What Will It Take to Reshape, Rebuild the GOP?
I was inspired by a blog post over on Next Gen GOP on how to effectively reach out to and bring in younger voters to the GOP. It's a tough question that currently plagues Republican parties all across the
Abby Alger, who wrote the post, points out some pretty obvious "perceived" (remember, when it comes to politics, perception is reality) problems we as Republicans face. Namely we are:
- "overwhelmingly old, white, racist, sexist, classist, and many other bad “-ists”
Ms. Alger hits the nail on the head for the most part. And much has been written when it comes to the GOP working to re-brand itself. But we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking this is the first time a major political party in America has gone through a self-inflicted identity crisis.
The same could be said for the Democrats in 1994 after the Republicans took Congress back like Stormin' Norman Schwarzkopf went into Iraq in the first Gulf War and again in 2004 after George W. Bush not only won the popular vote in the 2004 presidential election, but took it by a decisive margin. The difference is that combined with national and world events, it only took the Democrats fully four years to take everything back.
But along the way, they learned what they had to do. They had to energize their base and move beyond donation to fully utilizing volunteers who previously had been ignored because of their lack of expendable donor cash. Now Republicans find themselves in an almost identical boat.
So what must be done?
Find out tomorrow as I return to actually updating this site on a regular basis! (Hard to believe, but I'm going to hold myself to my New Year's Resolution...I mean it!)
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1 comments:
Personally, I'd like the GOP to break with the South; by which I mean socially conservative white evangelists.
I want to vote for a party that is socially liberal to neutral, fiscally conservative, and pro-business. And, by pro-business, I mean embracing and aiding those who rise and profit based on hard work, ingenuity, and risk-taking -- not so much the sort of crony capitalism I tend (rightly or wrongly) to associate with Republicans these days.
By fiscally conservative, I mean balanced budgets first and foremost. If they can do that by cutting wasteful government, great. But the first priority should be that revenues exceed spending, otherwise we are borrowing from future generations.
Market based approaches to doing things should ensure that market participants are not able to externalize the costs of their activities. Failure to do this distorts the market signals.
By socially liberal-to-neutral, I mean that the general approach should be that a person should probably be allowed to do something if it doesn't "pick my pocket or break my leg."
Now, I'm hardly a member of the Republican base and probably barely on the edge of those who can potentially be won back to the party, so I don't expect my philosophies to be embraced too readily.
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