The GOP lost the 2012 election, and in the bleak December that
followed, the Republican National Committee decided to figure out
why. RNC Chairman Reince Priebus saw off an expedition force of
operatives, dubbed the Growth and Opportunity Project, to speak
with Republicans and determine the source of their discontent.
Among the 2,600 people they interviewed were consultants,
pollsters, elected officials, and even voters, which compelled
these modern-day Lewises and Clarks to venture outside Washington.
In the end, the explorers returned to the Beltway with 219
recommendations and two reported cases of cholera. These findings,
called an “autopsy” by Priebus, were released earlier this
week.
It’s tempting to ascribe value to their report based on its size
alone: 219 recommendations! But a closer examination of the
prescriptions shows a lot of bureaucratic bumbling — lots of
listening sessions and new councils and minority group committees.
Anyone searching for meat will have to chew through a lot of fat
first.
But that’s not to say the report doesn’t make substantive
points. There’s an underlying argument being made by the Growth and
Opportunity Project, however myopically and clumsily. Much of it is
wrong, with a few bright spots sprinkled in. Let’s take a look at
both the bad and the good.
THE BAD
Where in the world is Mitt Romney?
The report contains a brief section on candidate recruitment.
But it fails to address the single most important reason that the
Republican Party lost in 2012: Willard Mitt Romney. According to
the
Real Clear Politics poll averages, Romney consistently ran 1-6
points behind Obama in the polls from the day he secured the
nomination, and caught up only briefly after his stunning debate
performance in October. Voters just didn’t like our guy, as
evidenced by his stagnant approval ratings throughout the
campaign.
The comfortable explanations — that Romney lost because of Todd
Akin or his notorious 47% comment — don’t hold water when you look
at the data. But the RNC’s autopsy never engages in a serious
analysis of Romney’s flaws; in fact, Romney is barely mentioned in
the report at all.
Governors vs. everyone else
“The GOP today is a tale of two parties,” the report declares.
“One of them, the gubernatorial wing, is growing and successful.
The other, the federal wing, is increasingly marginalizing
itself.”
But really, what are the differences between Republican
governors and Republican members of Congress, other than Republican
governors have been politically successful? If anything,
conservative governors like Scott Walker and John Kasich have made
more risky and potentially marginalizing decisions than
Congress, loudly taking on labor unions and making painful budget
cuts.
The report calls GOP governors “America’s reformers in chief”
who show the need to “modernize the Party.” But it’s difficult to
think of a big decision made by a Republican governor that hasn’t
been on the conservative radar screen for a long time. GOP
governors succeeded by applying long-held principles, not by
throwing those principles overboard in the name of modernity.
Young voters and social issues
Naturally the Growth and Opportunity Project is worried about
losing young voters. But its recommendations for connecting with
today’s youth are both shallow (“Establish an RNC Celebrity Task
Force”!) and shortsightedly focused on social issues.
That isn’t to say that social issues aren’t a factor. I was
shocked by how many of my young friends fell into Obama’s lap after
his transparently opportunistic flip-flop on gay marriage last
year. But the overall picture is much bigger and includes two
topics that the report doesn’t address: foreign policy and national
debt.
We may be three months into Obama’s second term, but for the
young, Iraq still matters. As Daniel Larison
convincingly argues, “The [Iraq] war was instrumental in
driving younger voters away from the GOP and into the Democratic
coalition in 2006 and 2008, and most of them have remained there
since then.” Rand Paul’s recent filibuster, which energized young
people across the spectrum, demonstrates that war and civil
liberties issues can have a galvanizing effect on Millennials. If
the GOP wants to win young voters, part of the solution will be
coming to terms with the Bush Administration’s foreign policy.
Young people also stand in the shadow of a tidal wave of debt.
This has produced a latent fiscal conservatism in many Millennials,
though it needs to be more fully teased out. The Republican Party
should be speaking directly to the young, elucidating the real
consequences they will face if the government continues its
reckless spending.
Immigration is not a panacea
The autopsy makes the common mistake of assuming comprehensive
immigration reform is a tonic for the GOP’s problem with Hispanic
voters. We can debate the merits of such a proposal, but it’s
simply not true that support for looser immigration policies will
convert Latinos. According to the
Pew Hispanic Center, education, jobs and the economy, health
care, and the deficit all rate as bigger concerns for Latinos than
immigration.
And that’s the real quandary: Hispanics, unfortunately, are
falling for the big-government promises of economic liberalism.
Since Republicans won’t (and absolutely shouldn’t) become economic
liberals, they have a far more vexing problem with Hispanics than
the RNC acknowledges.
THE GOOD
Distance from big business
Early on, the report encourages Republicans to shed the party’s
reputation as a tool of big business and “be the champion of those
who seek to climb the economic ladder of life.” This is sound
advice that’s made realistic by a simple fact: the Republican Party
no longer is the party of big business. Under the Obama
Administration, corporations are getting fat on a diet of subsidies
and rigged rules, while small businesses sink under the weight of
regulation. Republicans should make this point every chance they
get.
Define Democrats as unacceptable
In Mitt Romney, Democrats knew they had a candidate they could
(mendaciously) define as a heartless plutocrat. So they did so, and
very early in the campaign. The report learns this lesson,
encouraging Republicans to define Democratic candidates quickly,
and citing the Bush campaign’s success at portraying John Kerry as
a weak flip-flopper. It also laments the GOP’s utter failure to
combat the Democrats’ most effective line of attack: the war on
women.
Make the party more tech-savvy
Anyone who read the media’s
breathless insider profiles of the Obama campaign knows the
Republican Party’s technological disadvantage is real and hurt
Romney during the last election. The report recommends updating
both the Republican Party’s social media outreach and data
analytics, both of which are crucial to attracting new voters,
especially young ones.
So will the autopsy have a serious impact? Probably not. On the
campaign side, Republican consultants are already aware of most of
the report’s diagnoses. On the ideas side, conservative thinkers
and activists are hardly inclined to take their cues from a bunch
of party suits. Give the news cycle a few more spins and the
autopsy will likely be forgotten.
And that’s probably for the best. There are many lessons for
Republicans to learn after 2012, but most of them aren’t to be
found in this autopsy. Actually, autopsy is probably the wrong
word. You can’t really cut someone open when you’re wringing your
hands.
Photo: UPI
