Please note that this is by no means a comprehensive list of all of the lessons we should take from this year’s election. These are just a few of the many important recognitions we must make moving forward.
- The GOP’s electoral map has shrunk. As much as it pains me to say it as a Pennsylvania resident, I no longer believe that PA is a reasonable battleground state for Republicans. In 2006, Senator Rick Santorum lost his re-election bid by an 18% margin, and this year John McCain, a fairly moderate Republican by most standards, lost by an 11% margin. With the exception of Tom Corbett, PA’s incumbent Attorney General, Pennsylvania has not had a Republican win the statewide red vote since 2004, when it voted to re-elect the extremely moderate Senator Arlen Specter. Recognizing this, we need to find a way to expand our electoral map for the 2012 Presidential election so that we can win back the White House. Being stuck with only one or two paths to electoral college victory is not acceptable.
- The Age of Participation fueled Obama’s victory. A huge part of coming back in 2010 is going to rely on our ability to capitalize on new media and Web 2.0. As Adam Nagourney notes, the 2008 election was unique because the Internet played such a role in its outcome. Much of Obama’s victory was empowered by his innovative use of the Internet. The folks behind Rebuild the Party have laid out a very comprehensive plan detailing how we can regain the edge online.
- We Need to Win Back Young Voters. Patrick Ruffini points out that although there was not a significant increase in turnout among young voters, Barack Obama was able to blow out John McCain among these voters. Such a blowout, Ruffini demonstrates, made a huge difference in the final electoral margins. The Republican Party must earn back the support of young voters in order to get back to electoral success.
Last 5 posts by Aaron Marks
- Onward and Upward: Building a Sustainable Majority - January 22nd, 2010
- Dear Young Voters: This Is What You Get When You Don't Vote - December 1st, 2009
- The Youth Vote and the 2009 Elections - November 6th, 2009
- The Best of the Post-2009 Election Spin - November 5th, 2009
- Introducing NextGenGOP Executive Director James Kane - October 20th, 2009
May I also add, we need to in back the Minority votes, especially blacks. They are poised to see some of the greatest benefits of conservative leadership. I feel that if a few notable black people campaigned for freedom we could win some of those votes back.
Why Barack is Winning?
Warren Buffet recently said “I would rather be lucky than smart.” As far as luck goes, Obama has been on the receiving end of unprecedented luck while McCain has been on the receiving end of the kind of luck that would make a grown man cry. I mean… when the economy reaches crisis mode within a few weeks of the presidential election and you (McCain) are aligned with the incumbent party… lady luck ain’t smiling attchya.
However, the Obama phenomenon can’t be explained with luck alone. Obama was doing well before news of the economic crisis–when the economy was just facing a slow down, lower home values and some foreclosures. When Bill Clinton won the presidency, he said “it’s the economy stupid.” In the case of Obama, “it is the economy and Iraq—stupid.”
Recall that Obama gained credibility by opposing a war that turned into the most expensive military adventure in America history. It is no secret that most of the international community, including most of our allies, considered the Iraq war “unjustified.” Unfortunately for McCain, as the war dragged on, more Americans became convinced that America entered the war under false pretenses and Americans began punishing republicans because of their unconditional support for the war.
Even more disastrous for Republicans is that until today Republican leaders, including McCain, have not conceded that the war was wrong and even more important is that McCain has not reassured Americans that the flawed thinking that led to the Iraq war would never happen again. Instead, McCain focused on the surge and the fact that his vision may have led to a more acceptable situation in Iraq. Without a doubt, thanks to McCain, the surge was a success but this did not impress Americans because Obama reminded them that the issue is not the surge, it is judgment and he had the judgment to oppose the war from the beginning. This is a powerful argument that McCain has not been able to answer to the satisfaction of most Americans.
Certainly, it would be difficult for McCain to admit that his support for the war was wrong. Fine… but then he needs to convince Americans that the thinking that led to the Iraq war would never happen under his presidency. He needs to further convince Americans that he believes in diplomacy above all else and not say anything that would even imply that he has aggressive intentions against any nation. It would be impossible for McCain to disassociate himself from President Bush unless he convinces Americans that he has no hostile intentions against any nation and that his focus is to strengthen America by growing the economy and saving people’s jobs, homes and livelihood.
Without a doubt McCain’s advisors would argue against such a change in McCain’s rhetoric. However, it is not unheard of to change one’s view on a major issue. Obama changed his view about drilling for oil when it became apparent that most Americans wanted drilling. McCain needs to also listen to the wishes of the majority of Americans, as he correctly did on the immigration issue, and understand that Americans question his judgment because of his strong support for invading Iraq. McCain needs to understand that Americans are angry about the war and apprehensive about their economic security. McCain’s need to change people’s perception of him has become even more urgent because an increasing number of Americans now believe that the current economic crisis is in part due to the cost of the Iraq war. It does not matter that this belief may be wrong because perception is reality.
It should be noted that I am not arguing that Iraq is a total failure. In fact, I believe that Iraq will bounce back and actually become a success story within a short period of time. Iraq has the people and resources to reinvent itself once security is established and all indicators are pointing to a success story in Iraq. The problem is that most Americans no longer care. All they know is that the Iraq war was wrong and that McCain was one of the main backers of the war. This is McCain’s challenge.
Look, to win back young voters, the GOP is going to have to adopt more progressive stances on social issues. Younger generations overwhelmingly support stem cell research, abortion rights (to varying degrees – but I think it’s safe to say young voters support contraception at the very least), gay rights (civil unions or marriage – the point is, they come from the “gay is okay” generation, and the GOP alienates itself from these voters by aligning with hard-right evangelicalism attacking gays), and support for tackling climate change and global warming (because they’ve been taught these ideas in school for the last decade. The Bush administration’s multiple failures also made it cool to question Republicanism. Or, more precisely, what is now perceived as Republicanism, because the Bush administration, overseeing an expansion in government and governmental power, and intervening in personal issues like the Schiavo case, is about as un-Republican as you can get. Frankly, the Bush years have made ME question Republicanism in this country.
It’s a hard sell. If you study the numbers, you find a growing number of young voters uncomfortable with labeling or defining themselves by religion and can’t relate to the hard-right vote the GOP often courts. The face of the party is a bumbling cowboy from Texas, and God bless John McCain, but he is an old white guy. With predictions that old, white guys will be in the minority by 2042 and a growing population of multi-racial, multi-cultural youth voters who live in urban areas, they don’t find the GOP brand appealing in the way the Democrats seem to be. Plus, in our globally connected society, young voters interact with people all over the world and gather diverse viewpoints, mostly from progressive leaning countries in Europe. If we could show young voters the GOP roots in self-reliance, individualism, and disdain for government intervention, I think these are values young people support and will continue to support. But I think the continued association of the GOP with immovable far-right rhetoric drives them away. I imagine most people would vote fiscally conservative and social more liberal if given the opportunity.
The Democrats are winning in the social arena because they correctly judge that the future of social policy will be progressive. You only have to look at history as a model to discover that the general trend has always been progressive. Imagine the idea that fifty years ago it was illegal in nearly half the states in the Union for a black man and a white woman to marry or that eighty years ago contraception was an unheard of taboo or a century before that divorce was a social stigma worse than death. We don’t believe those things anymore, and people who still do are considered backwards, bigoted, or worse – stupid. And nobody is going to vote for the stupid party.
The GOP needs some serious soul-searching to decide how to take the party into the future. Basic tenets of conservatism still ring strongly – just look at one of the fathers of conservative thought, Edmund Burke. But the idea of preemptive wars or trying to force democracy on a people who have no concept of the intense history behind the development of democracy in the West – well, one need only look at his writings on the French Revolution to get a sense of what he thought about that. The GOP is the party of Lincoln! Do we honestly think Lincoln would be proud of the party today?
I’ve been reading some sites that have surfaced lately on “rebuilding the GOP”. For some reason many of these sites concentrate on logistics. Logistical methods are important when discussing ways to spread a message, but it is the message of the GOP that is damaged. Being the pro-war party, the party of Bush and Cheney, puts the GOP at a considerable disadvantage from the very start, not to mention how anti-conservative both are. The GOP will have to make a choice soon. They will either choose maintaining the statist anti-conservative, moderate republican leanings of McCain, Bush, and neoconservatism, or they’ll go back to their conservative roots of Goldwater, Burke, and try to maximize individual liberty, reduce government intervention, and vehemently support Constitutional governing. I assume they’ll stay on the wrong course, but I pray they do not. I have a plethora of ideas about the conservative message I think the GOP would be wise in at least considering, and I think that is what should be focused on first and foremost if the GOP would like to be a political force in the future.
Lincoln would be very proud Fibbius, as he was one of the most coercive Presidents this country has ever had. Many nations ended slavery in that era without war, Britain, Spain, Denmark, France, but for some reason Lincoln found it necessary to concern ourselves in an unnecessary war. Lincoln cared very little about slavery in reality, as he once claimed this during a debate with Stephen Douglas, “I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races – that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes.” He was much more concerned about tax revenues from tariffs, one reason he didn’t want the states to secede, even though he knew the states had a constitutional right to do that very thing. Using force to keep a state in the union was even debated, and rejected, during the Constitutional Convention. Lincoln further trashed the Constitution by suspending habeas corpus, declaring martial law, seizing property without just compensation, declaring a war without the consent of the Congress, jailing nearly 30,000 northerners without trial, and even deporting a Congressman from Ohio because he objected to the imposition of an income tax. Lincoln and Bush are actually quite similar in their ability to bypass the Constitution. I’m not saying the democrats are any better, its just that the Republicans must at least concern themselves with the idea of Constitutionally limited government.