Is Our Republicans Learning? (No, they isn't.)

After the 2012 elections, it was a consensus in the Republican party that they had some serious problems. Due to their distaste for math, the defeat they suffered, though widely foretold by statistics, was a shock to them. Immediately after, they began examining why they lost, and it became clear why: Their base had turned out strongly in support, but the problem was, their base was no longer enough people to create winning results. Minorities, women, and the young overwhelmingly voted Democrat, and the landslide predictions that various pundits had been predicting on Fox News for weeks simply didn't occur.

The Republican response? They decided they had a messaging problem. While this isn't untrue, the messaging isn't as big an issue as the message. As things like abortion, gun control, gay marriage, gay rights, minority rights, etc., become more and more popular with the public, the GOP holds steadfastly in their opposition, making them seem more and more out of touch with the rest of the country. Just this week, the GOP voted unanimously to keep as part of their platform "traditional marriage." According to a CBS poll, 58 percent of Americans favor gay marriage. The positions they take even on hotly contested topics like abortion, where the divide is much more even, are so extreme the majority of people are against them. Things like crafting "Personhood Bills" which outlaw abortion even in cases of rape, have been shot down in states as conservative as Mississippi. Mississippi is about as conservative as it gets. If your views are so out of touch that even conservative Mississippi thinks you're too extreme, your problem isn't with your advertising, it's with your message. Republicans aren't going to appeal to new voters they've previously alienated by making new commercials, they're going to do it by changing their platforms. At this point, their options are to change to to be left behind.

The other key problem facing Republicans is their primaries. They are allowing the few moderates left in their party to be primaried out of existence by nutty candidates who don't have a chance of winning in the world outside of the conservative sphere. I'm from Missouri. No one here or anywhere else in the country expected Claire McCaskill to hold on to her senate seat. The Republicans weren't going to vote for her because they thought she was to cozy with Obama, the Democrats saw her as weak on some of our key issues. Everyone thought she was a goner. And then Todd "Legitimate Rape" Akin came into the picture. Claire not only held on to her seat, she won by a landslide vote. This was not the only place where something like this happened. And the craziest part of all, is that when political veterans like Karl Rove point out this obvious problem in their party, blowhards like Sarah Palin (who's won how many elections recently? Oh, right.) shoot them down and say things like, "They're not real Republicans." I honestly have no advice for Republicans on this point. The problem is that the moderates, the only ones who can realistically win in most places in the country, have been run out of town by the Tea Party and right wing nuts. We Liberals have our nuts too, but they're not the ones running things. How the Republicans wrest the control of their party away from the crazies is up to them, but they'd better do it soon, or they're not going to have much of a party left.

Another major issue Republican have is how the leadership of their party isn't leading. They aren't creating platforms that reflect public opinion. They're bringing in people like Dick Cheney (approval rating: 18 percent) to advise on foreign policy. If you ask the public, one of the biggest foreign policy disasters in a generation was the Iraq war. And the leadership is bringing in an architect of that war to help them develop their current foreign policy platform? That's madness. Their other key problem was race relations. Among minority voters, the Republicans did abysmally. So who do they bring in to advise on this? An old white man named David Horowitz, author of multiple books, all of which have vaguely racist titles, such as "Hating Whitey: And Other Progressive Causes" and "The Race Card", books all about how white people are the ones at a disadvantage these days. (?!) This is so incredibly stupid it's hard for me to even comment on it. In fact, I can't. Tell me, Republican leaders, how is having a man who's platform is New Racism supposed to attract minority voters?
Women's votes also proved to be crucial in this last election, and Republicans are handling that in a ham-handed way as well. It was Democrats and a tiny few of Republicans who got the Violence Against Women Act passed through the House; most House Republicans voted against it. When the Democrats campaign on this (and you can bet your sweet ass they will) mumbling something about some tiny part of the bill you didn't like isn't going to cut it. Republicans largely voted against the Equal Pay Act, they put forth extreme anti-choice bills, and they have been against women being allowed officially (and I say officially because they're already there) in combat. All of these things add up to the public perceiving the GOP to be anti-woman. And they can say they're not until the cows come home, but until they start backing up this message with actual votes and platform and policy changes, women aren't going to believe them. They're smarter than that.

Republicans have managed to hold onto seats in the House through gerrymandering, but that will only get you so far. Eventually these unpopular stances on various issues and the fact that they keep running morons for their candidates is going to catch up to them. Some Democrats say, "Well it's great they keep these fools around! It makes it easier for us to win!" And while that may be true, the bottom line is that America works best and makes the most progress when we have two parties contributing legitimately to the debate. Democrats may win in the short game, but the long game is looking awfully bleak if we have one party stuck in La La Land where science is evil and facts are relative, and the other party content to be mediocre because there's no real challenge to them from anywhere.