I believe the Republican Party is on the precipice of irrelevance if it cannot rebuild a respect for civil debate-including self-criticism. The formation of powerful ideas requires the push and pull of varying viewpoints testing and informing one another. The litmus test politics that has abducted the party, has dulled the edge of its ideas, discourages those who respond to intellectual rigor, and repels too many from the party who are unwilling, as a condition of admission, to sign an oath of allegiance to a set of talking points.
Additionally, to have a future an institution must appeal to generations of the future. Appealing to youth is vital for rebirth. Yet, we seem trapped in a time warp. The Party has failed to fully comprehend how the young interact and communicate in an era transformed by the digital revolution. We do not yet appreciate their passions and their fears, nor pause to look at the world through their eyes. Battling to be a voice of technology and innovation is vital. In the world of youth, you must first “get it” before you are listened to.
The Party also must be more sober about the demographic transformation that is taking place in America. We are a browning nation, but a Party seemingly incompetent in connecting with America’s diversity and its ascendant multiculturalism. We are stuck in antiquated notions of race. My kids saw Barack Obama not as black but as modern. His race and enlightened manner of dealing with it captures how the young see themselves.
Finally, we must restore a commitment to competence. Knowing how to govern well is vital in a world of colossal problems. It is too convenient to build an ideology around what we are against, and being against government excuses the need to field players with real solutions and the skills, temperament and expertise to execute them. While Republicans are a proud party of values, politics is not a faith. It is an instrument for winning the consent of the American people to steer the nation that they love into a future they believe in. It is a sacred responsibility.
21 responses so far
1 JJWFromME // Jan 20, 2009 at 8:02 am
Very well said.
I think you are a bit too focused on the young, though. There are studies out there that say average age of online political forums is actually higher than the country as a whole.
I think most people who’ve joined DailyKos, etc. have been people who’ve been really concerned that the GOP establishment is out of control. And the rest of the Washington establishment for some reason doesn’t know how to deal with it.
I’m a liberal, and lately I’ve been reading Russel Kirk. Let me tell you there’s a lot there I can agree with. But it bears almost no resemblance to the GOP I’ve seen.
The GOP I see doesn’t have much to do with Burke, Newman, John Adams, and truthfully, the forbears of the modern GOP look a lot more like Machiavelli, Andrew Carnegie, even Leon Trotsky:
http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/9077?in=00:39&out=02:44
…and Antonio Gramsci:
http://erieobserver.blogspot.com/2005/04/grover-norquist-and-republican.html
I don’t think I’m exaggerating all that much when I say these things. And I think even the people in your own party know things have gone terribly off the rails:
http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=6040
I hope this site will help with your admitting that you have some problems (the AA reference is intentional).
2 Brad Smith // Jan 20, 2009 at 8:39 am
As a professor, I see daily that the GOP has definitely lost the “cool” factor. A surprising number of students reason along these lines:
1. I am not a Republican; Republicans are mean and don’t care about people; they favor bad things;
2. I favor limited government and lower taxes;
3. As I am not a Republican, therefore, the Democrats must favor limited government and lower taxes, and the Republicans must favor big government and higher taxes, so I should vote Democratic.
Logical? No. But it reflects the incredible tarnish on the Republican name.
Too many Republicans are whistling in the dark on the youth vote, consoling themselves that the huge margins Democrats are rolling up with under-30 voters will dissipate as those voters grow older. But history does not bear this out. Voters do grow slightly more conservative as they marry and have children, but where they start affects where they finish. Moreover, even as they grow slighly more conservative as a group, party identification remains extremely stable. Most people die with the party identification they establish by age 30.
3 astralis // Jan 20, 2009 at 9:46 am
If the GOP stands for limited government, you’d never know it with their actions over the past eight years nor the nomination of John McCain. The only people who are confused about the GOP are GOP leaders.
4 Clarence Darrow // Jan 20, 2009 at 9:51 am
What party would Ayn Rand be a member of if she were alive today?
I am a moderate Libertarian, scientist, highly educated and former young Reagan Republican when I was 17.
I believe in limited government, anthropotenic climate change, and an entrepreneueral spirit as the solutions for all of our problems. I want to help reform this party!
5 dittohead // Jan 20, 2009 at 10:36 am
What?? The GOP is the party that needs to re-discover civil discourse and debate?? Are you serious? I’m not saying the GOP is blameless in this regard, but if you had 100 points to distribute, the Dems would get 90 of them. Listen to the Dem rhetoric that comes out of Washington like clockwork. Listen to the bile that comes out of the (Democrat) media regularly. The GOP needs to rebuild a respect for civil debate?? Good grief.
6 JJWFromME // Jan 20, 2009 at 10:43 am
dittohead–Take a look at this book sometime: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/product-description/1400048753/ref=dp_proddesc_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books “Its the media, stupid. When I say this, in a more respectful way, to folks outside the right wing, I usually get either of two responses.Those who receive their news from the New York Times and National Public Radio give me blank stares. They are living in a rarefied media cultureone that prizes accuracy, fairness, and civilitythat is no longer representative of the media as a whole. Those who have heard snippets of Rush Limbaughs radio show, have caught a glimpse of Bill OReillys temper tantrums on the FOX News Channel, or occasionally peruse the editorials in the Wall Street Journal think Im a Cassandra. They view this media as self-discrediting and therefore irrelevant. They are living in a vacuum of denial.”
7 JJWFromME // Jan 20, 2009 at 12:02 pm
“The term “diversity” was invented by liberals to cultivate resentment and distrust.” Yeah, that’s why we developed it. To p*ss off conservatives. Segregation had nothing to do with it. The diversity of the country had nothing to do with it… By the way, I see conservatives on this site are the first to go right for the “our rhetoric goes to 11″ discourse. What was someone saying below about civility? By the way, your rhetoric isn’t very diverse–kind of like a Neil Young guitar solo, always the same like, two notes and ALWAYS LOOOUUUUD. But Neil Young has the personality to pull it off. Sadly, this is not the case with our conservative friends. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-z2D9lo9-8
8 JJWFromME // Jan 20, 2009 at 1:50 pm
By the way, if you guys don’t want to be diverse, and remain the party of white guys from the south, no problem with us liberals: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/02/opinion/02krugman.html
9 sinz54 // Jan 20, 2009 at 1:53 pm
The GOP will never appeal to young people as long as it acts like their crotchety old grandparents, telling them that they’re ignorant and soft and oversexed and “We weren’t like that when we were your age!”
Young people may be lectured on morality by their parents or guardians. Not by Republican politicians.
Accept the fact that sex is here to stay, in every conceivable form. It’s been that way since Homo Sapiens first appeared on earth. Drop the issue of premarital sex. Drop the “issue” of young people sending erotic photos of themselves over the Internet or by cell phone (cf. a recent National Review article). I mean that. Just drop them.
10 sinz54 // Jan 20, 2009 at 7:21 pm
The GOP also needs to regain the sunny optimism and “Happy Days are Here Again” tone of Reagan in 1980 and beyond.
President Reagan said in a speech that we would see Soviet Communism on the “ash heap of history”–a bold and daring prediction indeed. And he undertook specific policies to make it come true.
Where is a similar optimistic “ash heap of history” speech today about radical Islam and Islamic terrorism? It truly seemed to me that the GOP has nothing more to offer except perpetual endless war: We are fighting in Afghanistan, we fought in Iraq, Special Forces are fighting in many other countries, and this will just go on and on, without end. In the meantime, we must get used to ever-tightening homeland security and domestic surveillance measures here at home. That’s a pretty grim message, especially compared with Barack Obama’s sunny message of “Hope” and “Change.”
Americans have always been an optimistic, forward-looking people. They want to hear how problems can be solved, not just managed indefinitely.
11 Clarence Darrow // Jan 20, 2009 at 8:05 pm
Fantastic post Brad Smith!
12 dropdead // Jan 21, 2009 at 12:58 am
I am not confident that a right of center coalition will ever be a majority in this country. The Dems/Libs are importing voters ( illegals), producing voters ( left wing academics), creating voters ( see ACORN), and buying voters ( welfare, social security, SSI, disability). Can you see the new crop of lazy, pot addled kids voting GOP? Can we overcome the overwhelming media bias? I am not confident
13 GuyInCT // Jan 21, 2009 at 7:52 am
IMHO, the Iraq war destroyed the Conservative movement. Somehow invading a country that did not threaten us, nor threaten any ally of ours, somehow got sold as a “conservative” value. That was the genius of the neo-con movement.
14 eli // Jan 21, 2009 at 3:47 pm
I agree with you. I do think, however, that President Obama’s “modern” style was maximized by Sen. McCain’s oldness. Young people did not associate with Democratic Party before Obama came around. As a teen, I see Obama’s qualities drawing kids into the Democratic Party– not the other way around. That tells me that kids’ stereotypes are not inherent to a particular party, but to candidates. If the Republican Party could get Jindal to run on a national level, maybe they’d see the same young people surge as the Democrats saw.
15 whitetower // Jan 21, 2009 at 5:50 pm
The “graying” of America is far more relevant than the mythical “browning” of America.
The 18-29 demographic is largely irrelevant. They are the least political active, most misinformed, and are declining in proportion to the overall electorate.
Ultimately McCain lost because conservatives and the middle class abandoned him and the GOp in general (perhaps rightly). Obama won, albeit barely, the middle-class vote and was able to win the vote of 20% of conservatives. Appeal to those values, and the GOP is back in power.
If the next GOP candidate is a genuine, Reagan conservative (i.e., limited government, traditional values, strong defense) he/she would beat any Democratic candidate.
16 eli // Jan 21, 2009 at 6:52 pm
Yes, whitetower, youth do not make up most of the voters. However, it is the youth that get excited for the candidate and make noise for him/her. Barack Obama is a prime example. Youth on the internet brought Obama to stardom, and then the media picked up on the movement. But his rise to fame is largely attributable to screams of many youth.
17 arhooley // Jan 21, 2009 at 7:16 pm
9/11 Republican speaking here. (Sorry it took so long — I had my One Issue that kept me voting Dem for ages.)
I speak a lot with my erstwhile political coevals who are beginning to see a little more clearly, and a huge part of the problem is image. “Republicans are mean.” It’s funny, brad smith, because those are the very words they use in describing the image problem. I think if they see a few “cool” Republicans who aren’t into defining the party in terms of what it’s against as Powell says, we’d have a few more members under the tent.
18 Sk8 Punk // Jan 21, 2009 at 8:15 pm
Sorry man, but you have it wrong. Your kids saw Obama as modern because that is what the establishment and those with power wanted them to see. And power can do what it wants. Obama could have been mocked as one of the most incoherent and phony politicians ever if it would have served their purposes. Think of his incoherence, back tracking, constant contradictions, and inability to even put his pants on without a teleprompter… He is really just another politician, but because we is good looking and charming the establishment pulled it off. I am a college librarian and professor. It is all about the establishment and what they do with their power. Ironically, I just wrote about this at my blog:
http://sk8punkcynic.blogspot.com/ I skate, surf- in essence am way cooler than Obama, and I am a Mexican too. It’s all about Power. Power is how the Dems can image themselves as the good guys- just like arhooley says below.
19 Obamacan // Jan 23, 2009 at 9:21 am
This party is doomed.
20 agnostic // Jan 24, 2009 at 9:23 pm
I can see only one way – if there is any at all – to get back: To show competency at governing (according to conservative principles, of course, otherwise why bother trying to come back in the first place). Which means grassroots rebuilding from municipal to state to federal. In the short term, the Republican best hope are the Republican Governors. Grooming those we have and focusing on having more of them should be among top priorities.
21 Moral Strategy: The Case For Pragmatic Conservatism « Resolute Determination // Jan 21, 2010 at 3:00 pm
[...] added). Moreover, as Michael Powell has observed, a fixation on ideological purity and litmus tests inhibits the development of new [...]
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