Posted on 10/18/2013 8:41:58 AM PDT by Kaslin
A lot of people are asking what the heck is wrong with the Republican Party.
What isn’t?
That’s no joke. Not for the GOP, not for the country.
The party of Ronald Reagan is getting weaker by the week.
Republican failure, Republican infighting, Republicans caving on their principles -- it’s a grim soap opera, and it’s playing out on the cable news channels every day.
How did the Republican Party ever fall to such depths?
The GOP was flying high when my father led it to victories in 1980 and 1984 on platforms built solidly -- and proudly -- on conservative principles.
So how was he so successful? It wasn’t just his conservative gospel, his communication skills or his sunny personality. My father had a man named Michael K. Deaver by his side for a long time.
When Deaver died in 2007, The Washington Post called him the “media maestro” who “shaped President Ronald Reagan's public image for 20 years, transforming American politics with his powerful gift for image-making.”
Yes, Mike Deaver was a master of media stagecraft. But he was much more. He was the public relations arm of Ronald Reagan. He understood politics, the media, and the heart and mind of my father.
Deaver was able to marry all those things for the betterment of Ronald Reagan -- and therefore the betterment of the Republican Party, conservatism and America.
You don’t see anyone like Deaver in today’s fractious Republican Party.
You don’t see anyone who understands how important it is to use the mainstream media to create the political perceptions that ultimately change the political reality.
Even though they talk about my father incessantly, Republican Party “leaders” don’t understand that it was Deaver and others, such as Lyn Nofziger, who made him a success.
They weren’t consultants to my father or the Republican Party. They were around Ronald Reagan because they were true believers in Ronald Reagan.
Right now, I don’t know if the Republican Party has anyone it can trust to lead it out of the basement. John Boehner can’t get anything done because Republicans are so fractionalized.
As we said last week, it’s been government by tantrum, but at some point that’s got to end.
This is where a Deaver or a Nofziger -- the adult supervision -- would have come in and said, “This is what needs to be said and done to save the GOP’s butt and reputation.”
So what can the Republican Party do now to show itself in a better light -- not to Republicans, not to the Tea Party, but to the nation as a whole?
The GOP is always going to be a minority party, so the only way it can win in the long run is when it’s inclusive, not exclusive.
The GOP has to come out of this Obamacare/government shutdown debacle showing itself to be more inclusive, instead of being exclusive and pushing people out, which they can no longer afford to do.
At this point the president is not leading. But neither are the Republicans. They’re fighting, but they’re not leading.
It doesn’t matter that the Republicans’ failed attempt to stop or delay Obamacare was a “good fight” for conservative principles and the long-term good of the American people.
The drawn-out, poorly thought-out fight was doomed from the start and only weakened the GOP brand further.
To genuine conservatives, the GOP has become a party of spineless losers whose core beliefs about the size, scope and legitimate activities of government are virtually interchangeable with Democrats.
Yes, Republicans need another great leader to resurrect the party of Ronald Reagan. But they also need another Michael Deaver. Otherwise, we may see the disintegration of the GOP as an important political force in the running of a government that gets bigger and nastier every day.
I wanted to like this. I really did.
But, Michael doesn’t get it, either.
State your principles and then stick by come hell or high water. Those who agree will join you. Period.
This phrase is no longer valid. It is now open warfare against conservationism and Conservatives. It is the Dems and GOPe against Conservatives for the soul and future of this country.
Which one is getting weaker? The collectivist GOP-E or the GOP-C?
Don’t get it, do ya Mike??
The RINOs in the party are VERY COMFORTABLE as a distant 2nd place party. They get THEIR bennies and are quite happy not having to lead. That they follow the Socialist right off the cliff matters not. After all, they haven’t hit the bottom—yet.
Forseight. The ‘future’—who cares about that?
Accurate point! Bullseye!
Michael, back then Deaver only had to make a silk purse from pure silk.
In the last years, we are offered up old sow’s ears.
Simple as that.
My only hope for the future is that the Dim agenda will implode so much over the next year that the GOP will be the only alternative.
Well, there’s a real issue about handling the msm, and their anti-American activism. All we hear is that the Repubs can’t do the right thing because of how the media will cut them off at the knees, so to speak. I don’t know to what extent that is true, but it could be a valid concern.
I recall years ago Newt reflecting on how the majority of their time is spent on how to bypass, burrow through, or otherwise deal with the biasness of the media. I don’t remember Gingrich offering up any answers, however.
but we've won a few in the past, we got the Republicans to stop amnesty,hillary care , gun control in the past. if we give up and don't try to get them to stop amnesty this time we are much worse off with 50 million new 3rd world maggots invading the USA and taking away our jobs, our opportunity and our everything.
it's a long shot but we have to try to stop amnesty
the news media is trying to invent more fake crisis as they did for the debt ceiling. there was never any chance for default nor collapse but the news media said it in EVERY news story that if the Republicans didn’t agree to raise the debt ceiling that the USA would default on the debt and collapse of the world economy. this was the most blatant,. the most universal(said in every story as if it were a fact), and pervasive lie the media ever told and that i have ever seen. I will write a letter to every Republican explaining to them how they were fooled and how they better not pass amnesty.
Don’t buy the MSM Kool-Aid. The next election is local and if the Democrats try to nationalize it on immigration, the President or immigration they will lose only worse.
.
Everyone tries to compare now to Reagan’s time, but it isn’t just the party that has changed, it’s the American people. We are not the same country we once were, and Americans today are not conservative in the real sense of the word. If they were, we wouldn’t be electing the people that we do.
I know Rush always cites polls that say Americans identify themselves as conservative, but that doesn’t mean anything because people can have different ideas on what that means.
We have big government that doles out money because that is what voters want. We may have to face up to the fact that real conservatism is not popular. People prefer dependence to liberty and self-reliance.
7 years since the debacle of 2006 midterms and they’ve done nothing, NOTHING but sit on the butts...
Contact your local county GOP boards.
Across this country, local county GOP boards need to issue a “Vote of No Confidence” regarding the leadership of the RNC and the republican leadership in the House and Senate.
The local boards basically are made up by the base. The majority of republicans are conservative. It is the leadership of the RNC and the House / Senate are in the minority.
The RNC lavishly spends money on its establishment candidates while sparsely supporting their conservative counterparts.
If county GOP boards all over the country begin doing this, it will send a clear message that the leadership has to change now. We, the base, greatly outnumber them.
That's fine right up to the point where they start taking MY liberty and destroying MY ability to be self reliant; then I have a major issue with it. So the alternatives are fight the loss of liberty and increased dependency at every turn, or wait for them to knock on your front door, because you are the one voice left. Which will it be?
The only glimmer of hope I see is the Dim agenda will implode so bad, people will be forced back to true conservatism.
Who are you accusing of sitting on their butts?
I agree completely, but if the majority wants Uncle Sugar Daddy to take your money and give it to them, and they have the power to do so, then voting is largely futile.
I don’t have the answer and I’m not advocating giving up, but conservatives need to realize that it is not the politicians nor the Republican Party that is to blame, it is the average American voter. Politicians respond to what people really want, not what they say they want. Even people who call themsselves conservative don’t want to give up their place at the trough. It’s that simple.
If you don’t believe me, go to the most supposedly conservative parts of Louisiana or the farm states and run ofr office on the platform of doing away with ag subsidies and sugar tariffs. Good luck.
We are teetering on the edge. It could go either way. But I don’t want to have to explain to my grandchildren someday that I sat back and watched our country go over the edge. Do you?
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