WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE REPUBLICAN BRAND?

What’s wrong with the Republican brand? Most people whether they have been in the United States for generations or are recent arrivals have the singular goal of achieving economic success.

Isn’t that what the Republican Party’s mes­sage used to be? Small Government, less Regulation, God and Country, Unleashing the Free spir­it of Individuals, Strong Defense, Personal Responsibility, so what went wrong? The mes­sen­gers went wrong.

Many peo­ple vot­ed and sup­port­ed President Reagan not because he was next to God, as some Republicans will have you believe, but because he encap­su­lat­ed with­in those char­ac­ter­is­tics a human component.

Ronald Reagan

A com­po­nent which rec­og­nized that there needs to be rev­enue to run a coun­try, there needs to be com­mon sense reg­u­la­tions in place to safe­guard the pop­u­lace, and there needs to be an under­stand­ing that this is a nation of immi­grants and as such there must be a release valve which allows peo­ple here undoc­u­ment­ed a chance to come out of the shadows.

Reagan under­stood that there need­ed to be rev­enues, as such he raised tax­es numer­ous times, repub­li­cans who use Reagan as the holy grail of con­ser­vatism, will not men­tion that he raised tax­es exponentially.

Reagan under­stood that a nation of immi­grants will invari­ably attract, well… immi­grants, legal and ille­gal, so he grant­ed unequiv­o­cal amnesty to those who were here liv­ing in the shad­ows. Republicans today do not talk about that aspect of Reagan-ism.

Those peo­ple were allowed to come out of the shad­ows and become reg­u­lar tax-pay­ing mem­bers of soci­ety. Many of those peo­ple, most­ly men, were Jamaicans who had come here to work on Farms, to this day they are loy­al Reaganites.

Cubans in Miami will also tell a sim­i­lar tale, as to why they are loy­al to the Republican Party. In fact, as it relates to the Jamaicans, the val­ues once espoused by Republicans were the very same val­ues they were raised to believe in, it was sub­se­quent­ly pret­ty easy for them to become loy­al fans of Reagan.

This is some­thing that the last stan­dard-bear­er of the Republican Party, Willard Mitt Romney sim­ply did not get, and arguably still does­n’t get.

Mitt Romney.

In a con­fer­ence call with fund-rais­ers and donors to his cam­paign, Mr. Romney said Wednesday after­noon that the pres­i­dent had fol­lowed the “old play­book” of using tar­get­ed ini­tia­tives to woo spe­cif­ic inter­est groups — “espe­cial­ly the African-American com­mu­ni­ty, the Hispanic com­mu­ni­ty and young peo­ple.” “In each case, they were very gen­er­ous in what they gave to those groups,” Mr. Romney said, con­trast­ing Mr. Obama’s strat­e­gy to his own of “talk­ing about big issues for the whole coun­try: mil­i­tary strat­e­gy, for­eign pol­i­cy, a strong econ­o­my, cre­at­ing jobs and so forth.”

In oth­er words, Romney believes giv­ing col­lege stu­dents a break, giv­ing young women access to con­tra­cep­tion, allow­ing dream­ers a lit­tle breath­ing room from depor­ta­tion a gift. Those things which Romney denounces as gifts are what most peo­ple see as good gov­er­nance, gov­ern­ment deliv­er­ing ser­vices to the peo­ple it serves.

What this state­ment revealed was the deep­er inner core of what Romney actu­al­ly and tru­ly believe, jux­ta­pose that state­ment with what he said about the 47% we are made painful­ly aware how America dodged the bul­let by not elect­ing this guy.

The shock­ing tragedy inher­ent in Romney’s con­tin­ued dis­dain for the elec­torate, is proof pos­i­tive that he cares noth­ing about aver­age Americans.

This is the same can­di­date who want­ed to con­tin­ue tax give­aways to the rich­est Americans,wanted to dra­mat­i­cal­ly increase the bud­getary allo­ca­tion to the Military Industrial com­plex, even though some mil­i­tary lead­ers say they did not need it.

Romney made abun­dant­ly clear who he want­ed to give gifts to, and it did not include the moochers who do not take respon­si­bil­i­ty for their own lives.

Romney’s state­ments are not in iso­la­tion how­ev­er, his run­ning mate Paul Ryan sug­gest­ed that the rea­son President Obama won the elec­tion was because peo­ple voted.

Quote:”“What the pres­i­dent and his cam­paign excelled at doing is mobi­liz­ing turnout in their crit­i­cal base areas, and they expand­ed the turnout above the norms,” he said. “They had record turnout in urban areas and all of our polling did not project that kind of turnout, and that’s why we thought we had a very good chance at win­ning this race going into elec­tion day(.“huff​in​g​ton​post​.com)

In oth­er words they lost the elec­tion because peo­ple voted.

The tone deaf­ness of these peo­ple is amaz­ing, these are the peo­ple who want­ed to lead America,and in some way are still in lead­er­ship posi­tions polit­i­cal­ly. That was not all Ryan had this to say about los­ing the very town in which he was born to his con­gres­sion­al challenger.

Quote:“When you join a nation­al tick­et for a par­ty, you become more seen as a Republican guy than nec­es­sar­i­ly a Janesville guy,” he con­tin­ued. “So I think my image, or the thought peo­ple had in their minds of me once I joined the Republican tick­et, was more ‘Paul Ryan, Republican,’ than ‘Paul Ryan, Janesville guy.”(huff​in​g​ton​post​.com)

Well you don’t say? So peo­ple saw Paul Ryan as a Republican in his home­town and as such he lost con­vinc­ing­ly, yet the good­ly Congressman/whiz-kid did not see their nation­al defeat com­ing? some whiz-kid, some pol­i­cy wonk.

The truth of the mat­ter is that the Romney/​Ryan tick­et sim­ply could not see the defeat com­ing, because they were locked away in the par­al­lel uni­verse of FOX mis­in­for­ma­tion, and racist talk radio which told them what they want­ed to hear.

In fact they had peo­ple telling them they were win­ning the elec­tion by a land­slide even the night before the elec­tions, even though all of the polling data and oth­er indi­ca­tors were actu­al­ly point­ing to an Obama landslide.

The ideals of the repub­li­can par­ty are still great ones, the prob­lem is not the mes­sage, it rests with the mes­sen­gers, who have become increas­ing­ly white, male, racist, unyield­ing , misog­y­nis­tic, and dumb.

The Republican Party of white males are not going to real­ly get the mes­sage of this elec­tion until the par­ty suf­fers sev­er­al more loss­es, it took sev­er­al hun­dred years of telling them­selves they are supe­ri­or to oth­ers, one elec­tion cycle will not undo that misconception.