As we’ve been hearing, prominent Republican strategists are increasingly acknowledging that demographics are against them, and the GOP is too easily typecast as the party of–to quote Doonesbury–“angry, straight, white, well-armed, evangelical men.”
Well, instead of a thwart-Obama-at-all-costs or a Marco Rubio-as-savior strategy, why not this for a plan to broaden appeal? Why not take all that “American Exceptionalism” and “America First” rhetoric and make it mean something beyond bumper-sticker ideology? Why not truly take one for the country, forsake faux patriotism and selective Founding Father fodder in favor of actually playing the populist–not the panderer? Moreover, it could still be self-serving–but, more importantly, in the ironic context of enlightened self interest.
First, officially call off the canonization of Grover Norquist and the demonization of Barack Obama. Let John Boehner come out of the closet as the near-extinct-species, moderate GOPster that he used to be. Then act like authentically patriotic “country-firsters”–as well as politically savvy players in a minority party that was soundly defeated in last month’s election. The GOP, as you’re surmising, is no longer Tea Party ascendant.
Then think: deficit negotiations and gun control. There’s still time to get on the right sides. Too many voters now see “principled” stands for the disingenuous grandstands that they have been.
First–as in yesterday–there’s the regrettably labeled “fiscal cliff” that precipices-off the lion’s share of the electorate, as well as the business community and international markets. Pre-empt it by acknowledging that any equitable solution should, indeed, include higher taxes on the affluent. And drop the income qualifier down to, say, at least half a million dollars. And accept the rates of the Clinton era, which still has feel-good, balanced-budget resonance. That won’t bother most of the folks who don’t qualify for higher rates, which is just about everybody in the country!
And for good measure talk up addressing the entitlements side of the equation via means testing. It’s inevitable–as well as equitable–anyhow. Acknowledge and cheerlead for “fairness”–the principle that truly matters–only this time mean it.
Weapons In Context
Next, get in sync with the majority of Americans who understandably think that military-style assault weapons only belong in a, well, military context. And that there are no reasonable rationales for ordinary citizens to have access to high-capacity magazines. It’s the weapon parlay from hell and obviously at odds with any meaningful definition of the common good.
This has nothing to do with “Live Free or Die”–more like “Have Gun, Will Unravel.”
Don’t look at this as anything but a common-cause concession to common sense. Then make it clear that the National Rifle Association is no longer a GOP puppet master, let alone an entity to be treated as a de facto branch of government. “Gun control” can no longer be allowed to remain a “third rail” issue in contemporary American politics. People will die unnecessarily because of gun politics as usual.
Then concede that anybody claiming to channel a Second Amendment-ratifying Founding Father is a posturing, presumptuous panderer to the reactionary right and has no place in a GOP with makeover in mind. Then admit what it is in Article II that precedes “… the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed” as it was passed by Congress in 1789 and ratified by three-fourths of the states on Dec. 15, 1791. It is: “A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State …”
Context always matters. Now more than ever.
The ratifiers, quite arguably, were about militias, muskets and a post-Revolutionary, agricultural America–not stand-your-grounders, semi-automatics and violent pop culture-crazed, mental health-challenged, 21st-century society.
Then get ahead of the societal curve–as well as upcoming proposed legislation and the president’s Inauguration and State of the Union bully pulpits–on improving access to mental health treatment. And don’t back down from those who do with the First Amendment what you’ve long done with the Second. They’ve perverted it. There should be no safe, so to speak, haven for gratuitous, numbing violence and its glorification–in theaters, arcades and homes.
Anyone think that social recluse Adam Lanza wasn’t impacted by those countless hours in front of a basement screen anonymously playing violent video games with people he did not know?
GOP, there’s much more than the viability of your party hanging in the balance at this juncture. There’s the future of America. Its economic health and its societal soul.
You want to get rid of that 47 percent albatross? That greed-head label that disdains the have-nots? That image of mass killings as the price of freedom?
Prove it.