https://theringer.com/the-republican-mandate-on-election-day-diversify-or-die-90c8fdfe2cc3#.m6soew5qfThe Republican Mandate on Election Day: Diversify or DieTim Miller
10/31/2016
On one side, there’s Donald Trump’s flaming circus. On the other, there are politicians trying to evolve the party. Who will win out in November?
Next week when voters in Miami go to the polls, there will be two different Republican Parties on the ballot.
At the top of the slate will be Donald Trump, who’s running on a platform of sympathizing with white grievance, instigating mass deportation, shrinking America’s role in the world, closing borders and reducing trade, ignoring climate change, and warming the cockles of anyone inclined to believe a conspiracy about the global elites.
A few lines down the ballot will be Carlos Curbelo, a 36-year-old Cuban American running for a second term in Congress. Curbelo envisions a Republican Party as diverse as the country and his district, which runs from Key West through Miami-Dade County and Everglades National Park. Curbelo argues for America to continue its role as the world’s most indispensable nation. He values a country that is welcoming to immigrants and oppressed people throughout the world. He supports free trade and has actively campaigned on the need to address the effects of climate change that South Florida residents are seeing up close. In a recent interview, Curbelo cited his grandmother’s wisdom, “Los extremos son malos” — the extremes are bad. In July, he sponsored the DREAM Act that would allow those brought into America illegally as children to become citizens. In filing the bill, he said:
“There are many young immigrants in our country who came involuntarily with their families as minors. They have grown up with our own kids and attended American schools … These are undoubtedly America’s children.”
A far cry from “rapists and murderers.” In fact, if an alien unfamiliar with U.S. politics listened to back-to-back speeches by Trump and Curbelo, you’d be hard-pressed to convince it these two men come from the same universe, forget the same political party.
So the question that will face us Republicans after the election is clear. Which path should we choose, Curbelo’s or Trump’s?
A two-party system will always face internal factions and disputes, and we Republicans have long had our own internal push and pull between conservative elites and a populist “new right.” Matthew Continetti recently wrote a historical tour-de-force charting the history of the populist uprising within the party that highlights the roots of this tension.
But as intense as some of these past intra-party fights have been, there has never been a divide as stark as the one there is today about the direction of the Republican Party. In 2012, I was part of the team that wrote the RNC Growth & Opportunity Project — you might be more familiar with the liberal media’s preferred title: the GOP Autopsy. The report’s recommendations were so obvious they bordered on uninteresting. Upgrade the party’s data and digital operations, invest more in diverse communities, and offer a message that appeals to those communities.
The primary suggestion under messaging was fix the Republicans’ “don’t care” problem and recognize that America looks different than it did in 1950. Trump ran a campaign that’s central character trait was insulting others with a motto — “Make America Great Again” — that essentially called for a return to 1950.
In the area of grassroots organizing, we recommended more full-time GOP offices in minority communities, and, to the RNC’s credit, they followed up on that and made strides in an area we Republicans once mocked — “community organizing.” But organizing doesn’t work if the guy at the top of the ticket is rhetorically spitting at those you are trying to recruit.
I have to imagine that a statistician or a management consultant would look at the #twopaths forward for the party and not really understand why there is debate. The object is simple: get a majority share of the market. Curbelo’s path appeals to the growing part of the pie (nonwhite voters, young voters), while Trump’s path is maximizing market share in the shrinking part (white, older voters). No abacus needed.
But as we have seen, Donald Trump looked at the growth route and rejected it, deciding to use the GOP Autopsy as Trump Tower toilet paper. And he has prevailed. So any assessment of the path forward following his inevitable defeat next week has to take into account the factors that led to that success.
But those who are in the shrinking part of the pie — older, culturally conservative white voters who are more likely to respond to a nativist message — have a stranglehold on key parts of the party infrastructure. First, the presidential primary process is made up largely of these voters. The people who vote in the GOP Iowa Caucuses, for example, are overwhelmingly the same demographic year after year. There is always talk of which candidate can bring in new voters, but caucusing is habitual; and the only person in either party who has brought new voters to caucus with success was a uniquely suited candidate — President Obama in 2008.
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