The 53% Have Spoken

Many years ago, a major political party in this country adopted a platform which:

– Placed severe limits on immigration;

– Restricted political office to native born Americans of English or Scottish lineage;

– Restricted public school teacher positions to protestants;

– Mandated daily Bible readings in public schools;

– And restricted the use of languages other than English.

If my liberal friends think that I’m referring to the current Republican party, they are wrong. I refer to the American Party which was an offshoot of the Native American Party during the mid-1850s. And it is troubling to me is that today’s Republican party is beginning to bear a strong resemblance to this organization which was also known as the “Know Nothing Party.”

With the election over last week and the political autopsies having begun, I’m struck by a common theme being called for by Republican news outlets and talk radio hosts. Rather than recognize that their platform didn’t appeal to the young (39 and younger), or women; or minorities (racial & social), these pundits believe they lost the national election last week because their candidate wasn’t conservative enough to appeal to these groups. You see, to them it wasn’t the message, it was the messenger. They religiously hold to the view that the politics that can get a local congressman elected are the same politics that can get a President elected. And they’re wrong.

When someone runs for a seat in the House of Representatives, they only have to appeal to the voters in that district which is generally less than 700,000 people. The issues that will get 50% plus one of that 700,000 to vote for them are considerably different than the issues that will get 120 million people to vote for them. The current Republican party forced a moderate Republican, Mitt Romney, to run so far to the right in the primaries that he was never able to return to the center – and comparatively speaking, the center is where we elect our Presidents.

Had the former Massachusetts governor run on the record he compiled in Massachusetts as a moderate Republican, he probably would have won in a landslide against a very vulnerable President. But moderation has no place in Republican party politics today. So Romney had to become someone he was not in order to get his party’s nomination and that was most unfortunate. Because without moderation, without the ability or desire to compromise, without the ability to disagree with your opponent without demonizing him, any political party – not just the Republican Party, will find itself marginalized into a minority party like the Green Party or the Libertarian Party (no offense to their membership), and could easily go the way of the Native American Party of the 1850s.

The lesson for the National Republican Party last week was that you can’t always be the “Party of No” and expect the American people to say “Yes” to your ideas at the national level. You can’t tell us to fear our future and expect us to give you the leadership reins when your plan for the future only consists of saying “No!”  You can’t write off 47% of the electorate at the start of the election process because they draw Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment or some other Government assistance because, in your opinion, they are freeloaders; when in fact, they are playing by the rules put in place over the last 77 years by both Republican and Democratic administrations.

As is often quoted, “If you don’t stand for something, you stand for nothing.” The National Republican Party would have known this and how dire the situation was for them, relative to the national acceptance of their political platform before the election, if they had paid attention to the math models done by people like Nate Silver, instead of listening to the fantasy numbers of Karl Rove, Dick Morris and other members of Australian Rupert Murdoch’s “Conservative Entertainment Complex.” Last week’s election results spoke to the National Republican Party, but sadly it appears they are not listening.