The criticisms flash by in rapid fashion: Poorly timed. Dumb. Out of touch. Suicidal.
No, that’s not how a new report describes the flaws of the Republican Party. Instead, those words describe the party leaders who wrote and released the report. They even called it an “autopsy.”
Talk about a death wish.
Their action is the political equivalent of the New Coke debacle: Trashing your existing product and, by extension your customers, as a way to introduce a better product and get new customers.
The GOP self-flagellation will no doubt work just as well as that historic flop.
Public Relations 101 teaches never to repeat a problem you’re denying, so the report’s authors deserve an “F” in marketing.
They didn’t merely make the work of liberal critics easy. They did their work for them.
The opposition ads write themselves: The GOP is ideologically rigid and indifferent to the middle class. It said so itself!
Of course Republicans have problems. They’ve just lost a presidential election they should have won and, over the last two cycles, lost maybe eight Senate seats within reach.
Obviously, changes are necessary. The 2012 presidential primaries had too many debates, some moderated by liberals fronting for Barack Obama, and Mitt Romney and the Republican National Committee failed to create a voter-turnout operation.
The report notes all that, but its sad-sack, kick-me-again tone reeks of whimpering surrender. Accusing its party of having Latinos “pigeonholed into demographic outreach,” the report praises the way “Democrats have built relationships.”
Is this a plan for the future or a suicide note?
Readers of the report who voted for Obama would conclude they made the right decision, while readers who voted for Romney would doubt their choice.
Without directly saying so, the 100-page document also oozes contempt for the Tea Party, which is odd on several levels. Without the Tea Party, Republicans would be a minority in the House.
And it’s the Tea Party, not the Washington establishment, that has produced most of the GOP’s leading minority members. Think Cuban-American Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas, and Indian-American Govs. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Nikki Haley of South Carolina. And it was Haley who appointed Tim Scott to replace the retiring Jim DeMint, making Scott the first black senator from the South since the 19th century.
The rage from many on the right reflects the ways the report foolishly incorporates liberal criticism that the most conservative members of the GOP are the problem. The result, for now, is that the clumsy effort to unite the party actually makes a split more likely.
It was also terribly timed. Republicans finally are winning something — the battle of the sequester, and thus showing the fallacy of the idea that all federal spending is sacred. But instead of stories about Obama canceling White House tours while wasting millions on golf trips and giveaways, the MSNBC crowd now has a new talking point: Republicans admit they’re awful people!
Other facts are worth remembering. There are 30 Republican governors and 25 of them enjoy Republican majorities in both houses of their legislatures. About 53 percent of the nation’s population lives in those states, against the 37 percent who live in the 15 states completely controlled by Democrats.
But by far the biggest problem for Republicans is Obama’s rock-star appeal — he gathered nearly 136 million votes in his two races. By comparison, George W. Bush got 112 million and Bill Clinton only 92 million in their two victories.
I don’t believe even Bill Clinton could have won last year running on Obama’s sorry first-term record. But Obama can’t run a third time, and three consecutive terms by the same party is unusual.
So a strong GOP candidate in 2016 with a modicum of charisma — which would be more than either Romney or John McCain had — would start the race with a reasonable shot.
The first task, though, is to find party leaders who don’t insult their customers and talk down their brand. If there is to be a GOP comeback, it will have to start there.
A lesson for you, nanny Mike
Attention, Mayor Bloomberg: Your Department of Education needs a swift kick.
The mayor is busy, busy, with health issues. Denied his ban on large sugary drinks, he’s pushing another anti-smoking diktat with an explanation that is all heart and no head.
“Even one new smoker is one too many — especially when it’s a young person,” he said about legislation to force stores to hide their cigarettes and set a minimum per-pack price of $10.50.
Justifying government action with the idea of the impact on one person is an example of what author Jonah Goldberg called “The Tyranny of Clichés.” His book recounts many such insipid slogans, such as “violence never solved anything,” when, of course, it did — like winning World War II.
Meanwhile, some of Bloomy’s educrats can’t find even one bad teacher. When The Wall Street Journal discovered that 142 schools, or 11 percent of the total, didn’t flunk a single teacher in eight years, officials responded with a lame excuse: That just proves the evaluation system must be changed.
“Principals have basically learned over time that the . . . system is not an effective system,” a deputy chancellor, David Weiner, told the Journal.
That’s a cop-out. The battle to get a new evaluation deal is no excuse for not using the system that exists — one the mayor approved in union contracts. And with some of the 142 schools mediocre at best, any evaluation system is better than none, as the other 1,127 schools are showing.
To motivate the do-nothing principals, Bloomberg might say that getting rid of even one bad teacher is reason enough for them to do their damned jobs.
Oh, that’s why he’s a Nutter
Remember how the election of Barack Obama would usher in a postracial world? Mayor Michael Nutter of Philadelphia certainly doesn’t.
After Philadelphia magazine published “Being White in Philly,” a white man’s unflattering view of race relations, Nutter demanded the city’s Human Rights Commission rebuke the magazine and the author for his “prejudices.”
The Democrat called the article “potentially inflammatory” and urged the commission to evaluate whether it is “the reckless equivalent” of “shouting ‘fire!’ in a crowded theater” and could provoke “extreme reaction.”
It already has. Nutter’s reaction is the definition of “extreme.”
Hey, we have liquid bacon!
After 13,000 dead pigs were pulled from a river that supplies much of Shanghai’s drinking water, officials told residents not to worry — the river meets Chinese standards for clean water.
One cheeky blogger responded with a positive spin, writing: “We can enjoy pork soup simply by turning on our faucets!!”
What the Hill?
Catching up to her party’s base, Hillary Rodham Clinton finally has come out for gay marriage. But, as she said about the four dead Americans in Benghazi, “What difference, at this point, does it make?”