GOP’s Hope and Change Campaign

The political party that closely aligns with conservatism, the Republican Party (Grand Old Party [GOP]) is currently trying to revamp their public image and perception of their party. They even made a report about it after a study was conducted.

Largely, I think this ultimately boils down to a public relations (PR) campaign move to make the party seem like they’re changing, but not proposing anything really new. Alternatively, they might work on a grassroots level to convince people that they’re the best party for their vote, then they’ll go ahead and run the country the way they have been since the neoconservative movement took over in 2001. By then, votes won’t matter because people will be in long enough to change the course of the country.

That fear comes from what the party is currently doing. They just released a “blistering” report where focus groups were formed and people in those groups basically said they thought of the GOP as a party for rich, xenophobic, racist, sexist, and homophobic old white men who only exist to help out other rich, xenophobic, racist, sexist, and homophobic old white men. This is the image that has been portrayed lately from the party itself and in the media, and was exemplified best by Mitt Romney’s comments on the 47% of voters who didn’t like him. It didn’t help that he was addressing rich, xenophobic, racist, sexist, and homophobic old white men at the time.

This is now the party of warmongering, advancing rape culture that blames the victim and disregards her humanity, not understanding what a woman goes through to arrive at a decision to abort a baby, and a party that pays lip service to God, but has none of the heart that He has for “the least of these.” America rejected their philosophy in 2008 and voted in record numbers for Barack Obama, even though many racist things were lobbed at him as dog whistles to racists who voted for John McCain. The Republican Party didn’t win in 2010, but the Tea Party won. The Tea Party is a fringe group that mistakenly believed they were mainstream America only because Democrats didn’t get out to vote in 2010. Now the Republican Party can’t get anything done on one leg because of the Tea Party, and you can see how it frustrates John Boehner.

This is the party that has two (2!) gay groups in its midst but leaves them out of any outreach, planning, and even makes them have separate tents and functions at the official convention, yet their members are loyal to the GOP cause even though they’re mocked openly at every level of the party. This is the party so overtaken by racists that they can’t imagine working with a black President to give him a “win” at the end of the day and are willing to hold the country back in order to make him look bad. This is the same party that is trying to rig election maps to give themselves a perceived edge in elections. Both of these efforts have failed in the past and did not deliver expected results.

You can’t stop progress.

So, the report stated that the GOP needs to be more socially aware and accepting of anyone who isn’t a heterosexual Christian white man, and be more open to a more flexible approach to taxes and programs and ideas that benefit the middle class more than overwhelmingly helping the rich. I don’t think the party will actually implement anything in the report. They’ll say they’re working on it, but they won’t really work on it.

Even if they work on it, I don’t think it’ll get very far. They have too many people who consider themselves the “base” of the party and unless the GOP is willing to leave those folks behind to make a third party of a vanishing political minority, they won’t get very far trying to pull these people out of the mud and into the future. Additionally, the GOP’s main spokespeople from Capitol Hill, the GOP Conference, and political pundits and bloggers on news shows who have way too much influence and power to not serve in any official capacity for the GOP will stop any real progress from being made due to poisoning people’s ears against anything moderate or liberal that may be a good idea to consider to move the country forward.

So, it’s nice that they made the report, but I don’t think anything will actually get worked on to the point of improving anything, definitely not by 2016. Democrats have years (read: decades) of experience in getting everyone to the table to work together to move the party and country forward. Republicans best response to that has been to throw up minority speakers at conventions to show diversity while the party still blocks Obama and Democrats at every turn and doesn’t move the country forward. Oh, and also blocking gay marriage, immigration reform, and focusing way too much on abortion restrictions instead of economic and job growth.

Report all you’d like, but your leaders prove they don’t listen to Americans for policy. Why would they listen to them now to change the party for the better?

 

Tags: G.O.P. Report, GOP, Politics, Reince Priebus

Category: Barack Obama, Conservatives, Liberals, Politics