Dances with Confused Elephants

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Canada Free Press:

The Republican Party has gone from denying that there is a culture war to conceding defeat in the culture war while denying that it ever existed

Dances with Confused Elephants

 

Daniel Greenfield (Bio and Archives) Tuesday, March 19, 2013

 

The one question I invariably encounter in a conservative movement that tends toward the gray side is how to engage the youth. And the answer is usually nothing that the questioners want to hear.

 

Now the Republican Party has laid the corpse of the last election on the slab and come up with the expected answers. Some of them are correct, albeit belated. Many others are the sorts of things that the squishy side of the party has been recommending for a while.

 

The Republican Party has gone from denying that there is a culture war to conceding defeat in the culture war while denying that it ever existed. Its program now is to push aside the socially conservative material and stop frightening off minorities. And that misses the whole point about everything.

 

The left is not interested in gay marriage because it believes in marriage, but because it believes in destroying all existing social institutions. A Republican Party that fails to grasp that has no clue where it is or what it’s fighting. It might as well be sent blindfolded into the ring with Muhammad Ali.

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GOP “autopsy report” contains a plan to protect the establishment candidates against challengers in the primaries

 

Posted on March 20, 2013 by Steve Dennis

 

It looks as though the Republicans still haven’t learned their lesson even after foisting Bob Dole, John McCain, and Mitt Romney–the establishment’s preferred candidate in each of these cases–upon the American people.

As I first wrote about here, Karl Rove has created a Super PAC aimed at quelling all opposition to the Republican establishment in the primaries to ensure their preferred candidate wins the nomination in every race possible. (Read non-Tea Party.)

http://dcclothesline...-the-primaries/

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The RNC Autopsy Report, Part 2: Inclusion

By: davenj1 (Diary) | March 29th, 2013 at 01:14 AM

 

In the first part, I suggested that the GOP transform into and set forth the message that they are the party of individual opportunity and responsibility. Within those contexts, there can be room for disagreement. This part deals with the unfortunate herd mentality that defines politics today. Too often when a party fails, they look at which group or other where the message or the candidate failed and that usually comes down to demographic groups.

 

This report starts with a set of assumptions- some correct and some not so correct- that the Republican Party is one of exclusion instead of inclusion. I would argue that if the Republican Party strives towards some concept of ideological purity and then excludes groups with which they traditionally disagree, then the Democratic Party is no less guilty. Part of this is institutionally based in the media where Hispanic, black, Asian, female and young Republicans are marginalized. What else explains the pillorying of a war hero like Alan West, the marginalization of Tim Scott, the insults thrown at Marco Rubio for sipping water, the portrayal of a Supreme Court Justice like Clarence Thomas, etc.? Yet, can the Democratic Party name one minority elected member who does not subscribe to the theory that the government is the answer to all problems in this country?

 

Another erroneous assumption is that the Republican Party needs to “win” this or that minority group. In the recent debate over immigration reform, one worry is that reform will be delivering http://www.redstate.com/davenj1/2013/03/29/the-rnc-autopsy-report-part-2-inclusion/

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Outreach and Get Out The Vote

 

 

By: Loren Heal (Diary) | March 29th, 2013 at 04:25 PM |

 

In developing the Growth and Opportunity Project‘s Autopsy of the 2012 election (pdf), the Republican National Committee correctly identified the reason for the party’s loss, but failed to recommend a coherent strategy to reverse it.

 

President Obama won by defining his opponent in a negative way, and marrying modern technology with old-fashioned boots on the ground. Republicans can do those things even better than he did, but doing so will require radically reforming the party.

http://www.redstate.com/socrates/2013/03/29/outreach-and-get-out-thevote/