I'm pretty sure the GOP doesn’t actually want my advice about its
failures on the 6th, you know me being a homo and all, but hey I'm a generous guy. I read a really great article that inspired this post (some of which is paraphrased from said article) and I think it really captures my feelings as to what I think is wrong with the GOP and why they lost so badly this election cycle.
1. Recognize your brand isn't selling. You can’t call yourself the party of fiscal responsibility at this point;
your record for the last thirty years makes this laughable. Bush shot
your international relations standing in the foot. All you have left is
social issues, and — surprise! — on social issues, most people who are not you think you’re intolerant at best and racist, sexist, homophobic and bigoted at worst.
Seriously, guys: What does the GOP actually want to be the party of? At this point, and for the last few years, it’s been “The Party of Not Obama.” Running the country seems to have slipped your minds.
2. Deal with your base. Your presidential nominee slate was downright terrifying this year.
I know your base was excited about them, but from the outside we were
all, like, “seriously, WTF?” The fact that an unrepentant bigot like
Rick Santorum managed to pace Mitt Romney for the nomination as far into
the process as he did should have sent up enough red flags to rival
Beijing on May Day. Then it makes the (relative) moderates who
eventually win the nominations spend too much time tending to its issues
and selecting awful vice presidential candidates. Sarah Palin terrified
the non-base voters she was supposed to attract. That Paul Ryan counts
as an “intellectual” in GOP circles speaks to the almost unfathomable
poverty of your brain trust at the moment. That these two were brought
on to bolster their respective presidential candidates with the party’s
base should throw up all sorts of warning signs.
Your base is fine for now with mid-terms, when you’re dealing with
house races, and districts that have been gerrymandered to allow for
genuinely horrible politicians to be elected (yes, on both sides, but
we’re talking about you for now). For presidential elections, when you
have to deal with a national electorate? They’re a bad foundation.
They’re going to keep making you fail. If you don’t want to believe it,
two words for you: Akin, Mourdock. If you think they only lost their races, think again.
3. Accept that the US is browner and more tolerant
than you are, and that you need to become more of both.
By “tolerant” I mean being okay with gays marrying and women
deciding what to do with their own wombs and believing science doesn’t want to shiv Jesus in the night when no one is looking. By “browner,” I mean, well, browner. There are lots of ethnic minorities out there. With more
every day. And very few of them want to have anything to do with you. This means that lots of younger white people don’t want to have
anything to do with you either, because — again, surprise! — many of the
people who they love and grew up with in this browner and more tolerant
nation are the folks you spend a lot of time railing against, in code
or just straight up. And that’s bullshit.
I'm white and gay. And in my family and close circle of friends I have Hispanics,
African-Americans, Asians, gay, bisexual and trans people, religious,
agnostic and atheist, able-bodied and disabled. You lose me when you
classify me or any of them as the other. They’re not the other; they’re us, the national electorate. When you classify me or other minorities as other you aren't just losing my vote. You are losing the votes of everyone in my family and friends and probably more beyond that.
4. Stop letting your media run you. Fox
News and Rush Limbaugh don’t actually care about the GOP. They are in the business of terrifying aging white people for
money. To the extent that your political agenda conforms to this goal,
they’re on your side. But when you step outside of their “terrify aging
white people for money” agenda, they’re going to stomp on you. How many
GOP politicians have had to grovel at Limbaugh’s feet because they said
something he didn’t approve of? Stop it. Tell him to fuck off every once
in a while. It’ll be good for you.
And while you’re at it, tell Grover Norquist to fuck off, too. The
fact this dude keeps the lot of you from facing economic reality with
that damned pledge of his is an embarrassment.
Do I expect the GOP to consider this advice? Not really, no. What I expect them to do is the same thing they’ve been doing for the last twenty years,
which is to decide that the problem with the GOP is that it’s not
socially conservative or fiscally irresponsible enough, cull
anyone who doesn’t subscribe to the new tighter and angrier level of
orthodoxy and go from there. If that’s the direction you go, I wish you
joy in it, and look forward to years and years of Democratic presidents.
