GOP Desperation

Frank Luntz said the Democrats were in trouble when they became known as the angry party. They were way too serious, ran dour campaigns on gloom and doom platforms, and just never, ever smiled. The media still doesn’t get that likeability is a huge issue in any election – people won’t vote for someone they don’t like or who talks down to them, and that probably explains why Huckabee is starting to make inroads. He’s the only Republican candidate that seems like a legitimately nice guy.

But how times have changed! The GOP is now the party of hate. They hate immigrants. They hate homosexuals. They hate Mormons. They hate the poor. They hate the environment. In short, they seem to hate everyone who thinks differently from them. The one thing they all seem to like is war, whether it’s in Iraq or against Iran or elsewhere. No wonder the GOP electorate is undecided and the leading candidates are having trouble breaking away from the pact.

I’m not a Republican but watching this has been like watching a has-been athlete trying to make an ill-advised comeback. For years the GOP has been so good on messaging and communicating with voters. When you can get George W. Bush elected president twice and a Republican Congress in power for 12 years, you don’t have a superior product as much as you have good messaging. And it’s amazing how fast it has all come to an end.

I never thought I would see Rudy Giuliani, a man who I greatly respected and admired this time last year shaking hands with Pat Robertson, a virulent demagogue who said America deserved what it got on 9/11 because of its support of homosexuality and abortion. I knew three people who were murdered that day, and for Giuliani to shake hands with someone like that destroyed any credibility he once had with me. It doesn’t matter if he did it to pander to evangelicals who have assumed control of the GOP base. Anyone with integrity who lived through that day like Giuliani did would never stoop so low. That was beyond the realm of decency and a deal breaker for me.

And did you catch Mitt Romney’s appearance on Today this morning? While I watched it, all I could think of was the following: Romney ran Bain Capital for years. Then he ran for Senate in 1994, guided the 2002 Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, successfully ran for governor in Massachusetts in 2002 and stayed for one term. Not once in that entire time was his religion a problem. Nobody brought it up his entire tenure – not one Democratic opponent. But once he moved onto the larger GOP stage it suddenly became an issue, and he is increasingly forced to defend his religious beliefs right here in America. He’s not being attacked on his politics or the issues. And yesterday a poll reported that 33% of Republican voters said most people would not vote for a Mormon candidate. What do you think that figure would be among Democratic or Independent voters?

Karl Rove originally tapped evangelical Christians because they would deliver a solid voting block. But somehow over the last two years the nonstop spending, a mismanaged war and an unpopular president have erased the GOP’s traditional voting base. A new batch of candidates all trying to out-hate the others and run on a gloom and doom platform isn’t driving in new voters or doing Frank Luntz any favors. And the new base now appears to be rejecting one of its leading candidates on religious grounds and making another sell his soul in a shameless display of pandering that independent voters will see right through. The GOP had a nice run, but it has now reaped what it has sown.