REPUBLICANS AND CONSERVATIVES in the 2012 elections got less
bang for the buck, and for their time and effort, than they have
ever achieved in living memory. Their failure to defeat a severely
weakened Barack Obama and their loss of Senate seats in the best
environment in years for GOP pickups were failures on an epic
scale. Now, against what is likely to be a newly empowered, radical
president—bent on leftist “revenge” and untethered by the
Constitution—those of us on the right face daunting challenges.
We need a new approach. The biggest change we need, though,
isn’t ideological; it’s attitudinal.
The right seems to have forgotten completely how to motivate
voters. We fail at the levels of both head and heart. We offer
pabulum for breakfast, lunch, and dinner—and then wonder why the
voters spit it back at us. We speak in clichés and generalities; we
run boring advertisements; we take no risks; and we never leave our
comfort zones.
No wonder we utterly fail to attract black voters, do
increasingly poorly among Latinos—and watch as some 7 million
economically disaffected whites, who will vote against the guy in
power if they bother to vote at all, instead stay home on Election
Day. (For more on that latter topic, see Sean Trende’s Real Clear
Politics
article two days after the election.) If
Republicans/conservatives can’t regain Ronald Reagan’s ability to
inspire blue-collar white voters in the Rust Belt and elsewhere,
far too many of our candidates will be doomed to oblivion.
To understand how poorly Romney did, consider this: Since 2004,
the United States population has grown from 293 million to 312
million. Yet with 19 million more Americans (granted, not all of
them eligible voters, but still…), Romney managed to earn about 3
million fewer votes than G.W. Bush did in 2004. Or, looked
at another way: Barack Obama lost 7 million votes from 2008 to
2012. An overlapping set of 7 million fewer white voters went to
the polls this year. Yet Romney in effect garnered not a single one
of them: He did not even exceed John McCain’s already poor vote
total nationwide. If our side can’t garner a single extra vote as
the population grows by 19 million, or as the Obamites turn off 7
million of their former voters, then we’re doing something very
badly. And if we actually are losing votes among Latinos—as has
been well documented—then we are doing something very badly. If we
lost a net of two Senate seats in a year when Democrats were
defending 23 of 33 seats, and defending them almost exclusively in
red or purplish states, then we are, yes, doing something very,
very badly.
ONE THING that our consultant-led candidates do poorly is
actually explain solutions to voters as if the voters have brains.
Granted, a whole lot of “low-intensity” voters may be somewhat
ill-informed, vote on “impressions,” and may be susceptible to
false narratives. Still, the Republican approach seems to be to try
to dumb down the GOP message to reach these voters, rather than to
give them the tools to understand our real argument. It’s the
difference between addressing people as dimwits and addressing them
as jurors: Most voters at least like to think they are considering
evidence in each candidate’s favor.
Conservative sophisticates might scoff at some of Frank Luntz’s
focus groups, but in one key respect those groups repeatedly
provided the same message. One smart reader accurately noted this
in a letter to me shortly after the election:
The general consensus of the group was, “I’m not happy with
Barack Obama, but I want to know what will Mitt Romney do for me.”
I think a lot of conservatives stopped listening after the
first half of the answer, and our candidate never successfully
answered the last part. A lot of those people stayed home, too.
The second thing missing from consultant-speak is real heart or
compassion. No, I’m not talking about using the slogan of
“compassionate conservatism” or about equating compassion with
government spending. Instead, what Republicans need is real
empathy. How often did Mitt Romney talk about “small
businessmen,” compared to how seldom he talked about “workers”?
More importantly, how seldom do our candidates or their consultants
ever talk directly, apart from campaign events, to blue-collar
workers? Likewise, how seldom do they go into black communities, or
Latino communities, and actually hold conversations? And how few of
our candidates have actually volunteered in their private lives at
soup kitchens, or at community work days, or in ongoing outreach
efforts through their churches?
The goal is not to change our principles to pander to new
constituencies by adopting positions we know are wrong; the goal is
to actually listen to different constituencies; “learn their
language” (figuratively speaking); and, more than language, learn
what their real concerns and lives are like.
If we are going to say that the best solutions to their
difficulties can only tangentially be provided by government, then
we must first understand their difficulties and, second, offer
other good solutions and explanations of the same.
THOSE POINTS ASIDE, none of us should assume that we find
ourselves in yet another “normal” cycle in which we just need to
regroup and reload. Barack Obama is not a normal politician. He’s
out for blood—or, as he told voters in the last days before the
election, for “revenge.” He was re-elected by running the most
vicious, vile, mendacious, and, on a lower plane, just plain crass
campaign most of us have ever seen, cheapening the office he holds
in trust for the republic. Unmoored from the need for re-election,
he will show more “flexibility” to Vladimir Putin, issue more
executive orders and administrative fiats regardless of
constitutional restraints, and tip the judiciary so much that his
constitutional abuses will not be reined in. His Justice Department
and IRS will continue to stack the deck and, worse, hound
conservative organizations with spurious “investigations,” fines,
and possibly worse. The man is playing for keeps, and so are his
propaganda storm troops in the establishment media.
Right-leaning Supreme Court justices, in response, need to
undertake fitness regimens so they can keep their health for four
more years. Right-leaning politicians must keep their noses clean,
because any and all weaknesses will be exposed and exploited. And
right-leaning activists must demand candidates who are not just
philosophically solid, but also smart, canny, and tough.
The economy will tank—and Obama will use that as an excuse to
create even more government dependents. Our allies, especially
Israel, will be forsaken—and Obama will use their troubles as an
excuse to cede more ground (figuratively speaking) to the
adversaries who hate both them and us. Our military will continue
to be gutted—and Obama will use our newfound weakness as an excuse
to relinquish American sovereignty.
The entirety of both the political and societal playing fields
will be altered, and our side will be demonized every time we dare
set foot in the arena.
The only way to fight back against these abuses will be to win
the allegiances of large—not narrow—public majorities. And to win
those allegiances, conservatives must move well outside of our
comfort zones, not just in terms of whom we talk to, but also in
terms of whom we hire as consultants, where we advertise, and how
we build our coalitions.
Meanwhile, we may need to pick our battles. Even with a
Republican House majority protected via clever redistricting, we
won’t be able to fight on every front. We might need to use
flanking maneuvers, political guerrilla warfare, and pinpoint
attacks rather than full frontal charges. Yet when it comes to
defending the Constitution, or defending truly essential
principles, we must be fiercely defiant against anything Obama
throws at us. If this man in the Oval Office truly wants to
transform America rather than just reform it, he must be resisted
with every legal weapon we can muster.
YOU WANT SPECIFICS? Specific issues have been begging to be used
for years. Eminent domain. School choice. Voter ID. Parental choice
for abortions. Race-neutral justice. Conservative judges. Law and
order (not just against crime, but also against prosecutorial
abuse). Repeal of mandates that invade basic rights. Ethics.
In one state referendum or another, for almost every one of
those issues, voters approved amendments taking the conservative
side (or opposed amendments pushed by the left). When elective
judgeships were at stake, voters across the country moved courts
further rightward. Huge majorities even of ethnic-minority
populations support voter ID laws (although conservatives must also
work for reforms that make the actual process of voting easier and
less time-consuming). School choice offers inroads for support from
black voters and perhaps especially Latinos. (Pro–charter school
amendments passed in Georgia and Washington State.) And an
astonishing 82 percent of Virginia voters supported limits on
eminent domain.
Here’s something our dull-witted consultants fail to understand:
Focusing on one main theme (uh, yeah, we know the economy
is bad) does not preclude the use of other issues as honorable
wedges to leverage voter turnout among discrete slices of the
citizenry who might otherwise stay home. If Romney, for instance,
had piggybacked on the eminent domain issue, it might not only have
shifted key votes in Virginia but might also have positioned him
against big corporations that often are behind municipal land
grabs—and, Lord knows, Romney needed to fight the perception of
corporate fat cat if he wanted to earn the votes of white laborers
in Ohio, who instead just declined to cast ballots.
Conservatives must not delude ourselves: The 2012 elections were
a disaster. Barack Obama has the upper hand and will try to use it
for terrible ends. But for the many (we’ve all heard them) who say
we now are doomed, it’s time to reconsider. We’re not in yet in
perdition; we’re retraining ourselves in Valley Forge.
