America is changing and so must the Republicans

Rhoda Klapp

Your PS containsd the seed of truth. In fact the party will change anyway, in four years. Maybe it will become coherent, maybe not. The requirement for consistency is not so strong in american politics. IMHO a republican party which will not eschew big government is not truly republican, so a pox on them.

On the other hand, lifting ones eyes from the present to the next couple of years, the success of the GOP is dependent mostly on the inverse of the success of the dems. When the dem congress and the dem executive fight, as they surely will, the GOP must exploit the mess. 2010 will tell if they are going to do it, not much to do now but hope for the disaster which is inevitable from Reid, Pelosi and Mr O.

Tanuki

I'd say that the Republicans in the US need to dump the socially-conservative stuff, just as the UK Conservatives need to dump the managerialist 'chocolate orange at the checkout' stuff.

Rather we need to say, basically. "live your life how you want - just don't expect the taxpayer to fund your lifestyle".

Kinda like a non-dogmatic libertarianism - a non-interventionist government putting trust in the individual (who after all knows what's best for him/her).

RMH

If the GOP wants to win, it needs to disengage the extreme right, and fight for the centre.

The gods/guns and gay wing will never vote Dem, so you have to focus on the low tax, but fair for all policies element.

Should start by having tax policies that benefit from the bottom up (ie raise tax thresholds) rather than reduce upper tier tax rates.

Also need to shed the bigotted image that the GOP has in places.

In short do a Blair and occupy the centre ground, or do an IDS and appeal to the base.

TGF UKIP

Rhoda's spot on as usual and I'd agree with most of Tanuki's post except I would say seek more of a distance from the religious association rather than "dump the socially conservative stuff."

The GOP is a small government, strong defence, socially conservative party and the very last thing it should do is emulate the disastrous course of the UK Tories and prematurely seek to rebrand itself and try to appear to be a party at dramatic variance with the instincts of its core.

Politics goes in cycles and this was destined for a long time to be a Democratic cycle. The GOP shouldn't panic, therefore, but let events unfold and the Democrats unravel as they most surely will.

The Obama Administration will be like ferrets in a sack with the Chicago mob in permanent war against the Clinton New York/DC gang while the Dem Congress has more ultra pc, loony left, green headbangers than ever before. It's also got more than enough sleazebags for the Republicans to be able to exact a swingeing revenge.

Take your time GOP, position yourselves against the unravelling Dems and for God's sake don't do anything so daft as trying to "cameronize."

The main thing the GOP needs to do in the next two years is to coalesce round a new leader.

The Chocolate Orange Inspector

The Conservatives have to become conservative again; not NuLaborLite Lite.

Under the absurd marketing mantra (and Dave is a TV marketing man and we know they don't come much lighter than that)"decontaminating the brand", Dave fed into the negative mantra about Conservatives. Then the ice-floe incident, as I shall kindly style it; then the hug-a-hoodie incident; then the pretend-to-be-cleaning-graffiti-off-a-wall-with-an obviously-fresh-paintbrush-and-no-paint photo op.

And guess what! With his derisory publicity tricks, he reinforced every negative idea about the Tories the Labourites had been promoting.

Craig Strachan

I actually think the Bush Adminstration did a reasonable job of the presentation of socially conservative policies, ie on stem cell research. Bush's TV address on the subject, early in his presidency, was one of his more fluid performances.

Problem is, the large majority of the American people simply don't agree with said policies.

You can put lipstick on a pig...

Yaakov Watkins

Unfortunately, all the Republicans need to do is get out of the way and let the Democrats run things for a while. Then they can run against the Democrats and win.

This world is not now about who is good. Nobody is good. The media ferrets out every evil, every incompetence, and every mistake. Where there are none, the media invents them.

The goal now is to find someone who is so innocent that he or she has no vulnerabilities. Obama won on his Lack of experience.

Obama is going to be an easy target in 2012. His appointees are in political trouble even before they have been formally appointed, before Obama has taken office. That is a new low in American politics

Mike Brewer

McCain lost this election because Republicans did not vote for him, they stayed at home in droves. Bush is also unpopular, even in his own party, because he is a free-spending economic liberal. This election was not a dramatic shift. The party simply needs to get back to its roots - responsible government, staying off of people's backs and out of their lives. It also needs to understand PR and how to battle a very liberal media, including the Brownstein that you cite.

Conservative Cabbie

I have a thought experiment of my own. Imagine that Obama's potential trillion dollar plus stimulus package stimulates nothing but the deficit. Then imagine that following his appointment of a CIA Director with minimal intelligence community experience to satisfy his Daily Kos base, America suffers a 9/11-esque terrorist attack despite being safe for seven years. In those circumstances, the GOP won't have to change anything to get re-elected.

The point is, it is events that dictate people's voting decisions, not demography. We are expected to believe that the 50-50 America has suddenly shifted to a strongly Democratic country. Codswallop! America is facing a dramatic recession, the worst of which hit just weeks before the election and two relatively unpopular wars. At the same time, a unique Presidential candidate runs against a Republican candidate who imploded towards the end of the campaign, and despite all that going hugely in the Democrats favour, they still only win a 3% plurality.

I don't deny that Obama's win was dramatic, and by modern electoral standards, was a big win, but in 2012 or 2016, it is very unlikely that everything will be so strongly in the Democrats favour and we will return to the 50-50, one state wins all electoral cycle.

RMH

One of the issues being ignored is that the demographics of the US is going against the GOP and that in 2010 with a few retirements from the Senate, the main battles will be newbie vs newbie.

Incumbents generally win, and there is a view that the Dems may get the magic 60.....

Obama no matter what his troubles will be can pinhole alot of this stuff to Bush.

Job creation will go up under Obama (as it does by a ratio of double under Dems to the GOP) and the economy will glide into a better place overall.

But it started 4 months too late for the GOP to make political capital in 2 years.

David Lindsay

Huge numbers voted Democrat last year because they wanted their country back. The name of that country is America.

She is the country that long led the world in protecting high-wage, high-skilled, high-status jobs both against the exportation of that labour to un-unionised, child-exploiting sweatshops, and against the importation of those sweatshops themselves. And she is the country that could until very recently say that she led the world in that she "did not seek for monsters to destroy".

For she is the country of big municipal government, of strong unions whose every red cent in political donations buys something specific, of very high levels of co-operative membership, of housing co-operatives even for the upper middle classes, of small farmers who own their own land, and of the pioneering of Keynesianism in practice.

At the same time, those same voters made it clear at exactly the same polls that (in Florida and California) they wanted back the country where marriage only ever means one man and one woman, that (in Colorado) they wanted back the country that does not permit legal discrimination against working-class white men, and (in Missouri and Ohio) that they wanted to preserve the country where gambling is not deregulated. The name of that country is America, too.

The betrayal of those voters by Obama where appointments are concerned has already cost the Democrats a Senate seat in Georgia, and thus a filibuster-proof Senate majority.

Midterm meltdown awaits.

RMH

@ David Lindsay:

Do you mean the run off election between Martin & Chambliss.

In no poll did Martin ever lead, and there was only ever a run off due to the libertarian candidate, and they are more right of centre than left......

Not sure how that is denying the Dems a fillibuster proof majority.

They will get 63 seats in 2010 in my view.....

David Lindsay

RMH, a run-off ballot *at all* for the Senate seat in Georgia? Can you believe it?

But Obama's appointments blew it, and thus blew any chance of a filibuster-proof majority.

The third-placed candidate, Allen Buckley, was a moral and social conservative who wanted to end the wars, dismantle America's global network of military bases, and repeal the Patriot Act. His voters could have switched to an Obama Democrat.

But then Obama announced that he was keeping on Robert Gates while appointing Jim Jones and, wait for it, Hillary Clinton.

63 seats? Where, exactly? Once. But not now.

A significant primary challenger with third party or Independent potential is most urgently needed for 2012, and should already be organising.