Some Radical Republican Ideas

I have been reading a lot about the election and how it turned out.  There are many good explanations for why Romney and R Senators lost.  Romney polled high among independents but 3 million fewer R’s voted this time around, a clear indication that the base wasn’t turned on despite the realization that Obama would kill our future.  Lesson: Next time we need to find a true conservative who distills his message with passion for the conservative view.  Minorities scored the highest proportion of voters they have ever achieved and they didn’t vote for Romney.  Among the prescriptions is more appeal to minorities or fielding a candidate that didn’t get labeled an evil white Wall Street plutocrat.  Third point is that there was unbelievable fraud.  100 precincts in Cleveland went to Obama by 99% or more.  59 in Philadelphia went 100% Obama.  Now considering that experts think that about 1% of all votes cast are miscast—the voter intends to vote opposite what they actually mark—having such astounding lopsidedness smacks of fraud.  And then there is the flap about how one whole county in FL had every precinct tallying more votes than there were registered voters.  One precinct had 158% turnout.  Meanwhile the Democrats are congratulating themselves that R’s must have insulted all the minority people with voter ID laws. (This was the constant MSNBC rant pre-election)  I’ll let the pundits yak about all this for awhile.  There are 4 years before we get a shot at change again.

But here are some thoughts on strategies that could make a real difference.

#1 Pick your fight.  The pundits are neglecting one obvious fact.  In years where the public sees deep problems, they want solutions and answers, not personalities (an Issues campaign).  That was what was happening in 2010.  The debt issue was enormous and it played against the D’s.  But in other times when things seem to be going well, people take things for granted and want bipartisanship and moderation (a Personality campaign).  Remember Ike and the 50’s?  In 2012, it probably seemed to many R’s that it would be a replay of 2010.  But Obama cooked the unemployment books, got a midsummer upturn in the economy—the #1 issue of the campaign.  Meanwhile they were playing the “image” game demonizing Romney.  It turned into an image campaign and Obama won. A lot of non-political people knew the economy wasn’t so good but they didn’t blame Barry and besides the Gov’t will take care of everyone.  There was no desperate need for issues to be answered.

#2 It’s the vision thing, stupid Romney attacked BO’s policies as not working.  What he didn’t do was to stand like a prophet explaining in layman’s language what is going to befall USA if we keep spending.  To that point, what R’s can do the next few years is to be warning of the debt crisis to come, the stagflation, and the demise of SS and Medicare benefits for the middle class.  In other words, wait for the day when these issues will be hot stuff.  As when Churchill railed against the Nazis while Britain signed the Kellogg pact.

#3 Turn the tables on racism.  The constant harange of the Democrats is that white R’s are racists.  There has developed an entire industry in threatening minority D’s that the evil whites of the Republican party are out to get them. Meanwhile, most whites dearly wish the whole subject would go away.  Indeed my boomer generation vowed, during the civil rights movement not to be like our elders and say prejudiced stuff about people of minority descent.  Now, with an increasingly mixed-race populance a lot of people are asking why we can’t just get over all the racism charges.  After all, sociological studies consistently find that less than 3% of people have more than moderate racist views. Take advantage by Accusing the Dems of being the racism-against-whites Party.

#4 Give-in only on a few things.  Obama wants the rich to pay more.  Give it to him, but don’t give an inch on capital gains or death tax increases with the explanation that these are anti-business (and we have so many people out of work, etc.)  Best strategy of all is to refuse to make changes in Obamacare.  Make it function absolutely as it is written. No fixes.  Truth is, the program cannot function and it will make the public angry and ultimately it will implode.  Hang it around the necks of the D’s by insisting on Repeal Not Repair.  Obamacare will cause doc shortages, close hospitals (1 in 7 according to CBO), make insurance costs go astronomical (people will wait until they are sick to get insurance.  Meanwhile the ‘pool’ of insured people will all be sick and premium costs of $25,000 a year may occur (Heritage Foundation)) and will drive employers to part-time labor.

#5Change the Primaries Can someone explain to me why R’s let two Dem-leaning states, one in the north and another in New England plus a bunch of New York City TV commentators half-select our Presidential candidate?  Why not reverse this bias by letting the 5 (or 10) most loyal R-voting states have an activist at-large caucus prior to any primary.  Let the county activists who participated in the last election have caucuses at each county meeting and give that state a significant number of extra delegates. Then we start the primary season with the loyalists having spoken, not some danged New England state that lets Canadians and crossover Democrats vote in their primary.

#6 Listen to Cruz/Rubio/Martinez and come up with a new Conservative immigration initiative.  This happens as the Dems come forward in Congress next year and the R’s better have an alternative with 1. Appeal to our base and 2. Appeal to Hispanics.  Here’s the idea I like: Border sealed first. Path to citizenship for illegals which asks for about 20 years of service to USA which will only start once the border has been sealed.  We need to assure Hispanics but honor legality.  A funny little secret the TV guys won’t tell  us is that Hispanics are divided over the border issue (why else are so many border agents Hispanic?).  Yet all the jingoism of Republicans has been embarrassing to this dad of a Mex foster kid.  {“speak English!”—cripes everyone tries to learn it or you go nowhere. “self-deportation”—Mitt, who are you kidding? } And the other unspoken fact is that half of Hispanics get conservative after they have been here 20 years. They won't be Dem fools by that time.

#7 Better Candidates  This time around, we had a field of poor candidates.  Evidently Romney was the only one who could raise a lot of loot and he used the strategy of letting his attack dog PACs do his dirty work on other R's while never confronting himself.  Didn’t work in the general, where B. Hussein had  more money and PACs.  But the alternatives to Mitt were rather sad.  Santorum?  You have to be kidding me. Did he make C’s in school? We need to find the Jindals, Rubios, Palins, Christies,etc. this time who can really speak to our voters and turn them on.  And a conservative for a change.  Beyond this, why did a rape-speculating knothead in Missouri get the Republican Senate nod when he could only get a small plurality of votes.  He couldn’t even beat Macaskill.  We had the saddest field of Senate candidates in party history.