CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
Nov. 5, 2008 – 4:52 p.m.
The GOP is Looking for Guidance
By Molly K. Hooper, CQ Staff
Republicans are trying to figure out what went wrong, so they’ve decided to listen up by inviting supporters to weigh in with their views on the election outcome and where the party should go from here.
Republican National Committee Chairman Robert M. (Mike) Duncan said today the party will be creating a Web site to gather feedback from GOP voters.
“In the coming weeks the RNC will launch a new online initiative called ‘Republicans for a Reason,” Duncan said at a National Press Club gathering. “It will provide voters a forum to speak their mind; to tell us why they are Republicans; to tell us how we may have let them down this year; and what we can do to restore their confidence in our party.”
Comments
Sounds like a good idea... there are a lot more people in the party than just uneducated Christian fundamentalists who are attracted to someone who's right at their intellectual level (Palin)... but, maybe we need to lose another election or two to fully wrap our heads around reality.
My parents are both Republicans and my father holds an appointed position in the Town I grew up in New York State. The Republican party is no longer conservative - fiscally - but has become VERY conservative socially. You MUST return to the party of Eisenhower and Goldwater if you hope to have a prayer with winning the votes of my family in the future.
The GOP needs to realize that capitalism is not the answere to everything. While capitalism is great, it has to be regulated to prevent people making a buck at the expense of the next guy. We have to get back to respecting the worker as much if not more than the share holder. The drive to make a quick buck is why we're in this mess.
The GOP used to have a subgroup of members that were members of the John Birch Society. Now the GOP has *become* the John Birch Society. The GOP needs to get back to its roots in the country club, the boardroom, the mainline Protestant churches--and become a political party of intellectual ideals and ideas again, a party that was big enough for Nixon and Goldwater, for Rockefeller and Lowell Weicker. The Sarah Palin, lowest-common-idiot route is insulting to so many true moderates who will never consider voting for a party that only wants to waste government money on legislating morality, trashing the Constitution, and waging unnecessary war.
I am not a Republican. However, I do have the good of the GOP in mind, mainly because we cannot conduct the matter of political business in this nation without two (or more) viable party platforms. So, I would rather there was a functional, vibrant GOP than not. The GOP as it stood for the last 20 years is defunct. My prescription for its revival: 1) Listen to the Stephen Colbert interview with George Will and the latter's idea of the True Conservative Movement as it used to be. THAT is worth gunning for, not its twisted sister... not what it has come to symbolize via talk radio and its perps. 2) Realize that the country and its demographics have undergone a sea change and that it behooves the GOP to ride the wave and be as embracing of change and the future as possible. The more you exclude, the more YOU will be excluded from the nation's political discourse. 3) Stop deifying ignorance. It is a GOOD thing to be intelligent, global and informed... it lets you aspire to be more than you are and engineers progress. So, please, stop being the Party that celebrates the stupid. In conclusion, the GOP needs grow up, regroup, rethink and re-enact its fundamental, guiding principles if it wants to survive into the heart of the 21st century.
I agree with MOST ALL of the answers given so far, but I have a REAL PROBLEM believing that the "leaders" referenced in the article will be willing ar able to listen and accept the wisdom imparted here. They ARE the problem...i.e., simply too dogmatic and not at all willing to open the tent to those of us not seeking a religious utopia in our political party!
The GOP has been taken over by the evangelist right- it's hard to even recognize the party anymore. The religious influence has so polarized the GOP it has become a one issue party- whether you are pro-life or not. Ditch the right wing and get back to being the fiscally conservative, small government, stay of the tax payers pocket kind of party you were. The way the GOP runs it's campaigns also needs to stop as it clearly makes you appear to be hypocritical, intolerant bigots. I am a fiscal conservative but I cannot support the GOP where it is heading, especially if it thinks Palin is the future of the party. My advice is to get behind Ron Paul.
It's easy as everyone has mentioned, more or less. Drop the evanglicals and along with them, anti-abortion, gay marriage bans, et. al. Restore fiscal conservativism. Go back to Barry Goldwater and they'll be just fine. Imagine a new Sarah Palin in 2012 who is pro-choice, pro-same sex marriage, both by reason of the "live and let live", individual freedom ideals of Goldwater. And imagine if she's established credibility as a fiscal conservative and energy guru in Alaska in the next 4 years? She'd give Obama a serious run for his money. The gains would be so enormous for the Republican party that you wouldn't even miss the evangelicals.
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