The Republican Party's official investigation into what the hell went wrong in the 2012 election just came out. Its called called the Growth and Opportunity Project (pdf). It contains many hard truths about about how the GOP is being marginalized demographically by its narrow appeal targeting its mostly White, mostly farm state base.
Republicans have lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections. States in which our presidential candidates used to win, such as New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, Iowa, Ohio, New Hampshire, Virginia, and Florida, are increasingly voting Democratic.
We are losing in too many places. It has reached the point where in the past six presidential elections, four have gone to the Democratic nominee, at an average yield of 327 electoral votes to 211 for the Republican. During the preceding two decades, from 1968 to 1988, Republicans won five out of six elections, averaging 417 electoral votes to Democrats’ 113.1
Public perception of the Party is at record lows. Young voters are increasingly rolling their eyes at what the Party represents, and many minorities wrongly think that Republicans do not like them or want them in the country.
Where would the young and minorities get that impression? Republican efforts to raise the costs of student loans, and Republicans harsh reaction to to the shooting of an unarmed Black child, might provide them with them with some clues.
If we believe our policies are the best ones to improve the lives of the American people, all the American people, our candidates and office holders need to do a better job talking in normal, people-oriented terms and we need to go to communities where Republicans do not normally go to listen and make our case. We need to campaign among Hispanic, black, Asian, and gay Americans and demonstrate we care about them, too. We must recruit more candidates who come from minority communities.
Somehow I don't expect many Republican candidates to start marching in Gay Pride Parades.
Recommendations:
2. The Republican Party needs to stop talking to itself. We have become expert in how to provide ideological reinforcement to like-minded people, but devastatingly we have lost the ability to be persuasive with, or welcoming to, those who do not agree with us on every issue.
4. The perception that the GOP does not care about people is doing great harm to the Party and its candidates on the federal level, especially in presidential years. It is a major deficiency that must be addressed.
Maybe the Republican Party's proposed policies that consistently lack compassion for their less fortunate fellow Americans might be a good place to start.
6. The Republican Party must be the champion of those who seek to climb the economic ladder of life. Low-income Americans are hard-working people who want to become hard-working middle-income Americans. Middle-income Americans want to become upper-middle-income, and so on. We need to help everyone make it in America.
7. We have to blow the whistle at corporate malfeasance and attack corporate welfare. We should speak out when a company liquidates itself and its executives receive bonuses but rank-and-file workers are left unemployed. We should speak out when CEOs receive tens of millions of dollars in retirement packages but middle-class workers have not had a meaningful raise in years.
Whoa! Is this window dressing? Most likely. Most Republicans in Congress aren't likely to take these recommendation to heart as they dial corporate executives for dollars. Following that recommendation would require a major reorientation of the GOP's devotion to Randian Free Market dogma.
America is changing demographically, and unless Republicans are able to grow our appeal the way GOP governors have done, the changes tilt the playing field even more in the Democratic direction. In 1980, exit polls tell us that the electorate was 88 percent white. In 2012, it was 72 percent white. Hispanics made up 7 percent of the electorate in 2000, 8 percent in 2004, 9 percent in 2008 and 10 percent in 2012.
According to the Pew Hispanic Center, in 2050, whites will be 47 percent
of the country while Hispanics will grow to 29 percent and Asians to 9 percent.
If we want ethnic minority voters to support Republicans, we have to engage them and show our sincerity.
Instead Republicans in congress are very likely to dismiss these ominous demographic trends, and instead show minorities their insincerity and rigidity by rejecting Immigration Reform. Why? Out of the fear of enfranchising millions of longtime undocumented Hispanic residents and risking them voting for the more inclusive Democrats.
The Report does include a section on voter registration. Being Republicans they emphasize registering like minded groups of people instead of trying to broaden the franchise to include more of the population.
2. The RNC Political Division working with state parties should set target registration goals and identify target groups and locations for a registration program, and registration volunteers and drives should be identified and implemented quarterly. These drives could focus on issue areas and target opportunities like gun shows, naturalization services, church fellowship opportunities, and so on.
Of course the Report doesn't mention the GOP's efforts to make registration and voting more inconvenient and cumbersome.
Then there's the Republicans' usual calls to open campaigns up to a flood of large contributions from large donors.
3. Increase contribution limits for federal campaigns. In the age of SuperPACs and other such organizations, the contribution limits to federal candidates must be increased so candidates have more control of the message and voters have a better understanding of the viewpoints of candidates rather than of third-party groups.
GOP Leaders don't sound too happy with the emergence of Super PACs and their loss of control that came with it.
5. Convince Congress to remove the biennial aggregate contribution limits. Many donors would like to fully support efforts to win majorities in the Senate and House and the presidency. They should be allowed to do so. The McCutcheon case aims to accomplish this goal, but Congress can fix the problem through legislation.
Republicans like the illusion that more money produces more democracy. Never mind that the opposite is true.
Add the recent poll results of the Republicans' shutdown of the Federal Government and the GOP's future looks even darker.
GOP loses more young, minority and female voters after shutdown - House majority at risk
By Seth McLaughlin
Polling after the 16-day shutdown, which ended last week in a near-complete victory for President Obama, showed the party polling poorly among all three key groups the party said it wanted to reach.
Indeed, majorities of women, younger generation and non-white voters now say it’s a bad thing that the Republican Party controls the House.
“By taking such a hard line on this topic, the party reinforced negative perceptions of extremism and unwillingness to compromise,” said Darrell M. West of the Brookings Institution. “Fiery rhetoric helps with the base but does a poor job reaching out to young people and women.”
Most Republican incumbents are likely to dismiss the polls as well as the more critical sections of the report, as are their potential Tea Party primary challengers IMHO. So I don't expect this report to change much beyond seeing more women and minorities being used as spokespersons to give the Republican Party the superficial appearance of diversity.