(Note - this guest essay was sent to us early Wednesday morning, November 7, 2012, and is being published with the permission of its author.)
I write this at 11 pm CST on
November 6, 2012. The GOP is about to lose the presidency to Barack Obama for a
second time. The first election can be explained easily enough; the republicans
were on their way out after the Bush administration, and Obama was promising
hope and change to a people hungry for it. After 4 years where that change
wasn't effective in the way it needed to be, the time should be ripe for Mitt
Romney to step in and lead this country. He won't get that chance. I've been a
republican my whole life, and I'm part of a generation that has never voted in
a republican president.
The 2012 presidential campaign should have been about debt and about the economy. Almost every poll indicated that much. Mitt Romney should have been the clear choice to deal with those issues-he was the candidate who knew big business and budgets, whereas Obama seemed to spurn managing the national debt at every turn and hadn't made sufficient progress with the economy. If those were the issues, and Romney was the better choice, how did he lose? There could be two explanations: the country didn't believe in Romney, or the country didn't vote on those same issues it professed to care about. Evidence suggests the latter.
The 2012 election couldn't have been narrower in the popular vote-a 50%-49% distribution indicates a very clearly polarized electorate. This has been a trend of the last 4-5 years, which has hit a peak during Obama's term and the coming of this election. The country is polarized, but beyond that is very clearly divided based on the values of individuals rather than a greater good. It is the saddest of realities: the greater good of the country, and the issues that are most important to our future, are being ignored in favor of individualism. It is no mystery, therefore, that the Democratic Party wins in this political environment; it has established itself as the Everyman party, and offers a candidate who identifies with a more diverse portion of the population than any presidential candidate ever.
At the same time the Democratic Party has capitalized on this schism in the American electorate, the Republican Party has alienated itself. This election should not have been turned on social issues, but it was. Republicans have seemingly bent over backwards to alienate women, to take offensive stances on immigration, and to ostracize gays. It is time for the party to enter the 21st century on social issues; until then, candidates like Romney stand no chance. Romney didn't lose the election so much as his party did.
I'm not advocating that social issues should take any sort of precedence in national politics, in fact I believe exactly the opposite. However, it is time that the Republican Party starts reevaluating their stance on these issues. If not because they believe in the social issues, then because it will again make them competitive for the presidency. The evidence that supports this necessary change in ideals is widely available-in conversations with women or minorities, in polling data, and in the beliefs of some of the inner party republicans. The Republican Party owes the American people a party that can seriously compete for a presidency, one that aligns itself with important social issues in a modern way but still represents small government, fiscal responsibility, and free markets. America desperately awaits a modernized republican party. It is time to wake up.
The 2012 presidential campaign should have been about debt and about the economy. Almost every poll indicated that much. Mitt Romney should have been the clear choice to deal with those issues-he was the candidate who knew big business and budgets, whereas Obama seemed to spurn managing the national debt at every turn and hadn't made sufficient progress with the economy. If those were the issues, and Romney was the better choice, how did he lose? There could be two explanations: the country didn't believe in Romney, or the country didn't vote on those same issues it professed to care about. Evidence suggests the latter.
The 2012 election couldn't have been narrower in the popular vote-a 50%-49% distribution indicates a very clearly polarized electorate. This has been a trend of the last 4-5 years, which has hit a peak during Obama's term and the coming of this election. The country is polarized, but beyond that is very clearly divided based on the values of individuals rather than a greater good. It is the saddest of realities: the greater good of the country, and the issues that are most important to our future, are being ignored in favor of individualism. It is no mystery, therefore, that the Democratic Party wins in this political environment; it has established itself as the Everyman party, and offers a candidate who identifies with a more diverse portion of the population than any presidential candidate ever.
At the same time the Democratic Party has capitalized on this schism in the American electorate, the Republican Party has alienated itself. This election should not have been turned on social issues, but it was. Republicans have seemingly bent over backwards to alienate women, to take offensive stances on immigration, and to ostracize gays. It is time for the party to enter the 21st century on social issues; until then, candidates like Romney stand no chance. Romney didn't lose the election so much as his party did.
I'm not advocating that social issues should take any sort of precedence in national politics, in fact I believe exactly the opposite. However, it is time that the Republican Party starts reevaluating their stance on these issues. If not because they believe in the social issues, then because it will again make them competitive for the presidency. The evidence that supports this necessary change in ideals is widely available-in conversations with women or minorities, in polling data, and in the beliefs of some of the inner party republicans. The Republican Party owes the American people a party that can seriously compete for a presidency, one that aligns itself with important social issues in a modern way but still represents small government, fiscal responsibility, and free markets. America desperately awaits a modernized republican party. It is time to wake up.
3 comments:
This young person is very astute and his/her opinion is probably shared by the majority of republican voters, however–as they say in Vegas–follow
the money. Hopefully a strong, fiscally conservative, socially moderate leader will emerge to unite the majority of the party.
I agree with this young man and encourage you to read the article in yesterdays Wall Street Journal by a young college Sophomore in the editorial section entitled Advice from a Lonely College Republican. She says many of the same things. A friend of mine said we could do three things to turn this around. 1. Give the public some sort of token increase in tax rates on the rich (it won't kill them and would take away a huge stumbling block). 2. Go pro choice since a majority of women favor that position (with limits). 3. Solve the immigration problem now. The real conservatives continue to dominate our party and are killing us in the elections. This nation will never be far right and until we learn to be more moderate, we will continue to lose.
To tie today's guest post and our discussion together, the Republican Party needs to appeal to people who want fiscal sanity without the culture wars. The GOP is the Democratic Party of the 1970's. The members want to save the world from themselves, which is not a winning strategy. It used to be that the party was going to save us from someone else.
The party at its roots is the party of business. It should return to that position. I have my doubts.
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