The above cartoon by Lalo Alcaraz contains a lot of truth. It pictures the Republicans, not as an elephant, but as a mammoth -- a species that is now extinct. The GOP is not extinct yet, but if they don't change they could well go the way of the Whigs in just a few more years. They did very poorly in the last election, with the Democrats easily winning the White House and capturing several new Senate seats. The GOP did hold on to the House, but even that was not a cause for their celebration. They lost the raw vote of all House members by over a million votes -- and retained their majority only because of some effective gerrymandering they did in 2010.They have now done some "soul-searching", and the national party has put out a blueprint for change. At least they call it change. After reading it, it just looks like they put some lipstick on that mammoth. The real change they needed is not in the plan, and probably couldn't be accomplished right now (thanks to too many state parties being in the hands of their base trifecta -- teabaggers, fundamentalists, and racists).
The biggest changes they desire are to:
1. free up more money for campaigns
2. modernize their digital outreach program
3. hold conventions before August
4. cut down on the number of primary debates
5. reach out to minorities
The first two mainly concern money, and that wasn't really their problem in the last election. They had plenty of money -- but just didn't have a program they could sell to a majority of Americans. The second two are purely cosmetic. It doesn't really matter when you hold a convention, and while the primary debates did expose a lot of their mean-spirited views, holding fewer will not solve that problem. If they aren't exposed in their primary debates, the Democrats will be happy to do the exposing for them.
Number 5 is the real change they need. They need to reach out to minority groups (including women, even though they aren't a minority), because the number of whites making up the electorate has been shrinking by about 2% in each presidential election -- and no one expects that to change in the foreseeable future. The Republicans know this -- but knowing it and fixing it are two different things.
The plan recognizes that they must reach out to Hispanics, African-Americans, Asians, women, and the LBGT community, and they have earmarked about $10 million to do that. But the problem is that the only solutions they came up with are to find minority candidates and to speak in a manner that will be more appealing to minorities. That's not enough! Finding some more "tokens" and sugar-coating their hard-hearted policies are not going to win over any minority groups. Minorities are not stupid (no matter how much the GOP wishes they were), and they know when a party supports policies and an agenda that hurts them.
There is only one real way to reach out to those minority groups -- moderate the party's policies. But the plan doesn't include that as an option -- and it would probably be rejected by the party faithful if it did. As long as the party is being run by the extremists on the far-right-wing, they will continue the same policies that cost them the 2008 and 2012 elections -- and those policies will again hurt them in the future ( as the percentage of old white men in the electorate continues to drop).
The truth is that they have a way out of their current mess. It just wasn't in the plan because, at least so far, they are unwilling to do it. Will they finally wake up and change their policies -- or will they become extinct like the mammoth (and the Whigs)? Only the future can tell us that, but as of right now there will be no change.
NOTE -- If you enjoy some pretty dull and very pointless reading, here is the Republican Plan.
