Republicans in the United States just damaged their chances of winning elections in 2014, while trying to increase their chances. That is what is wrong with the Republican Party: A total failure to properly diagnose or understand the Party’s circumstances cripples it. What Ronald Reagan saw so clearly, Republican insiders cannot grasp.
Here’s the problem: Campaigns are not won on election day. They are won during the entire year leading up to election day, by the mostly-conservative grassroots activists who help raise money, organize, pound yard signs along the highway, make phone calls, set up meet-and-greets and coffees, and other events.
Candidates do not win or lose elections. Republican insiders do not win or lose elections. Campaign consultants do not win or lose elections. Thousands of unpaid volunteers win the campaign for the candidate, especially on the Republican side. Those volunteers vote with their feet and decide anew each and every Saturday morning whether to stay home or get out there and campaign for the candidate. Every unpaid volunteer faces the temptation to just stay home instead of leaving the house and getting in the car.
With the sequester broken, there is no enforceable restraint on deficit spending in future years. Spending will increase $45 billion higher in 2014 and $63 billion over the next two years. But most of all, the restraint against future spending increases is gone. Republicans will not be able to re-impose the deficit reduction discipline hard-won in the 2011 Budget Control Act sequester. The sequester required enormous work and political capital.
So if the Republicans win next year we will fly off the cliff at 80 miles per hour. If the Democrats win we will fly off the cliff at 100 miles per hour. Neither party is willing to avoid driving off the cliff. GOP leaders have destroyed any motivation for unpaid campaign volunteers to get up on Saturday morning and do unpaid work for Republicans who lied to them. Worst of all, anything Republicans say to try to fix the situation will be viewed with skepticism
Conventional wisdom endlessly repeats that there is a clash between fiscal conservatives and social conservatives. Wrong. In fact, the GOP’s problems come from fiscal conservatives who spend money like drunken sailors and constantly grow the government. Social issues are not the problem. The problem is that GOP fiscal conservatives vote like fiscal liberals.
What keeps the Republican Party in the minority is the widespread perception that “there’s not a dimes’ worth of difference between the Republicans and the Democrats.” That gives people the excuse to do nothing, which they were already inclined to anyway.
There is already a natural tendency toward apathy. Let’s see: A typical voter could (a) go fishing with his daughter, or (b) spend Saturday knocking on doors for a Republican candidate who lies to him and breaks his campaign promises and who will insult his conservative beliefs if elected. Tough decision. Spending time with your family suddenly sounds like a better choice than making phone calls, pounding yard signs beside the road, knocking on doors, or helping organize campaign events.
The sole purpose of the Republican Party is to serve as an ineffective alternative to the Democrat Party.
Please get some new material.........