The GOP Needs Major Change

It is remarkable how far the Republican Party has fallen. Mitt Romney is a horrible presidential candidate, but when you look at the field that competed for the nomination this year it wasn't any better. Santorum? Perry? Newt? Cain? Trump? The only candidate who I would consider to be a serious candidate was Huntsman - he had bona fide conservative credentials and seemed the most comfortable being himself and not wanting to jump into a mudslinging contest. Of course, his unwillingness to call President Obama a Muslim Manchurian candidate made him undesirable to the far right wing crazies that the other candidates bowed down to.

It certainly looks like the wheel are coming off the Romney train and in the next two weeks we are going to hear more and more Republicans break from the top of their ticket to try to save their Congressional seats. It is now starting to look more likely that the Democrats will hold the Senate and gain seats in the House. It is even becoming more and more of a possibility that Nancy Pelosi will again be Speaker of the House.

The big problem that I see for the Republican Party is that it needs to re-tool its message in order to appeal to a larger number of Americans. Attacking women's health care options, promoting religious/Christian doctrine (I know Romney is a Morman, but there are significant numbers of Republicans who don't trust him because of it), alienating Hispanics and other minorities with all of these crazy voter suppression efforts, protecting the very wealthy while trying to raise taxes on middle and lower class Americans, backing Big Oil companies with unnecessary subsidies, attacking environmentalism and science (global climate change is real folks) and accusing non-Republicans of being moochers are simply not winning themes.

The GOP is going to get trounced this election cycle. It is going to have to really re-look at what it wants to be. It cannot just be the party of older white males. It is going to have to change because the electorate is changing rapidly. I think that at its core, it must focus on its economic message of smaller government, but it must do so with specific policies that can be explained to the American people. How those policies can actually help the various groups need to be explained. In addition, the GOP is going to have to recruit and promote minority candidates in order to be a relevant national party in the future. The RNC was just a whole lot of middle age and older white folks bashing a black President. I am not saying that it was meant to be racist, but the imagery was horrible. If there were significant numbers of minority faces and younger faces in the crowd it may have at least looked better. Until the GOP truly decides that it is going to open up in the 21st Century, it is going to become less and less relevant as a national political party.