The Naive GOP

The GOP is living in some naïve fantasyland if they really believe they can win the 2016 election without making some big changes. Since Romney’s defeat I have not seen one admission from the GOP finding any fault with their platform or strategy – other than to blame Romney as being a flawed candidate. This is wishful thinking.

Romney was a squeaky clean candidate and that is hard to find in this day and age of technology. If the Democrats can paint him as a villain then they can paint any GOP candidate as a villain. Conservatives blame Romney for making some dumb statements such as the “47%” comment. This may be true, but Romney is right about what he said. At least 25% of Americans expect handouts and entitlements and at least another 25% want to give it to them. And there you have the Democrats 50% majority. This welfare and socialistic state of mind and culture has to be changed for Republicans to win another Presidential election. But keep in mind Obama will work hard over the next four years to expand entitlement use and spending to win more Democratic support.

I have heard the GOP say that Democrats will not win minorities by the same margins in 2016 as they did in 2012. Even if Romney garnered the same margins Bush enjoyed with minorities in 2004, he still would have lost the popular vote by around 1 million votes. This may have been enough to put Romney over the top in the Electoral College, but that is highly debatable. And if the current trends hold, minorities will make up 30% of the electorate in 2016 (this is an additional 2 million votes for the Democrats – this will be tough for the GOP to overcome in 2016), up from 28% in 2012. And Hispanic turnout may push this percentage higher if some sort of immigration policy is agreed upon before the next election. This could possibly make more Hispanics eligible to vote in 2016. Still, I hear the same thing from conservatives “We just are not doing a good job of resonating our message to minorities”. Really? I hear this comment or something similar time and time again over the past decade. I think the GOP message has been heard loud and clear – especially on immigration and on entitlements. People care more about money and handouts than they do about family values. After all family values mean nothing when the family struggles to exist.

The GOP is being naïve if they think the several minority candidates within their party will do anything to help garner more minority support in future elections. Nikki Haley, Bobby Jindal, Susana Martinez, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz are all good potential prospects for 2016. They could certainly sway a few minority votes in their direction, but not enough. Democrats are best at demonizing conservative minorities and women since they go against their claim that the GOP is only represented by old white men. We only need to look at the liberal media attacks leveled against Sarah Palin and Allen West and their families to verify this point. Any minority or female GOP candidate for the Presidency will be crucified by progressives far worse than Romney to make sure the minority vote does switch parties. Liberals see these candidates as a serious threat to their growing base and therefore they will be painted as disgraceful traitors to their gender and race.

The GOP is also naïve to think that liberals will let conservatives go further left then them on any political position, especially immigration. Even if the GOP granted amnesty to all illegal aliens in the U.S., the Democrats will go a step further and want to grant them some other handout such as education vouchers. You can rest assure that any move the GOP makes to appease to Hispanics will be countered by Democrats.

The GOP’s only chance is if liberals are forced to moved further right and implement austerity measures when the government can no longer support entitlement spending that has put the nation in 16 trillion dollars of debt. This is why I am okay with going off the fiscal cliff. Yes, this will work against Republicans at first, but in the long run a recession is never good for the Party in power. If the U.S. goes into another recession, it will be a very long and hard recovery since we are still trying to recover from the last recession. Liberal imposed entitlement cuts will force people to find work and maybe then they will decide to go with a conservative candidate.