How will the GOP rebrand the party?

[BarnOwl]

On a talk show today(The Chris Matthews Show, I think), John Boehner described how the Republican leaders are going to hammer out a new brand for the party.

He said they were going back to the party of Abe Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt; that they would rediscover what once made the GOP so popular, so powerful, and so relevant, and would then develop a platform to appeal to the average Joe, etc.

Pressed on specifics, one of thethings he said was they’d develop a powerful energy policy which would lower the cost of gasoline, plus a couple of other things, and surprise of surprises, smaller-government-and-lower-taxes.

When asked how they’re going to do all this, he replied, “We’re gonna work at it.”

I don’t recall anything about ethics, morality, governing for the good for the country, etc., but they’re just in the planning stage.

So, I thought you folks might want to help them out with some ideas of your own.

[BrainGlutton]

Lincoln was essentially a Whig, TR essentially a Progressive. Today’s GOP – rooted as it is in the post-Goldwater ideological conservative movement – cannot embrace those politics or anything like them without cutting loose from what has become its base. Maybe, just maybe, they can safely revive Rockefeller Republicanism. But even that would lose them the neocon, paleocon, and religious-right votes.

[dalej42]

They need to get rid of the religious right. The Republicans never looked so silly as they did when they were debating Terry Schiavo and Bill Frist was making his diagnosis from 1000 miles away.

[Merkwurdigliebe]

How to rebrand the GOP?
What they are saying is good. However, if the Republicans are going to regain their previous stature they’ll need to spend some time out of office. The reason being is that there will be no impetus to change otherwise.

I’ll say it again as I will continue to say. Any politician promising lower gas prices is not taking the situation seriously. Making such promises only shows that they don’t know what the hell they are talking about. Gas prices are never going to go back down. Ever hear of the Indian car, the Tata? The one that costs 2000? Know how many people live in India? A billion. what if one tenth buy a car? Boom, you’ve got a hundred million new cars to feed. I’m not saying this is going to happen overnight, but it’s dumb to not see it coming. The idea of fiscal responsibility is a good one, for sure. But the GOP will have to figure out where it’s interests lie. Fiscal responsibility now means no more corporate welfare, which has been a big thing since GWB took office. What about social policy? The GOP has been trying to legislate morality since 2000 as well.

Honestly the ideas they put forth are a good idea, but honestly, how are they going to deal with their far right-wing of their party? They’ve been feeding this monster for years, only to have it turn on them. Really it will take another George Bush to be able to pull off the same level of Republican support as before. A guy like Huckabee really turns off the independent voters, and McCain turns off the religious right. Now, had they been responsible and not promised something they couldn’t deliver to these people, then maybe their ranks wouldn’t have swelled to the extent that they have. The Republicans built these guys up as a political force, but now they aren’t terribly happy with the amount of respect they get.

The Republican Party interfacing with the religious right will end up causing them long-term problems. The RR has finally realized that they are never going to get what they want from the Republicans. The Republicans played them for fools for ages.

One thing that is for sure…the Republicans have been setting the tone of the discourse since at least 1994. The Democrats have been in the woods since then. 9/11 only made it worse. The Republicans though have thoroughly screwed up this country since then in every way possible. While the income gap grows and grows, Bush has been saying for 8 YEARS that the economy is doing fine. You simply will never be able to erase that.

To be honest though, I think that when the Dems get in power, and they finally enact Universal Healthcare, people will really appreciate it. It’s going to make such a huge difference in people’s lives that they will for a long time be appreciative of the Democrats. If the Democrats can do it correctly. Really it is just another way of investing in infrastructure. Our economy depends on a lot of things. Healthy workers, is often overlooked. But it’s just as important as any other part of infrastructure that the government provides.

What America needs to do is to grow up. If you look at the actions of the rest of the nations of the world vs. ours, we clearly come off as a petulant child. We refuse to play well with others, refuse to invest in our future, and rack up gigantic bills. And the worst part is that the powers that be, right now, don’t seem to think that it will matter. There comes a time in everyone’s life where they realize that they aren’t as special as they had thought. Well there will come a time in America’s history where we realize that our inherent advantages won’t take us as far as we want to go. We are going to have to work for it. If the Republicans can somehow get this message across then I think they’d be much further ahead. But right now they are the party of the head in the sand.

[BarnOwl]

@BrainGlutton

Lincoln was essentially a Whig, TR essentially a Progressive. Today’s GOP – rooted as it is in the post-Goldwater ideological conservative movement – cannot embrace those politics or anything like them without cutting loose from what has become its base. Maybe, just maybe, they can safely revive Rockefeller Republicanism. But even that would lose them the neocon, paleocon, and religious-right votes.

Was TR reviled by GOP leaders for his trust busting? I read the blurb about how Thomas A. Bailey greatly admired him, but Bailey was a history professor, not a pol.

[BrainGlutton]

@BarnOwl

Was TR reviled by GOP leaders for his trust busting?

Nothing here suggests it. Unlike “That Man!” FDR, TR was never reviled as a traitor to his class.

But the point is that both Lincoln and TR believed in federal government activism as a way to improve the people’s lives, though the content of their ideas in that regard was (unsurprisingly, given the time difference) somewhat different. Whereas today’s GOP has committed itself to rejecting that idea.

[Squink]

@BarnOwl

So, I thought you folks might want to help them out with some ideas of your own.

Stick with Tom Cole as head of the National Republican Congressional Committee. The GOP doesn’t need negativists like Tom Davis, with his insulting memos (pdf):

Members instinctively understand that the Republican brand is in the trash can. I’ve often observed that if we were a dog food, they would take us off the shelf.

Ohh, goody: Boehner says Cole is staying put

That’s the right move. They just need to keep doing what they’re doing, but do it harder.

[elucidator]

@Squink

…They just need to keep doing what they’re doing, but do it harder.

Won’t somebody please think about the pooch?

[XT]

How will the GOP rebrand the party?

Well, I’m unsure how well this would work, but couldn’t they simply apply hot branding irons to their flabby white rumps? Perhaps hooded and cloaked party bosses could tie them up and bring in the red/white (and perhaps blue) hot branding irons in some convenient star chamber somewhere…

-XT

[elucidator]

Looks from here like the last free-range maverick is already wearing the Lazy W brand.

[Sam_Stone]

Republicans have been screaming at their party leaders for years about their straying from core Republican values of smaller government, lower taxes, less regulation, and less focus on social issues and more focus on being fiscally conservative and militarily strong.

Jay Danforth said it best back during the Terry Schiavo mess - in the days of Reagan and Gingrich, they were more interested in fixing government than in micro-managing every social issue that was in the news. The Republicans had big ideas, and worked to implement them.

Today, they’re just another political party handing out pork and creating new entitlements. They’re fat and corrupt, and the idea people are gone and have been replaced with chair warmers who buy re-elections with pork and just vote for whatever bill seems politically expedient on any given day.

I don’t think it will change until the Republican party gets a really good smackdown and spends a few years in the wilderness, watching Democrats run everything.

[SenorBeef]

@BarnOwl

plus a couple of other things, and surprise of surprises, smaller-government-and-lower-taxes.

Assuming you’re being sarcastic, I would have to say if Republicans actually took up the cause of smaller government and correspondingly lower taxes, I’d be quite surprised.

At this point, advocating that would be a complete rebrand of the party.

[BrainGlutton]

@Sam Stone

Republicans have been screaming at their party leaders for years about their straying from core Republican values of smaller government, lower taxes, less regulation, and less focus on social issues and more focus on being fiscally conservative and militarily strong.

At the grassroots level, I’ve heard of very few discontented Pubs demanding less focus on social issues. Quite the reverse.

[BrainGlutton]

@SenorBeef

Assuming you’re being sarcastic, I would have to say if Republicans actually took up the cause of smaller government and correspondingly lower taxes, I’d be quite surprised.

At this point, advocating that would be a complete rebrand of the party.

It would also spell the final end of the party’s prospects. Most Americans are more realistic than that, and very aware of how much depends on biggumint.

[Squink]

Here’s the bullets from “The American Families Agenda” of the House Republican Conference

*Lower gas prices and energy costs

* Provide for a family-friendly work week 

* Grow our small businesses

* Allow workers to take their benefits with them when they change jobs

* Take care of our parents and grandparents

* Assure health care for all

* Make prevention a national priority

* Crackdown on child predators and gangs

* Provide health care for our neediest children

* Reduce the costs and burden of college tuition

* Ensure every child in America can read and write

* Increase local control

* Ensure our schools perform for our children

* Take care of our troops, veterans and their families 

* Win the war on terror

* Secure our borders

[BrainGlutton]

@Squink

Here’s the bullets from “The American Families Agenda” of the House Republican Conference

Hm.

Most of those things would be very government-activist. And very expensive.

[Cisco]

They don’t have to change, of course. This election cycle is lost already and with the mess W is leaving behind I doubt the smartest and most powerful ones care very much. They just have to wait until the Democrats screw up. And they will. Probably on healthcare.

[Merkwurdigliebe]

Again…How are they going to lower gas prices? For a party that bases a large part of their argument on economics, shouldn’t they know that this will never happen? The only way to lower gas prices will be to make our cars twice as efficient, thus reducing demand. Short of “liberating” some poor country’s oil fields for our own personal use, I don’t see how it will happen.

[Voyager]

@Squink

That’s the right move. They just need to keep doing what they’re doing, but do it harder.

Right on brother! Considering the way the special elections are going in staunch Republican districts, they should wind up with, say a few dozen, house seats in next January. Sounds good to me.

[Little_Nemo]

Here’s some old-fahsioned Republican values I’d like to see return:

It is preeminently the province of government to protect the weak. The average citizen does not lead the life of independence that was his in former days under a less complex order of society. When a family tilled the soil and produced its own support it was independent. It may be infinitely better off now, but it is evident it needs a protection which before was not required.

Let Massachusetts continue to regard with the greatest solicitude the well-being of her people. By prescribed law, by authorized publicity, by informed public opinion, let her continue to strive to provide that all conditions under which her citizens live are worthy of the highest faith of man. Healthful housing, wholesome food, sanitary working conditions, reasonable hours, a fair wage for a fair day’s work, opportunity full and free, justice speedy and impartial and at a cost within the reach of all, are among the objects not only to be sought but made absolutely certain and secure.

Government is not, must not be, a cold, impersonal machine, but a human and more humane agency: appealing to the reason, satisfying the heart, full of mercy, assisting the good, resisting the wrong, delivering the weak from any impositions of the powerful. This is not paternalism. It is not a servitude imposed from without, but the freedom of a right to self-direction from within.

Industry must be humanized, not destroyed. It must be the instrument not of selfishness, but of service. Change not the law, but the attitude of the mind. Let our citizens look not to the false prophet but to the pilgrims. Let them fix their eyes on Plymouth Rock as well as Beacon Hill. The supreme choice must be not to things that are seen, but to things that are unseen.

Our government belongs to the people. Our property belongs to the people. It is distributed. They own it. The taxes are paid by the people. They bear the burden. The benefits of government must accrue to the people. Not to one class, but to all classes, to all the people. The functions, the power, the sovereignty of the government, must be kept where they have been placed by the Constitution and laws of the people. Not private will, but that public will, which speaks with a divine sanction, must prevail.

There are strident voices, urging resistance to law in the name of freedom. They are not seeking freedom for themselves - they have it. They are seeking to enslave others. Their works are evil. They know it. They must be resisted. The evil they represent must be overcome by the good others represent. Their ideas, which are wrong, for the most part imported, must be supplanted by ideas which are right. This can be done. The meaning of America is a power which cannot be overcome. Massachusetts must lead in teaching it.

Prosecution of the criminal and education of the ignorant are the remedies. It is fundamental that freedom is not to be secured by disobedience to law. Even the freedom of the slave depended on the supremacy of the Constitution. There is no mystery about this. They who sin are the servants of sin. They who break the laws are the slaves of their own kind. It is not for the advantage of others that the citizen is abjured to obey the laws, but for his own advantage. That what he claims a right to do to others, that must he admit others have a right to do to him. His obedience is his own protection. He is not submitting himself to the dictates of others, but responding to the requirements of his own nature.

Laws are not manufactured. They are not imposed. They are rules of action existing from everlasting to everlasting. He who resists them, resists himself. He commits suicide. The nature of man requires sovereignty. Government must govern. To obey is life. To disobey is death. Organized government is the expression of the life of the commonwealth. Into your hands is entrusted the grave responsibility of its protection and perpetuation.

Calvin Coolidge’s “Law and Order” speech delivered during his second inauguration as Governor of Massachusetts on January 8, 1920.