Paul Giorgio: GOP’s Rising Stars Need New Ideas
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
New blood doesn't always equal new ideas, especially in the case of the Republican party.
The Republican Party met last week in Boston to strategize for future elections. They most likely planned the event when the GOP leaders were the only ones in America who thought Mitt Romney would be president.
What were the takeaways from the parley? Well, we do now know that GOP stands for ‘great opposition party’. The Republicans now have a one-line party platform. If he [Obama] is for it, we’re against it. You can't build a national party based on that. Additionally, you certainly can't build a party based on being against large groups of Americans.
If they continue on their current course, the electoral math just doesn’t add up for the Republicans…as pointed out to them by Newt Gingrich.
Racking up enemies
For example, Obama and the Democrats are for women's rights, which include reproductive rights and workplace rights. Republicans are waging a war on women in state houses across the nation.
Women were 53 percent of the vote in the last election, and the gender gap was larger than any previous election. In the last 12 presidential elections, going back to 1964, more women have voted than men have.
Republicans in southern states have also been waging a war on voting rights ever since the Supreme Court ruled the pre-clearance provision of the Voting Rights Act invalid.
Republican-led state legislatures have been putting photo ID provisions in place and eliminating early voting. How can the party of Lincoln do this?
Those rights did not come easily. Just ask Congressman John Lewis of Georgia, who was nearly clubbed to death on the Edmond Pettis Bridge.
African Americans now account for 13 percent of the voting pool.
Republicans at the national level have also been waging war on immigrants, mostly Hispanics. They have opposed the path to citizenship and the Dream Act.
Hispanics represented 10 Percent of the voters in the last presidential election.
Another large immigrant group, Asians now represents 3 percent of the vote.
Lastly, in the cultural wars, Republicans have opposed gay rights, whether it is marriage equality or gays in the military. President Obama, much like President Truman before him, banned discrimination in the military with an Executive order. Truman banned it against Blacks and Obama against Gays.
Gays represent 5 percent of the voting population.
If you add up women–53%, blacks 13%, Hispanics 10%, Asians 3 % and gays 5%–that is an astounding 84% of the electorate that they have seen fit to pick needless fights with. Now, not all of the 84% voted Democrat, but if you take that 84% as a starting point, it is an uphill battle for Republicans.
So the electoral math no longer ads up for Republican party. What is the Republican response?
New faces, old ideas
Last week they announced their “Rising Stars” imitative, a program to highlight young Republicans who they think are the up-and-comers of the party.
Who were these rising stars? Well among the four featured was Melinda Garcia, a Republican/Hispanic woman and a member of the New Hampshire Legislature. Another rising star was T.W. Shannon, the African American Speaker of the Oklahoma House of Representatives.
These rising stars had one thing in common. They all mouthed the same old ideas, that rising tides lift all boats.
The rising stars of the Republican party are not mainstream. And as long as they continue on their path of self-destruction they will be relegated to being the Great Opposition Party, devoid of ideas.
So why are they hell-bent on this strategy?
I believe it is because their base is shrinking and becoming more strident. The hardcore base plays a big role in primaries, so that the most extreme candidates get nominated. If you look at the 2014 mid-term elections that are approaching, the hard right has put up primary challengers Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham and Lamar Alexander, all considered hard core conservative in anyone’s book except the wing nut-Tea Party right of the Republican Party.
This anti-immigrant, anti-black, and anti-minority sentiment is not new. In the 1850s, they were known as the Know Nothings.
Until the Republicans learn something–this one thing, that America is changing–they will be a minority party in national elections no matter how many rising stars with old ideas they put forward.
Paul Giorgio is a longtime Democratic Party Activist who has worked on numerous campaigns. He was a Lead Advance Person for President Clinton & Vice President Gore. He was Deputy Director of Special Events for President Clinton’s first Inauguration. He has been elected a delegate to numerous Democratic National Conventions and recently served as one of President Obama’s representatives on the Platform Committee. In 2013 he was chosen as a Presidential Elector. He is the President of Pagio, Inc., publishers of Pulse Magazine, Vitality Magazine and Worcester Medicine.
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