When all is lost. When all seems to be in the toilet. Just when you thought the Republicans can't do anything more stupid, guess what...?
Republicans Seek Sweet '16 Solutions: HuffPost List
It’s been just two weeks since The Most Important Election In Our
Lifetime, and the side that lost is gearing up to be a better competitor
by the time the next Most Important Election In Our Lifetime happens,
in 2016. But first, there comes a period of soul-searching. What went
wrong? And who went the wrongest? How does the Republican Party move
forward (but not like, you know ... Obama Forward). Over the past few weeks, various GOP thought-leaders have offered suggestions. Bill Kristol said he thinks the party should go ahead and raise taxes on upper-income earners. David Frum said he thinks
that the Republican Party should embrace "cultural modernity." Karl
Rove said he wants to return to the "50 State Solution." And lots of
people seem to generically agree that the next Republican candidate for
president should "do some Hispanic stuff."
But other ideas have drawn a lot more attention, suggesting an
amusing step-by-step process that your HuffPost List shall now run down
for you.
For Starters, Reject Romney Thoroughly:
As Ben Smith pointed out, Mitt Romney is getting disappeared from the
GOP ranks faster than a dissident in Milton Friedman's Chile. It's easy
to see why. Who wants to be associated with the guy
who was just at the receiving end of a shellacking from President
Barack Obama, especially after an election that was deemed to have been
handed to Republicans on a silver platter. Not only did the party come
together to unanimously condemn Romney’s “gift” comments (huh, weird how
there were mostly crickets when the whole 47 percent debacle went down)
-- but now Sen. Marco Rubio is also reiterating his opposition to
Romney’s “self-deportation” remark made during the GOP primaries. It’s
true that Rubio has taken issue with Romney’s choice of words before,
but like most in his party, he spent the last months leading up to the
election pivoting to jobs and the economy when asked about his nominee’s
non-existent position on immigration. No more. Yep, we chose him over all others and that's why we need to throw him under the bus. God Knows we are an ethical, moral party who only backs 'winners.'
Then, I Dunno ... Get Better Candidates, I Guess?:
Republican party bigwigs will be ret-conning 2012 for years, wondering
what might have been if only Mitch Daniels, or Jeb Bush, or Chris
Christie had run for the nomination and won. (You don't think that
candidate Christie and President Barack Obama would have bro'ed out in
mutual love for one another, do you?)
But the need for better candidates is more painfully felt down-ticket, where -- as Mike McAuliff reports -- memories of the damage done by some of the GOP's leading low-lights remain fresh:
The most remarkable losses were in Indiana and Missouri,
where the GOP had been looking at near-certain wins until their
right-leaning standard-bearers both took controversial positions on
abortion. Missouri Rep. Todd Akin declared women don't get pregnant from
"legitimate rape." Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock proclaimed that
pregnancy from rape is "something God intended to happen."
Or
Maybe We Can Just Have The Same Sort Of Candidates, Only They Remember
To Stop Saying The Stupid Stuff Everybody Hates Out Loud: After
keeping a relatively low profile during the presidential race, Bobby
Jindal suddenly has all the answers. The Louisiana governor took to
various media outlets to decry the GOP for coming across as the “stupid party”, and then again to denounce Romney’s ‘Obama’s policies were gifts to minorities’ comments ... and then yet again to urge the Republican Party to go back to the basics. Of course, those "basics" didn't differ in many meaningful ways from Mitt Romney's basics -- Jindal's preferred tax policies aren't a whit different from Romney's. And for all of Jindal's talk about not being the "stupid party," he's the guy who supports creationism.
Besides, I think a lot of Republicans are just going to hear Jindal's
admonitions about not being the "stupid party" and think, "Well, that's pretty rich coming from the guy who endorsed Rick Perry."
That’s A Lot Of Work, Can’t We Just Run George P. Bush?:
Yeah, we get it. He's a Bush, and he's handsome, and he's Hispanic, and
he's ready to, like, TOTALLY run for something? Maybe land
commissioner? Whatever you got, basically. But it's not actually going
to be that easy, reckons Alex Pareene:
There was honestly never much of a reason to expect that
Hispanic American voters -- a diffuse group of lots of very different
types of voters -- would end up voting as a bloc. But then the
Republican Party started encouraging and explicitly campaigning on
nativism and ferocious white racial resentments, instead of merely
profiting from them. In doing so, Republicans might have served to make
the non-white portion of the country liberal for a generation at least,
which would be a major problem.
[...]
If that’s the case, if the Tea Party and Sheriff Joe have liberalized
a generation of Latino voters, the Republican Party’s demographics
problem will not be fixed simply by embracing individuals like Marco
Rubio, who share the same batshit beliefs as the party. (Nominating a
white guy did not win the former Confederacy for Democrats in 2004.) But
it also might not help that much to nominate a guy like George P. Bush,
who merely subscribes to most of the beliefs of modern conservatism. It
could take years, and a series of Democratic missteps, to erase the
damage done in the last few elections.
Screw It, Then, Why Don't We Just Bring Palin Back: While GOP operatives point to the likes of Chris Christie, Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush as potential 2016 frontrunners, conservative columnist Charlotte Allen tossed another name into the mix:
Sarah Palin. Cause, remember how well that worked out the last time?
"Palin can more than keep up with the Democrats in appealing to voters'
emotions," Allen wrote in a column that apparently was not satire.
"Hardly anyone could be more blue collar than Palin, out on the fishing
boat with her hunky blue-collar husband, Todd." Ha, ha: no.
Wait I Got It!: Remember all those amazing engineers and technologists that Alexis Madrigal profiled in his great post-election article
on the Obama campaign and the brilliant geek-savants who built the
system that powered the president to victory? Well, can't you guys just
pay those nerds triple what Obama was paying them? I mean, you are Republicans, after all.
If at first you don't succeed, do something more stupid than you did before. Run Palin again! She's a winner, we all know that. Then all the Dems would have to do is put a basset hound against her and the hound would win by a landslide. I can't believe this idiocy. Doesn't anyone think critically anymore?
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