Will The GOP Wander Back Onto A Mainstream Path? Not Likely

RNC... yesterday, today and tomorrow

Now that the Autopsy report ordered by Reince Priebus for the Republican Party has been studied by the media, Priebus is probably wishing he had never broken the first rule of rebranding-- never tell the public you're "re-branding." Even the Beltway's ultimate symbol of contentless, mealy-mouthed pabulum, Charlie Cook, is telling the GOP they now have 2 choices: change or extinction.

It may not be too melodramatic to say that over the next couple of years, the Republican Party faces a fork in the road. Following one path, the GOP can seek to address what has gone wrong, the narrowness of the party’s appeal, and the intolerance that has alienated so many minority, female, young, and moderate voters that Republicans have a hard time prevailing in federal races outside of carefully drawn conservative enclaves. Taking the other road could lead the party over a cliff in 2016, in much the same way Barry Goldwater led Republicans to disaster in 1964.

Meanwhile, the last RNC chairman to preside over a set of successful elections, Michael Steele, has been belittling Priebus' approach-- especially the superficial approach to minority outreach-- as a very pale imitation of what he did when he was chairman. He also referred to Priebus as numb nuts. The public feud between former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele and current RNC Chairman Reince Priebus took on a new dimension on Tuesday when Steele suggested he could win in a physical fight with Priebus. Appearing on Andrea Tantaros’ radio program, Steele said that he “would clean his clock” if forced to fight Priebus with “just one knock to the head... I was laughing at some of these numb nuts after the election talking about, ‘oh, we need a 50 state strategy.’ Dude, where were you for 2009 and 2010? That’s exactly what we did.” They did? I thought that was Howard Dean who did that (before Rahm Emanuel and Debbie Wasserman Schultz came along and killed the idea and gave us a Republican state legislatures, gerrymandering galore and a GOP Congress. Anyway, "The bottom line," asserted Steele, who has publicly blamed Priebus for the GOP defeats in November, "is you've got to be focused on what the purpose and the role of the party is. The national party is too big for its own britches right now. It's centered around itself."




Priebus and his party might want to look closely at the new Gallup poll released yesterday. It doesn't just show that Democrats and independents support the progressive approach to job creation through government spending-- it shows that most Republicans do as well! "Job creation proposals enjoy widespread public support, including majority backing among all party groups, even when the issue of government spending is raised in an era when deficit reduction is one of the major priorities for the federal government. Despite the high levels of support for the job creation proposals, the political realities in Washington are such that Congress has not passed any of the proposals since President Obama first advocated many of these more than a year ago."

The public waking up to the treacherous nature of concerted GOP congressional obstructionism is what Priebus and his cronies should be looking at seriously. If that happens, not even gerrymandering is going to save the Republican Party.