You would think after trotting out a sorry presidential candidate in the general election and getting soundly beaten in both the popular vote and the Electoral College, the Republican party would have learned its lesson and started doing some serious introspection.
And it seems there is a small, but determined wing that is serious about looking at the GOP's flaws. In the Daily Beast Meghan McCain, one of the few moderate Republicans, said, "Times are changing. The face of America is changing and we as Republicans stand at a crossroads. Are we going to accept the changing face of America and change with it? Or are we going to continue to become more isolated and irrelevant? It’s possible to maintain the core values of this party and evolve when it comes to social issues. Quite frankly, I don’t see any other path to success."
However, there are a large number of Republicans who are determined to double down on the same bad ideas that cost them election. The GOP lost because the party is mainly focused on catering to white Americans, the fastest shrinking demographic in the country. But instead of reaching out to Latinos and other ethnic minorities that made up President Obama's broad-based coalition, what do they do? More of the same.
Here are some examples:
- Mitt Romney blamed his loss on the fact that Obama had bribed his constituency with free stuff. I guess George W. Bush's tax cuts and the Medicare drug benefit were paid for?
- Vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan continued digging by saying that Obama won, because of the large turnout in "urban" areas. Urban has been used as a substitute word for black and Latino.
- In Maine, Charlie Webster, state chairman of the GOP, stuck his foot in his mouth, when he said that the GOP lost because mysterious gangs of black people turned up at the polls. Maine, by the way, is less than 2 percent black.
- And Rush Limbaugh, who is one of the highest profile mouthpiece's in the GOP, recently went on a rant where he lumped illegal immigrants in with all Hispanics. This should not be surprising, Rush has been doing his race-baiting shtick for 20 years, at this stage it's all he knows.
Apparently, the GOP hasn't learned that calling minority voters dupes and cheats is not the best way to attract them. Four years is a long time, but at this rate I can see the GOP losing the mid-terms and the next presidential election.
You would think that in the face of glaring losses and rapidly changing demographics, the GOP would be forced to change, but it still isn't. I suspect the reason is because of the right-wing media.
As I said before, the right-wing media is a hindrance to the Republican party, because it tells Conservatives what they want to hear, and not what they need to know. David Frum, a former George W. Bush speech writer, says Republicans have been lied to and exploited by a "conservative entertainment complex." The right-wing media, and FOX in particular, is like a general with a lousy intelligence unit. If your spies are lying to you, don't surprised if your troops march into a massacre.
Judging by the reactions to Obama's win, many people in the GOP still don't get it. In their minds, Obama won because he cheated, even though there were at least two incidences of Republicans being arrested for voter fraud; Obama suppressed the vote, even though there were long lines in black neighborhoods, and machines were seen to change votes to Romney; and blacks and Latinos only voted for Obama, because they were not smart enough to vote Romney.
So let me get this straight, the Republicans are still clueless to reality and even though Obama got the lion share of blacks, Latinos, Asians and women, they still have no idea of how to reach out to them. Alrighty then, 2016 is looking better every day.
