The problem with the right's messaging/policy infrastructure

By these points, it seems Republicanism has become a religion rather than a body of policy positions. If that's the case, I don't see how they can turn it around - they are just going to become more insular and stubborn the worse things get.

 

Your last paragraph leaves off a few key strategies: Yell really loud! Keep claiming Obama is an islamo-socialist! etc.


As to the paucity of ideas...Mickey Edwards, former congressman and one of the founders of the Heritage Institute, addressed this issue on NPR's Fresh Air. I've linked this elsewhere, but it's worth a listen if you can. His take is similar to yours. I'd love to track down his book, incidently.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96648705

 

Seems to me the Right was saying the same thing about the Left just a few years ago.

Over the past couple of days, I've come to the conclusion that a good ass kicking is exactly what the Republican party needed. They've clung to Reagan longer than Ron would have. It's time to move on. Many of us who used to identify strongly with Republicans feel abandoned, and I sense it is likely a generational issue as much as anything.

There are more and more who feel that the party should first and foremost should be about fiscal conservatism. And we're right on this issue. Dead right. Campaign financing should be an open book. Every candidate should have to list their donors down the dollar. No more back room deals to buy politicians, right or left. And as much as Superdave wants to believe this election wasn't about a reaction against Bush, it largely was. Most of America doesn't agree with his and many of your ideas of "fairness" in taxation. Redistribution of wealth is hardly something people espouse as an ideal.

As for the environment, that's the area where my old party, I'm afraid, needs a complete revolution.

But the old powers in the Republican party got their ass kicked. They got their ass kicked when McCain won the nomination, hardly something that overjoyed many on the right. And they got their ass kicked in the election, and frankly they deserved it.

So there are those of us who hope the party has to reevaluate itself and go a different direction. Much like the Dems successfully did a few years ago after successive losses.

 

Taking from the poor and giving to the rich is redistribution as well.

 

Could it be that after Reagan/Bush41 Republicans became more interested in power than in good governance?

Newt Gingrich shutting down government in '94 was the beginning of the Republican's abdication from good leadership. The "Contract with America" was essentially a platform for opposing Clinton and his governance, not a platform for making America a better place.

I don't need to go into huge detail on Bush....but it's fun anyways: Iraq, Katrina, Scooter Libby, Alberto Gonzalez, massive budget deficits etc etc. The Bush Administration put power ahead of governing, and frankly most of the GOP benefited from it so they went along (until the Dems took back the Senate and House).

When the GOP puts governance and leadership back into their thinking, they'll do fine. But they'll need to clean out those "dead enders" of which you refer to make it happen.

 

Pretty much. It's been pretty sucky these last few years if you wanted to actually be fiscally conservative, cos you knew the Republicans weren't giving it to you and that the Democrats, when they got in power, weren't going to either.

Hopefully this election will force the Republican party to eat itself from the inside out and show up in 2 or 4 or maybe 8 years as something more capable.

 

But the problem is that most people are against fiscal conservatism. You can't pay attention to what they say. I'm in a state with a massive debt, and yet just about every bond measure on the ballot still passed. A party only based on financial conservatism is going to fail horribly.

And we're not going to put out books in order until we are commended to by our owners.

 

I largely agree. I don't think most people separate Bush's competence from his policies. I mean, if you support his ideas, you're voting for him, even if you don't think he speaks English well or can't run FEMA.

Yes, the Republicans are out of ideas, but they'll come back. Firstly, the deck is so stacked in favor of the two party system that they can't possibly go away, it's like their own personal bailout.

You would think that this election would flip the switch for most Republicans to think, "hey, let's try something different". It doesn't seem to have happened yet, but it might still, we'll see.

The key for the GOP is to go back to what "conservative" used to mean. Find a couple key issues and go with it. It will take awhile because the GOP brand is so tarnished, but it will come in time.

 

1) I think Bush was largely unchecked for too long, both by his own party and by a Democratic party too weak and divided to stop him. The Dems played their role. Now the Republicans will have to reevaluate what's important to them.

2) Absolutely does not matter. Personalities aren't the issue right now.

3) You seemed to be focused on the past. I think it matters only so much as it's important to understand where we (conservatives) need to change. IMO, that includes:

-- Getting away from the "a vote for RepX is a vote for Jesus. And a vote for DemX is a vote for Satan" rhetoric.

-- Focusing on the ideals of individual freedom, responsibility, and consequence. Individual can be a person, business entity, or any other organization.

-- Reverting to fiscal conservatism and the ideal of smaller, less intrusive government. That is not to say a government that abdicates juridiction.

-- Make government transparent espacially in taxation and more importantly, make absolutely transparent campaign financing. Our current campaign finance and tax systems are far too prone to corruption and manipulation.

-- Implement a flat tax, whether that be through a FairTax or some other system. If states and local authorities choose to be more progressive in their taxation, so be it.

-- Make the environment a priority. Not kinda sorta. Truly. America will be as strong as it is energy independent. Hold entities responsible for their impact on the environment.

And so on. Notice none of those issues focus on Gay Marriage or whatever else the issue du jour may be. They are principles, and every issue should be viewed through the lense of those principles and evaluated accordingly.

4) I think you would love it if everyone espoused your philosophies and ideas, but you may want to get used to there being an opposing opinion, and that being a very healthy thing. And I think more than anything, this election was reactionary and not issues based. It was about personalities, not ideas. It was about a machine delivering a message of hope and Americans hoping the messenger is sincere. We'll see.

 

Good ideas nutmeg. The Reps problem is fiscal responsibility has flown out the window with the last three Rep presidents. What's left for them to stand for? The Democrats may be "tax and spend", but the Republicans are "spend and don't tax".

Start here. Mortgage deduction limited to $500,000. Estate tax exemption reduced from its current value.

 

I think the core of the issue is in the Jim Nuzzo quote about "aid and comfort to the enemy." The Reep "revolution" functioned/functions less as a half-dialectic than it has as a war machine. They have defined anyone in the citizenry who holds any alternative opinion as an ENEMY.

The more I looked at the election returns the other night, the more they disturbed me; has there ever before been an electoral vote won by a margin of 86%? (DC) The NYC area went for Obama by over 70%, while the central Adirondacks went the other way by more than 20%-- thats a difference of almost 100% within a state. I've lived in both places and I know there are "natural forces" which separate them politically-- but this is absurd. There are similar if not so large figures in many states...

It seems to me that for several decades we have as a populace been voting with our feet-- if we disagree with our neighbors, we move somewhere else rather than try to persuade them. And so a series of regional consenses are reinforced until they become traditions, and we are forever engaged not in debate with each other, but in battle across county and state and call-in lines. It has ceased to be about deciding and become altogether about winning. To modify a belief to fit conditions is weakness-- let go of your reality for an instant and the other guy will kill you with his.

And so the problem is not really a Republican one (though it seems to me to originate in decisions they made) but rather a national one-- the body politic spends all its energy trying to figure out which of its growths is healthy and which is the cancer, rather than trying to decide what to eat and what to wear. No wonder we're all so many of us on drugs; as a nation we're in constant pain...

 

There is a point to Nutmeg's larger view about the election that I have to agree with: You always have to come back to the fact that Barack Obama is a "superstar" candidate-the once-in-a-generation type, that grabs the moment. Without the failure of the Iraq War, where is he? Strip away the war, and what he offers is DLC 2.0. Now that may not be such a bad pattern/strategy for the Dems, and is more in line with my politics, but it's only "change" relative the poor quality of GWB.

The country is still center right and all the GOP needs is their version of a DLC. And I don't think this will be difficult. People are reading way too much into McCain's defeat. Something that I posted before and I think bears out in the results is that the GOP never embraced him; never was really behind him.

The smart money in the GOP was/is realizing that is a Democrat year. Look at the people who ran-it was the JV. That's the difference between someone like Bobby Jindal and Sarah Palin: even if Jindal was asked, I don't think he would have touched the VP with a 10 foot pole. Palin on the other hand...well she aint varisty, and this was her only shot at making the first XI. Simply put: this was going to be a Democratic year, and anyone in the GOP who has any future would be an absolute shmuck to shoot their wad this election. So the Jindal's (and I use him only as he is an obvious example) of the GOP keep their powder dry, wait until stench of Bush is out of the air, and fight another day.

Pro-life, lower taxes, energy/pro-evironmental policy as a part of national security, keeping the part of the Bush Doctrine concerning preemptive self defense...these are blocks that a future GOP candidate can use to bring the party together. And he/she can win on these basic planks of a platform.

And I'll add one last bit: my wife did some work for the Obama campaign here in Ohio. The effort to get out the vote here was herculean. This should be a warning to the Dems about reading too much in the win: in spite of the mess the country is in, it took a massive effort to win this state. So, I don't think it's nearly that grim for the GOP. Hopefully for my side, this administration will govern in a manner that will make re-election easier due to positive changes in the fundementals. But that remains to be seen.

 

Of course getting the vote is important. The point is the energy/performace used to get that vote was outside normal. To borrow from baseball, Obama pitched a perfect game this campaign-and did so partly due to a weak opposition.

 

No. Obama didn't get the vote out better because he was more charismatic or more of a superstar. He got the vote out better because of the nature of his organization. Instead of sending his message from the top-down, Obama's campaign empowered local volunteers to organize within their own communities. This is a huge change from campaigns of the past, and the real key to his impressive victory.

Yes, Obama is a charismatic and compelling figure. Yes, he did a far better job of articulating a message than McCain, who floundered from message to message with no coherent philosophy, platform or ideals. Those were important factors. But what really won this race for Obama was the organizing on the local level, amplified through the internet and new technology.

 

This is a very interesting thread. Here are some thoughts.

The Reeps lost because they got buzz-sawed by a superstar (Obama). There's some truth to that for the presidential election. However, the dems crushed the reeps for the house, senate and governors. I haven't seen the data, but I'll bet the movement to the left also occured for state legislatures.

For the future of the reep party, I again suggest that folks turn no further than the California reeps. The reeps did themselves a huge disfavor when they attacked illegal immigrants. The Hispanic voting population is growing everywhere. Given the hostilities, there's no wonder why they overwhelmingly went dem.

The reeps, masters of the wedge issue, are now wedged in as the party of the south and bumpkins everywhere. The Rockefeller reeps have fled the party. Can they return? Sure, but its hard to see how the party can be stitched back up. I just don't see where the reeps can gain a working majority on the legislative side.

 

That's right...so love it or leave it, pal.