Advice for the RNC

Great Debates
1

I invite people to argue against me or offer ideas of their own. Participate in any appropriate way, but I’d like it if people were analytical and studious about it with a minimum of drama and hyperbole.

If I were the Republican Party poobah, here’s what I would do.

1. Dump the extremist evangelicals

Seriously. I’m sorry, but you’re just going to have to do this. I’m not saying you have to disassociate yourself with the Christian faith or anything. I’m just saying that you have to dump the people who are scaring everybody away. Dump every person who had anything to do with spreading the rumors about Obama’s religion. They practically define the set of people I’m talking about.

2. Dump all the Rovians in your ranks

It did take a long time, but Americans finally became fed up with Rovian tactics in politics. This happened because you launched smears that flew in the face of obvious facts. People could see with their own eyes that Obama was not the madman or nutter you made him out to be. You took it too far, and now people are alert to it. They’ve gotten to the point that they presume it from you.

3. Dump the ignorant and rabid hicks

These are the people who stood in line especially for Palin rallies. Now, I’m not saying anything about Palin per se, but for whatever reason (and this can easily be confirmed via YouTube) many of the people who went to see her were ignorant, racist, scare-mongering fucks.

4. Decide what Republicanism means and stick with it

I recommend that you define it in the way that best accommodates my suggestions (1) - (3). In other words, I think you should become more libertarian, along the lines of Goldwater Republicanism. What happened with Reagan Republicanism is that you went from being fiscally conservative and socially liberal to being fiscally liberal and socially conservative. That is not a tenable position to hold in a vigilant and empowered American society. Once the social conservatives (again, identified above) get started, their tentacles reach far and deep, and they become hard to disjoin from the party.

5. Find new young leadership in the Goldwater mold

This is a really tricky thing because it involves the biggest clash of personalities. A lot of people are going to want to vie for power, and a lot of people who have power are not going to want to let it go. Therefore, if your leadership is not interested in retiring from politics, overthrow them. Put them out, right along with the evangelicals, the hate-mongers, and the idiots.

Okay…

Now, those are my suggestions. And the most obvious quick rejoinder is, “What the fuck. You’re suggesting cutting out whole chunks of membership. That’s crazy. It’s suicide.”

And my answer is that you’ve already committed suicide. Well, you’ve made the attempt, anyway. You’re not dead yet. But the people I’ve identified above are the cancer in your system that you need to irradiate. You really shouldn’t be afraid of them because quite a number of them are lemmings anyway, and if you just tell them to shut up, they will. Make up bumper sticker slogans that tie being civil to being patriotic or something.

There will, in the end, be some number who won’t tolerate your new radical views of personal liberty and financial responsibility. And they will fall away. But where will they go? They can’t go to the Democrats, except subversively. They can form their own party, but doing so will be an enormous expense in both time and money. And like all third parties, it will peter out anyway. Eventually, they’ll just drop out of the system and stop voting. And that’s a good thing.

Once you’ve taken those steps, you can begin to bleed people away from the Democrats. People like me, for example, who were drawn to Obama’s libertarian leanings. He is, frankly, more Republican (Goldwaterly speaking) than many of you are. Anyway, best of luck in your post-mortem soul searching.

2

Wow. Nothing like kicking sand in the face of the loser on the beach to make you feel big.

3

And how exactly do they go about cutting these people out? Suppose I were an evangelical, Rovian ignorant fuck. What’s to keep me from registering as a Republican?

4

Perhaps some sort of test could be devised. Try, for example, fielding candidates who are distasteful to evangelical Rovian ignorant fucks.

5

I worry that the Rovian, evangelical smearmongers outnumber the reasoned Goldwater Conservatives by a significant margin. They may end up kicking you out.

6

I believe he means stop pandering to those groups and doing the old nudge nudge wink wink regarding race. As far as Rovian tactics go, well, I don’t think that sort of thing will ever change, because 1. It’s as old as politics itself and 2. It works, unfortunately.

7

There was a big round of this going around in 2004. Hand-wringing and identity crisis on the Democrat side concerning how they had to shape up or risk losing elections over and over. That was a mere 4 years ago.

In that context, the best advice to the Republicans would be to act bipartisan for 4 years and tempt the Democrats into going overboard with their power, enacting hasty heavy-handed legislation to try and fix everything.

In the spirit of the OP, though, the Republicans really only need to do one thing. Recognize that government exists to protect the public good by enacting sound policy. We can agree to disagree on entitlements, what good government means, etc. But fucking stop acting like the only way to improve the government is to destroy it and line your pockets with the pieces. It was Katrina, not Sarah who did you in.

8

Although I personally agree with you, Liberal, I think their problems are the war and the economy, both of which will be much smaller or non-issues by 2012 or 2016 at the latest. I don’t believe that social conservatism, ignorant hicks, and Rovian smear tactics really hurt them all that much, unfortunately.

9

Having a platform that doesn’t include: a constitutional amendment to define marriage as one man and one woman, seeking to interject creationism into classrooms or seeking to allow prayer in school, for a start?

10

There were actually a number of these sorts of threads after the last couple Bush wins, telling Democrats how to fix themselves.

In Liberal’s defense, he’s at least sticking to suggestions that incorporate what a large number of Republicans claim to stand for (fiscal conservatism, small government, etc) whereas the ‘fix the Democrats’ threads were mostly suggesting that Democrats become Republicans::shrug::.

11

Not that I favor this, but are you aware that a majority of Americans, including lots of Democrats, would like to see prayer allowed in school and creationism taught alongside evolution? How would that improve the Republican’s chances?

12

Maybe some people would buy into the idea that they want the government out of our lives? People can be for prayer in school in an abstract way, but far, far fewer (imho) vote based on it. The good parts of the Republican party are those that are irrelevant to the fanatical cross clutchers.

Those that do are an albatross. Cut them loose and let them form the JOP.

13

I participated in some of those as well. My suggestions then involved such things as being more tolerant toward people of faith, and so forth.

14

Actually I’m not aware of that, do you have a cite for it? I don’t doubt the numbers are probably higher than most liberals think, but I have a hard time believing it’s a majority, at least for those who want the teaching of creationism.

15

A lot of it depends on how you ask the question to.

I’m not opposed to kids being exposed to teleological, ex nihilo explanations for the universe or god, in the context of philosophical discussions in school. Indeed, I would love it if schools expanded their syllabi to include a greater philosophical component.

What I think is complete indefensible, however, is trying to smuggle in creationism and young earth ideas into the class room under the guise of intelligent design. ID is NOT nor has it ever been a proper falsifiable scientific theory, so it’s not science. It does not belong in the scientific classroom on equal footing with evolution; it’s as simple as that. No matter how many people believe in it, it’s not science.

I think the Republicans opened a Pandora’s box by exploiting religious alienation from secular culture and getting these people whipped into a frenzy. They now have some degree of responsibility to create either ways from them to depoliticise, as they existed prior to Reagan, or engage in a more constructive way which isn’t framed completely as them against the god-hating liberal enemy.

16

Dumping those types would definitely improve the GOP’s chances of getting my vote, if anyone cares.

I’m an independent who usually votes Democrat, but I could see voting for a principled conservative who has sound fiscal views.

However, if that candidate also embraces teaching creationism in science class, they have automatically attached a gigantic MORON sign to their forehead as far as I’m concerned, and will never get my vote.

A post-modern Goldwater type could tempt me though. Food for thought, GOP.

17

Yes, they do.

Americans are ignorant, and they support the promotion of ignorance.

18

And it looks like they took your advice in the form of Obama. Obama was extremely savvy and overcame a very tough name and a legacy of bigotry this country still has. McCain would have been the Republican version of the man reaching out to all Americans in 2000 but Rove took that from him and this time McCain lowered himself and used the Rovian tactics. It was sad to see as I still retain respect for McCain and wish he had won in 2000.

I like the platform you laid out up top, but I doubt the party has fallen far enough yet to disenfranchise what has sadly become their base.

I guess deep down I am closer to Goldwater than most politicians since. That true fiscal conservative part of the party is buried. Goldwater would never have approved of Tax and Spend but even more so he would have railed against spend and spend like Bush/Cheney just gave us. It flew in the face of Fiscal conservatives. Now Goldwater was far from perfect in staying out of other people’s business but at least he believed it deep down and gave it lip service. I doubt he would support gay marriage bans and I don’t think he would have made it one of his platforms either. Just my opinion of the man.

Bush Sr. was an older style Republican and man of faith. He was closer to Rockefeller Republicans and he knew that faith was personal and had no place in politics. I liked Bush Sr, I just did not like his VP who was a precursor of the Social Issue Republican that took over the party. Sadly Bush Sr. just did not have a good feel for economic issues. He was actually quite excellent in Foreign Policy.

As to Bush the second, Cheney and Palin I won’t repeat my feeling about them except to say again they have betrayed my party and finally drove me from it.

Jim (Independent since February of 2008)

19

The Pubs can purge the Rovian strategists and be nothing but better for it. But to purge the evangelicals, etc., means purging a significant portion of their voting base. How will the party win elections without them?

20

The repubs do not have the numbers to compete with the dems. That is why they pander to single issue groups like anti abortion and gun nut groups. The evangelical group are rabid and will contribute and work for them.The repubs never give them a thing in return. The main base of the repubs are the wealthy and powerful who move the economy around to their advantage. They are not a huge group. They need the crazies to have a chance.