U.S

No country for old Republicans

 

Tomas Mega, From Las Vegas Nevada

 

It’s finally over, and Republicans are asking what they do next.  Your candidate for President lost, failing to win the electoral vote, the popular vote, the state he was once governor, and all the states he once called home.  Your Vice-presidential candidate failed to win his own state, and that state had the audacity to elect an openly gay woman to the United States Senate.  You watched as two of your tea-party darlings for the United States Senate committed verbal suicide expounding on how a women’s body can prevent pregnancy during rape, and why pregnancy as a result of rape was a gift from God. You watched as Democrats increased their control of the Senate, and more of them were elected to the House of Representatives.  You sat idly as Hispanics turned the table on your candidate, and ‘self-deported’ him from the Oval Office.  And all that money you poured into Conservative Super-Pac negative advertising in your quest for electoral glory?  You lost the majority of that too.
Face it.  You got whipped.
Are Republicans now left for dead?  Only if they wish.  Their dilemma is where they go from here. How and what do they change, yet not become too much like the Democrats?   With a shrinking population of their core base constituency, Republicans have to decide where their narrative takes them next.   They have lost four of the last six Presidential elections (some would argue they lost five of the last six, recalling the debacle in Florida in 2000.)
Demographics are changing in America.  Hispanics are the fastest growing population.  Women, young people, African-Americans and other minorities are tired of feeling disenfranchised. The middle class continues to look for salvation from someone. Old white men and social conservatives that want to manage who can fall in love with who, exert control over issues that begin in the bedroom, thump their bibles at those who don’t want to be thumped, desire less government when it suits them, and more government when that suits them, seem to end up with unappealing political future.  It appears the United States is no longer a country for old Republican ideology and demagoguery.  Some liberals are ringing the funeral bell for Republicans, saying they are caught in their own ‘time-warp,’ unable to adapt.
Nonsense.  Change and adapt is what humans do as a species.  It’s when we don’t that we die. What would the future of business be without change and adaptation to competition?  Remember the Wang Word Processor?  Few do, because they didn’t change.  What about the big business of professional sports?  If you don’t change your tactics and style of play, the competition eventually figures you out, and you lose.  The military?  Hitler’s army fell into the same trap as Napoleon when invading Russia.  They both lost.
And politicians?  Bill Clinton, revered among Liberals, was forced to move to the centre-right in his second term, because of a landslide Republican win in Congress.  Ronald Reagan started his political career as a Democrat.  Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican, delivered an address to Congress shortly after taking office, asking it to curb the powers of large corporations.  Imagine.
Republicans and Democrats both have a problem with listening. But Republicans have become deaf.  Their messaging isn’t getting through, their narrative doesn’t resonate.
Both parties have something to offer Americans.  Neither has a monopoly on what is righteous. A healthy, vibrant, inclusive multi-party system is essential for democracy.  Without it, you have a one-party system, and, regardless of your political beliefs, one-party rule is not democracy. Political parties without robust competition become, like businesses, complacent, flaccid, idea-less, and fall victim to their own group-think.
Republicans have a dynamic group of young, multi-racial male and female future talent. Hispanic Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, Vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, New Hampshire Senator Kelly Ayotte, Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, and Mia Love, a young black woman city mayor in the conservative, ‘white old man Republican’ state of Utah who is beginning to amass national attention.
Democrats cannot take any of them lightly, and Republicans cannot allow them to take the stage to voice the same old Conservative messaging and narrative that excludes or dismisses the changing demographics and social beliefs of a country. If they do democracy suffers as a result.

 

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