Fixing The GOP Brand

A new Gallup poll sheds some light on the direction that the GOP needs to take following its second losing election in a row:

The Republican Party's image has gone from bad to worse over the past month, as only 34% of Americans in a Nov. 13-16 Gallup Poll say they have a favorable view of the party, down from 40% in mid-October. The 61% now holding an unfavorable view of the GOP is the highest Gallup has recorded for that party since the measure was established in 1992.

Wowsers!  To have almost two out of every three people say the GOP sucks is very, very bad news.  In the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit I'm one of them - I seriously contemplated registering as an Independent this year, though I ultimately decided not to.  Still, that certainly doesn't mean I'm going over the aisle to become a Democrat - it means I believe the GOP has broken itself and needs to be fixed.  I suspect I have a lot of company.

So, this brings us once again back to whether or not the GOP should go more towards the center, or more towards conservatism.  Gallup answers that question, too:

Gallup addressed this issue in the recent poll with a question asking, "Over the next few years, would you like to see the Republican Party and its candidates move in a more conservative direction, a less conservative direction, or stay about the same?"

Most rank-and-file Republicans (59%) want to see the party move in a more conservative direction and another 28% want it to remain about the same. Only 12% would prefer to see the Republican Party become less conservative.

Bingo!  This is a very revealing bit of data!  Remember the conservative vs. big-government/moderate battle?  This tells you what the base thinks, and it also shows just how much of a minority in the party the moderates are.  The problem is that those moderates are the ones who have been pulling the party's strings over the past few years.  Bottom line: their way doesn't work, ours does.  Move over, moderates!  You're welcome in the party, of course, but unless you want to be a permanent minority party, you need to let the true conservatives lead.

Another interesting thing we see the moderates doing is blaming people who aren't even in elected office.  From Hot Air:

Two editorials in the past two days have attempted to shift blame for two successive election losses onto someone who has never run for public office.  Both Mort Kondracke and Karen Harper blame Rush and other conservative talk-show hosts for the GOP's descent into the minority in Washington DC.  Neither, though, explain how a conservative talk-show host whose policy positions got largely ignored over the last eight years cost Republican candidates votes.

Kondracke:

How can the Republican Party rebound? The first step would be to quit letting Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham set its agenda. …

Step One is to fire Rush Limbaugh and his ilk as the intellectual bosses of the GOP. They shouldn't be muzzled, as some liberals want to do by reviving the "fairness doctrine" in broadcasting, just ignored more frequently.

In recent years, Republicans have let right-wing talk show hosts whip the GOP base into frenzies — over immigration, brain-damage victim Terry Schiavo and same-sex marriage — that have branded the party as troglodyte.

Huh?  Did Rush or any of the other people Kondracke mentions support an explosion of pork-barrel spending?  As far as I know, Rush never uttered the phrase "compassionate conservatism" without irony or contempt.  Rush, Laura, Sean, and the rest of the talk-show circuit certainly didn't back the biggest expansion of discretionary spending by the federal government in decades.  Other than the war and judicial nominations, Kondracke would be hard-pressed to identify which parts of the Republican agenda as pursued by GOP officeholders over the last decade belonged to Rush.

Harper falls into the same trap, only more insultingly:

However, Governor Jindal and other moderates must contend with Rush Limbaugh and others like him.  Limbaugh, the Jerry Springer of radio, continues to encourage his listeners to support the right wing conservative wing of the Republican party as he trashes anyone who disagrees with him and that includes moderate centrist Republicans.

Irony spill on Aisle 1!  Harper complains about Rush "trashing" people with whom he disagrees at the same time as she calls him the Jerry Springer of talk radio.  Well, thanks for the tolerance lesson, Karen!  We'll put that right up there with Kathleen Parker's "Oogedy Boogedy" description of Christians. 

You know, it's odd; when Republicans won elections, no one seemed to mind Rush and his energy to bring conservatives to the table.  When Republicans stopped being conservatives, or at least stopped acting like conservatives and more like the kind of Democrat Lite that Kondracke and Harper prefer, they stopped winning elections — and started blaming Rush Limbaugh for it.  Kondracke wants Republican politicians to ignore Rush, Laura, and Sean, but they've been doing that since 2001, and that's not Rush's fault.

Hot Air offers the following prescription for the GOP:

The GOP will go nowhere if it engages in scapegoating talk radio for the next couple of years.  Republicans have lost two successive elections because American voters will choose Democrats when given a choice between an authentic Democrat and a fake Democrat.  We're not going to win elections by making Republicans more like Democrats.  We will win elections when Republicans do the following:

• Find a First Principles approach that will unite the conservative coalitions, as Reagan did in 1980
• Have a zero-tolerance policy for corruption
• Stop supporting pork-barrel spending
• Take concrete steps to shrink the federal government
• Take responsibility for their own actions and the consequences for them instead of scapegoating talk radio

Note to Kondracke and Harper: Rush doesn't work for the Republican Party.  The Republican Party doesn't follow Rush's policy agenda, and hasn't since George Bush came to office.  The notion that the main problem with the GOP is Rush Limbaugh is profoundly foolish, so much so that only Beltway insiders could possibly reach that conclusion.

Elites are elites, no matter which side of the aisle they're on - they simply don't understand normal people and how we think.

Of the two sides of Congress, the House is always the most responsive to the will of the American people.  The GOP in the House has already started moving in the conservative direction:

The House, at least, is heading right:

Pence, who was unanimously voted in as the Republican Conference Chairman on Wednesday, told CNSNews.com that conservatism is the current trend among House Republicans.

"What I saw today in the Republican conference was an affirmation that the way back for the Republican Party is a return to timeless principles," Pence told CNSNews.com. "My unanimous selection was not so much an affirmation of me as a person, but my conservative principles."

Both Mica and Flake also told CNSNews.com that the conference is experiencing a shift towards the right.

"Sure," Flake told CNSNews.com when asked if there had been a shift. "Fiscal conservatives have more of a voice here now."

Independents will head right too as the Democrats overreach...

This is good news.  This effort will take time and continuous input from the rank-and-file like you and me, but it can be done.  It must be done, if we are to bring our government back around to some sense of sanity and accountability.  What we need to do is get educated on our representatives, supporting the true conservatives over the moderates, and be consistent in our awareness of what our reps are doing.  The first step is to clean our own house - that seems to be starting now, and that's a great thing.  As that effort continues, the party can identify a few core principles around which all GOPers can rally (the list above looks great to me), then develop a new message that will be presented to the American public as its rebuilt image and vision.  If the correct principles are used for the foundation, the country will support it, as they did with Reagan.  Remember, he didn't ever have a GOP majority to work with.  Rob Portman, former US Trade Representative and OMB Director under George W. Bush, shares the secret of Reagan's success:

The renewal of the Republican Party starts with an embrace of the core principles of fiscal conservatism, smaller government, traditional values, personal responsibility and ethics, not just when we campaign, but when we govern.

But adherence to these core principles is only a starting point. The key to success is turning these principles into compelling policy solutions to real-world concerns.

There is an understandable nostalgia in the Republican Party for Ronald Reagan. He grew the party and was a popular president while staying true to core values. But I believe we sometimes overlook what made him successful.

Based on core conservative beliefs, he fashioned innovative, and ultimately successful, solutions to seemingly intractable challenges of his time: a dysfunctional welfare system, the Cold War, stagflation from the Carter years, and increased levels of violent crime, among others.

And he effectively communicated his policies in a way that resonated with the American people. His simple and clear explanations, his relentless optimism about America, and his focus on results, not partisan advantage, allowed him to reach beyond the Republican Party to garner support.

We must do the same thing.

Damn right.

There's my two cents.