Gonna come right out here and say that any organization that wants
Reince Priebus heading it probably has issues enough already.
Good news, Republican passengers. Your Republican National Committee captains have decided that there's no need for a course correction,
those icebergs will probably move:
[T]he party’s main problem, dozens of Republican National Committee members argued in interviews over three days this week, is who delivers its message and how, not the message itself. Overwhelmingly they insisted that substantive policy changes aren’t the answer to last year’s losses. […]
“It’s not the platform of the party that’s the issue,” RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said Friday after being easily reelected to a second, two-year term. “In many cases, it’s how we communicate about it. It is a couple dumb things that people have said.”
If the new goal of the Republican Party is to stop their members from saying stupid things, then good luck with that. I can't imagine how many experts, training workshops, shock therapy sessions, and signed Allen West ball gags it would require to pull
that off. Stopping
Fox & Friends alone from saying dumb things seems like the sort of thing you could get a Nobel for, if you could actually accomplish it. More to the point, the entirety of the last two election seasons (one very good for the Republicans, the other considerably less good) was absolutely devoted to the elevation of people who said dumb things. That was their schtick. Holy hell, that was their
calling.
A big focus of the four-day session, which wraps up Saturday, was adopting a more positive attitude – and smiling! – when interacting with voters and reporters.
"Thank you for asking that question, Mr. Voter. I can assure you that I, too, believe that the president is a secret Marxist, possibly not American, definitely a stooge of foreign interests, and possibly a moon-man. My handlers have told me that by smiling while I tell you this, I shall look at least twenty percent less batshit crazy."
Thrill to the deep insights of mid-tier Republican leaders:
(More below the fold)
“I feel like a pro-life position is a position that a lot of people have, but that doesn’t have anything to do with crazy talk about rape,” [Mississippi Republican Chairman Joe Nosef] added.
Losing battle, Joe.
[North Dakota committeeman Curly Haugland]’s confident that Obama will overreach now that he’s secured reelection – and that this will drive voters to Republicans in the 2014 midterms.
“This administration is a socialist administration. There’s no question about it,” Haugland said. “America’s not a socialist country.”
Shutting Curly here up would seem an opportune first battle for the RNC's new stop-saying-stupid-things policy. No time like the present, fellas.
You might note, dear reader, that the central message of "we don't need to change a damn thing" does not quite mesh with today's apparent negotiated bailout, by some Republicans, from the whole immigration debate. I'll chalk that one up to the right hand not knowing what the other right hand is doing. Wasn't "amnesty" for children the hill that Republicans made poor Rick Perry die on, not that long ago? We'll see; Republicans may be hoping to simplify their message by hating fewer people at one time, or we may yet witness an epic (though smiling!) meltdown by the crazy base as they realize their party elders may not be as entirely devoted to the Republican "change nothing" strategy as their lesser lights were hoping.
