi, etc.
The reason the GOP lost the election are two fold: 1) The voting trends made it the Dems’ election to lose. 2) McCain sucked as a conservative candidate from the get-go.
To paraphrase, Palin was essentially the hot chick that got uncool McCain from behind the velvet rope and past the bouncer into the club. Unfortunately, McCain couldn’t dance.
One important thing to remember: It doesn’t have to be *one* face.
It is somewhat important that it be one message, and a simple and principled one…
<blockqoute?She’s right. We need to better articulate our message. And we need effective messengers.
… like Sarah Palin… or Joe the Plumber?
. This is a good topic. I really wished Newt would have run. But I think even he would have lost. He’s kind of a nod to the past. Who IS on the horizon that could emerge as a leader? And before anyone says we need a new Reagan, no we don’t. we need someone unique unto his or her own abilities.
Let’s face facts: The Cressbeckler Effect did McCain in.
See the scoop here: http://www.theonion.com/content/video/old_grizzled_third_party
Newt is still toxic, so I don’t think he works. A woman would be great, but I still don’t see the attraction to Palin. Also, the message and the messenger are useless now that big media is unrepentantly biased. The GOP needs to have enough money to get around that. Obama and the Dems don’t seem to have any problem dumping campaign finance restrictions to win elections, and the GOP has to do the same thing. Politics is guerrilla warfare and in this last election the Republicans acted like a typical army with rules and regulations.
Look – this election was probably the best thing that could happen to our party from a long-term perspective for a couple reasons.
One, I would much rather have lost to a very left wing candidate like Obama, than a more centrist one like Clinton. Clinton’s were geniuses of coopting republican fiscal policy and rebranding them as democratic ideas. Obama’s background makes this highly unlikely to occur in his presidency.
Second, it will force the party to wake up and realize that you can’t win elections by constantly placating the radical right. Our party had better take this opportunity to broaden our base to include hispanics, women, gays, etc. Yeah, and we’d better look at abortion too, since it’s an entrenched right, and the alternatives are disgusting (i.e. back alley abortions).
It should be good for For gay’s and lesbians – Replublicans need our voters now more than ever.
My fear is that instead of doing this, Republican leadership will instead pin all of their hopes on an Obama-led economic disaster. After all, it worked for Obama. However, it’s not a good long-term strategy.
The litmus test for everything decision should be: does it unnecessarily expand government and will it raise taxes. If you think about it, nearly every issue can be solved by these two questions. Gay marriage: pulls the government out of the bedroom and has no impact on taxes. Ditto with abortion, ditto with capital gains taxes, ditto with everything. Instead, we’re hung-up on things like Terry Shiavo and flag-burning. None of which I agree with, but repel moderates from our party.
The question is: How can we influence our party leaders to take a step back and analyze this opportunity?
Look, this election could be a very good thing for our party in the long-run.
First, we lost to a very left-leaning candidate with almost no experience. I’d rather campaign against someone who’s so diametrically different than say, the Clintons, who were genius at co-opting and rebranding Republican fiscal policies as their own.
Second, this is a wake-up call to the Republican party that they can no longer placate the religious right at the expense of moderates, minorities, women, gays, etc. They need our votes now more than ever. They should create a framework with which to develop a broader platform and attract more voters. The framework could be as simple as running every policy decision against two of our core principals. 1. Will the policy extend the control of government unnecessarily? 2. Will the policy increase taxes? Instead, our party gets all uptight over things like assisted suicide, gay marriage, and flag burning, none of which have anything to do with limited government and taxes
My fear is that the party will blow this opportunity and instead pin all of their hopes on an Obama economic nightmare-inspired comeback. This is not sustainable strategy.
How can we let our party leaders know that this is the time to sit back and really think this stuff through?
There’s no question that the GOP needs an articulate messenger, as Brock and Barbour certainly were. But, first, it would be a good idea for the Republican Party to determine what it’s message will be.
Is the Republican Party going to focus on making government smaller and less costly and less intrusive (its old core values) or is it going to continue focusing far too much on divisive social issues?
In the absence of an attractive messenger, the Republican Party could do what was done between the disaster of 1964 and victory in 1968. Ray Bliss, the Ohio GOP operative, took over. He was not the “face” of the GOP but as national chairman he put the party’s precinct machinery back together state by state.
And there are some voices I wish we heard less of.
I am 100 percent opposed to the so-called Fairness Doctrine, at least in respect to sponsored programming. I do believe that a station or network newscast should provide “equal time” to competing major party candidates, for example, but if a Rush Limbaugh is able to package a regularly scheduled program that is sponsored by advertisers no station that carries Limbaugh should be required to set aside the same amount of time everyday for a liberal broadcast.
But the message delivered by Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingram, etc., is hurting the Republican Party among Independents needed to win elections.
Not to be rude, but all these calls to purge Blue Blood Republicans seems idiotic. You do not grow a party but trying to knock out a segment of it, Republicans need to become big tent again. They should do a better job of recruiting new, qualified canidates of youth, color, women, and even gays.
I believe there is a message or basic set of issues that could bring about a new, broad coalition. This hardly the time to trim down when the party has faced a two big defeats. We should look to expand and if you aren’t happy with the party, run for something. I know I plan on running for things when I get old enough. People should do something.
McCain had to run against his own record. He had to run against an extremely unpopular president. He had to run against a credit crisis and a bad economy. He had to run against the media. He had to run against world opinion. He had to run against easy-listening slogans designed for 10-second sound bytes. He had to run against his campaign managers.
This wasn’t a referendum on conservatism per se. The GOP once again failed to communicate effectively; it doesn’t understand that particularly with a stacked deck, it needs to really sell itself. Americans rightly believe we’re going in the wrong direction and apparently the only thing that will convince them to listen to us is an even worse direction. Republicans simply don’t understand the media age, salesmanship, crafting proper messages. Bush is a disaster and that conservatives I know are not willing to even consider the point means we have much work to do. I hope Republicans will not have greater electoral success by default of inaction or ineptitude by proxy. Unity of a party dedicated to individualism is difficult as is being the party of the ‘mean parent’, always telling the children what they can’t have.
I’m not one for happy talk of our future. Especially now.
The GOP needs to admit that the experiment of the last 28 years was a failure and that Reagan’s boosterism was unfounded: American’s didn’t deserve to believe they were the best. Look at Prop 8. American’s STILL don’t deserve to call themselves the best.
You know, once a month, my church holds “What We Believe” and “Why we believe” firesides, where members and non-members are invited to come in, in a relaxed environment, and just hear from members and leaders of the church why we are members of the church, and what we believe as members of the church.
This would not be a bad model for conservatives or Republicans to begin emulating, although they have to figure out what it is they believe, first.
Didja ever stop to think that the message itself is what’s wrong? not how you deliver it, not who the messenger is, but the simple fact that your message simply isn’t what the people want to hear.
Look –
This election could be a very good thing for our party in the long-run.
First, we lost to a very left-leaning candidate with almost no experience. I’d rather campaign against someone who’s so diametrically different than say, the Clintons, who were genius at co-opting and rebranding Republican fiscal policies as their own.
Second, this is a wake-up call to the Republican party that they can no longer placate the religious right at the expense of moderates, minorities, women, gays, etc. They need our votes now more than ever. They should create a framework with which to develop a broader platform and attract more voters. The framework could be as simple as running every policy decision against two of our core principals. 1. Will the policy extend the control of government unnecessarily? 2. Will the policy increase taxes? Instead, our party gets all uptight over things like assisted suicide, gay marriage, and flag burning, none of which have anything to do with limited government and taxes
My fear is that the party will blow this opportunity and instead pin all of their hopes on an Obama economic nightmare-inspired comeback. This is not sustainable strategy.
How can we let our party leaders know that this is the time to sit back and really think this stuff through?
Newt Gingrich is toast–and not for the reasons commonly espoused by the press. Newt talks a great talk, the Contract for America was fabulous, and it accomplished that election win. However, from the minute he took office as Speaker of the House, he turned back on the conservative message and started the usual suck-up to Democrats so beloved by big-tent and moderate Republicans, who have just shown how to lose yet another national election. Newt infuriated his own party by 1998, who had seen him waste his political advantage. He had a chance and he blew it. He wasn’t actually pitched out for being too conservative–that’s just what the media claimed. The GOP faithful were fed up with him and they were happy to throw him to the dogs. Newt’s always better at talking than at leading.
Now that another milk-toast-messaged moderate Republican, supposedly beloved by independents, failed to win, some of you are recommending that we further abandon the conservative message and try to provide a bigger tent?!!!! Who is delusional here? Show me a moderate Republican who has ever been as successful as Ronald Reagan.
McCain has no message, never had one, spent his career poking conservatives in the eye. Outside of his noble armed services duty, the only real decision I give him credit for is selecting Sarah Palin. It’s somehow fitting that he may have lost in part thanks to his rotten McCain-Feingold bill, which demonstrated poor understanding of the 1st amendment, and inability to understand Mitch McConnell’s view on this.
As far as the message is concerned–let’s be honest. The voters NEVER heard a clearly articulated conservative message in this campaign. Not from McCain, certainly, never from Bush, not even from Palin, despite her other fine qualities. And of course it never came up in any debate, and is never understood or stated by the media. On the other hand, I hear a lot of much more intelligent commentary on talk radio, and read great columns written by brainy conservative writers on the internet. Obviously, the people with the ideas and the brains are NOT in the positions of making decisions within the GOP itself and sadly aren’t in leadership either. Despite all the supposed alternate media, the average person is still just repeating whatever the mainstream media say.
The only way any progress will be made is if conservatives find a way to access some communication channels, and then make intelligent use of them. Few people under the age of 35 have a clue what is the fundamental basis of conservatism. They haven’t heard it in schools for sure, and they mostly are not listening to talk radio. Unless they know a couple adults with a brain, they will never have the vaguest idea what conservative means or what conservatives believe. Our biggest job is to find a way to get the message out, and we will never accomplish that by using all the populist, independent-loving candidates like McCain. If they can’t articulate the message (because they don’t get it themselves), they have nothing to offer an electorate who is going to hear promises of bigger goodies from the Democratic candidate. It’s a losing proposition. We’ve just had 12 years of this losing scenario played out. How many more years of it do we need? If we continue doing the same thing and expecting different results, we’re delusional!
I just had a 2 hour conversation with a foreign student from Japan yesterday, and took her through the philosophical differences between liberalism/socialism and conservatism, based on how one understands human nature. It was gratifying to see someone with a brain actually understanding the bigger picture. Now if I could only get a chance to explain this to brain-dead Republican politicians.
McCain has no message, never had one, spent his career poking conservatives in the eye. Outside of his noble armed services duty, the only thing I give him credit for is selecting Sarah Palin.
If conservatives really think their message is not compelling, convincing, and able to inspire, they need to just get out of politics and accept a socialist government. If we have to weaken the message, or disguise it, then we either have no convictions at all, or we are just dissembling. For one, I’m sick of being told that the we need to appeal to a broader base. We don’t even appeal to our own base right now.
V the K got it right again…we need a good organizer..nuts and bolts and build fromt he ground up and hit all age groups like Reagan did. The message is common sense values of getting government out of the way (actually it is a shame that Bush never stuck with compassionate conservative..that works…) where government is government that governs least, where individual freedom comes first so you chose your own destiny and the sky is the limit based upon your own hard work, energy independence, strong national defense/homeland security, health insurance where you make the decision (it is a shame that McCain’s plan (which he stole from Giuliani) of making health care competitive, free market, portable and tax credit for it would have worked.
We have a messenger in Palin/Jindal..
we need to organize the grass roots..local on up and in the Northeast again, Rustbelt, the West again (remember when the Far West was consistently Republican?)
bring in the youth, (Reagan did by the droves and so did Bush in 2000/2004) and Latinos, Reagan Democrats, etc.
we are free to begin again….this is an opportunity to begin anew…so there will be another Morning in America and a shining City on a Hill..time we stop whining about the Leftists and Marxists and start building our own message and kick butt and stand up, fight and be proud!
Steve–as far as assisted suicide is concerned, we just passed it in WA, much to my disappointment, although I’m not surprised. I frankly don’t understand why you think this is such a winning issue. Who are the people whose major hot-button issue in life is to make sure they can get help in committing suicide? But seeing as we now require government to do everything else for us, I suppose we cannot commit suicide by ourselves either.
Sorry, but if that’s the largest issue in someone’s mind, perhaps they aren’t a good long-term prospect for the growth of the party!
I’m sorry I was misunderstood. I’m not advocating that the party become more liberal. But in my mind, a true Republican is someone who wants limited government and low taxes. However, and we must admit this, there is a large part of our party whom I would characterize as pseudo-republicans. In other words, they may be fiscally conservative, but they’re also extremely socially conservative. The refuse to endorse a republican candidate who is unwilling to legislate morality.
I threw out examples like assisted suicide, etc. simply as examples of how we get distracted by issues that have nothing to do with these two concepts. Personally, I’m not in favor of assisted suicide, but does that mean the government should legislate against it? Seems like it should be an individual choice. Just like Gay Marriage is an individual choice. Republicans who use legislation to prohibit these things are violating the principle of limited government. We need someone who can stand up to these folks and tell them that they can’t win elections with these extreme viewpoints.
Both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama did similar with their extremes. For example, during both of their campaigns they put their African American constituents on notice, warning them that they could no longer simply vote for the candidate that promised unlimited welfare handouts because those candidates never win due to their extremity. As soon as they went on record with this, voila – to many undecided moderates, it suddenly became less ridiculous to vote for a democrat and they both won their elections.
Anyone who believes that we are going to attract voters who voted for Obama by being more socially conservative needs to look at the election maps. Do you think all of those people in the blue states were looking for a more socially conservative approach and found it in Obama? Of course not.
BTW, Vivian – you’re spot on about the need to develop communication channels. We’ve really lost the edge on that front.
Steve-sorry if I misunderstood your post. The only problem with your analysis is that in order to win, Republicans must garner more of the African-American and Latino votes. For those groups, the social issues ARE the economic issues. They are the ones who voted for Prop 8, who are in favor of school choice, are pro-life, etc. For them, family issues are of paramount importance. If Republicans are left only with deep philosophical issues involving free markets, etc., it is probably impossible to attract enough of these voters to win.