The Republican National Committee is now in Hollywood looking for a makeover, where makeovers are a thriving local industry. Welcome RNC. Perhaps you are thinking of a few tummy tucks, butt lifts, breast enlargements, or maybe finding trainers and dieticians who can get rid of the flab and build up those six pack abs. After all, it works for actors and actresses….. but, I have news for you - for a political party, not so much. In fact is doesn’t work at all.
The Republican National Committee is now in Hollywood looking for a makeover, where makeovers are a thriving local industry. Welcome RNC. Perhaps you are thinking of a few tummy tucks, butt lifts, breast enlargements, or maybe finding trainers and dieticians who can get rid of the flab and build up those six pack abs. And of course, you may be dreaming of new lips, hair and clothes. After all, it works for actors and actresses….. but, I have news for you - for a political party, not so much. In fact is doesn’t work at all.
But that fact – like most facts – isn’t deterring your Chairman, Rince Preibus and the other 168 members of the Republican National Committee from holing up for three days in the nation’s den of liberal iniquity to deal with what you keep calling their “messaging problem” so you can finally win a national election.
You RNC board members – who incidentally I understand are the national party’s most conservative – are now digesting a report on the “Growth and Opportunity Project”, a supposedly honest assessment of why your party lost women, minorities and especially the fast-growing Latino vote. The presumption is that your party’s rhetoric was responsible for Mitt Romney’s overwhelming loss among these constituencies and his sound trouncing by the Obama campaign.
You hope that you can show that you are not so bad since you are meeting in the bluest city in the bluest state (sorry Massachusetts) with some of the highest minority populations. After all, California has no racial majority so where better to connect with Latinos and Asians and maybe even blacks? Right? Priebus thinks he can show that Republicans want to reach out to regions and constituencies have traditionally seen them as hostile, or as he put it, “The Republican Party has done a lousy job of reaching out to communities across the country, but I am committed changing that.”
Good luck with that Rince. The problem is not your messaging, the problem is your message. The American people just ain’t buying what you are selling and you apparently don’t get it.
The great conservative Barry Goldwater once warned that when “preachers” take over the Republican party they will destroy it.” It turns out he was both right and prophetic. Preachers have taken over the Republican party, linked arms with global corporations and converted it from the party whose leaders ended slavery and established national parks to a force for a theocracy manipulated by corporations to enslave women and workers in general, bankrupt the middle class, steal from the taxpayers and rewrite the Constitution. All in the name of liberty, of course.
Rince, once again, the problem is not the messaging, it is the message. As long as the preachers and the oligarchs are in control of your party and put up religious fanatics and gilded age freebooters up for office, your messaging is going to reflect your message. And the American people hear your message loud and clear – if you are not rich, white, evangelical Christian and male you don’t count.
The know that Romney’s 47% remark was not poor “messaging” – it was truth. The message of the party is that the government exists to make businesses and those who own them richer and protect them from everyone else.
They know that Todd Akin’s comment that raped women don’t get pregnant was not “poor messaging”, it was sincere belief of your base and the Republican office holders who introduced dozens of bills denying women their constitutional right to an abortion even when the are raped.
They know that claiming Obama is not a citizen but is really from Africa is not Donald Trump’s way of getting attention that interferes with the real message of the Party, but it is the real message of the Party and it is racist.
They know that Mitch McConnell’s claim that his only legislative priority is to hold the President to one term was not a poor choice of words, it is the message and he has blocked every piece of legislation intended to help common ordinary Americans to reach his political goal.
Rince, Hollywood can’t fix you. You and your party are not actors. Your job is to do, not just look pretty. No matter how many rhetorical tummy tucks and bust enlargements and butt lifts you try to give the RNC this week, it won’t work. People are not interested in how you look and sound, they are interested in what you do. And until you return to what made the Republican party great, the party of my parents and my youth, you will continue to lose. If you want to win. skip the Hollywood makeover and start making up with America – the real America of hard working middle class American women and men who right now, hear the Republican message and know it is not for them.