Solutions to a loss

Don’t tell me the R’s aren’t blowing an opportunity.  Polls last summer had 70% of people saying we were going the wrong direction, 80% of R’s eager to vote while Dems were 30%.  This was a banner year coming.  Well, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum.  Trump came along and won the nomination.  He should be 20 points ahead of uninspiring Hillary right now, but the two are in a dead heat.  Trump won Nebraska easily the week after Indiana when he was the only candidate still in the race—with 61%.  His win in Indiana, the 41^st contest, was the first majority win in one of the 26 red states.  People are having trouble lining up behind him.  He insults Hispanics and other people of color, a weird situation for the party of Lincoln.  He’s about a 75% conservative which will leave the base disgusted at having to once again vote for a half-liberal.  The one this year is from NY.  Last one was from MA, right?  Well, not to fear, on the last day of the primary he won with 67-72% of most states, and even got 81% of NJ.  He might still win, and that is our hope.

But I want to make a prediction.  If Trump loses in Nov., all hell is going to break out with the postmortems.  How in the dickens did we lose in a year that was supposed to be an Obama fatigue slam dunk?  It will show a party with fleeing Hispanics just like blacks fled in the late 60’s.  It will show deep divisions over the issue of free trade/free enterprise. It will show a party split over whether USA should ever go to war again in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, and our enemies will surely take advantage of coward Democrats.  People will shrug and say, so just what does the Republican party now stand for anyway? And you will hear this all over the media.

But what you aren’t likely to hear much are these vital questions,

*Was Trump an interloper?  Did he come into a crowded field with a bunch of Independents and a lot of celebrity-worshiper/low-info voters and get 25% of the vote from people we had never seen before?  And then did his success and his bluster, on television non-stop, begin to bandwagon some R-voters as well until he was at 35%, then 40%?  And had there been no open primaries on the front end, would Trump’s big momentum have died the way it did in Oklahoma on Super Tuesday and in caucuses like Maine and Colorado? 

*Did the party regulars, the activists, the people who pay attention, lose control of the nominating process? 

*Did Talk Radio, now losing listenership the last 4 years because sophisticated listeners are using Sirius and Apps, make a calculation that they had better support the lesser-educated audience they still retained, and mysteriously ditched conservatism in favor of Trumpism? 

*Will populism in the R’s be repudiated or will it be the new norm, where the lead candidate needs to lambast everyone else? Will clipped phrases and foul-mouthed slogans replace issues, or will we get back to solutions? And women voters.

* Should the state parties, in a year of much-contested candidacy, simply throw open the convention and let everyone vote their conscience on the first ballot?  Should there be some sort of super delegate system like the Dems to keep out an interloper like Sanders?

*Do we need to educate the public about what GOP stands for?  Given that government schools indoctrinate liberalism, do we need alternate learning places?

So here are some answers.  Trump is an insurgent who brings a lot of disgruntled independents and the party did lose control to the primaries, being saddled with a candidate they could only hold their nose and work for.  Solution is to have special state caucuses ahead of the primaries in the five or ten states that voted “most R” in the last election.  Caucuses would be to assign 200-500 additional national convention delegates (who could either vote conscience or are pledged) by county caucuses. These would only be open for those who had attended county party meetings in the previous year, i.e. activists. More people will come to county meetings to become eligible to participate.  Some are the big donors who previously thought themselves too important to attend county meetings.  And some who said, I ought to get involved but have no time. And maybe we will have to have a larger meeting hall to accommodate all the Republicans who used to sit in easy chairs and vote dumb, but now realize they need to be involved in party politics.

The national Republican party has always had the rule that delegates can vote their consciences.  It is the state party that makes them pledged.  Just follow national rules with no add-ons.

Talk Radio will have to answer.  Call ‘em.

Perhaps on the state level, there needs to be an extra-curricular activity in high schools where citizenry is allowed to speak, debate, convince—not run by the government school or teachers, but by the community.  Hence the parties would have a larger task/say in what gets presented.