The results of the 2012 presidential election reveal a need for the Republican Party to reinvent itself. The party’s reputation outside active, registered membership is what caused Romney to lose. Shy of scrapping the primary system for selecting its presidential candidate, the GOP needs to substantially disavow itself of pure social conservatives and hardline traditionalists.
Because election results show the majority of the U.S. views traditional social conservatism as reactionary, the best thing the GOP can do is to disown hardline conservatives and become the “center of center” party. Is it selling out? You bet. Will it save the party from another electoral beat down? Well, it’s more likely to than becoming the Socialist alternative to the Democrats.
If the split between social conservatives and moderates within the Republican Party broadens enough, then disenchanted GOP moderates may switch to the Libertarian Party, which in turn might gain enough traction to grab a few House of Representatives seats. This would pose a greater loss of membership by volume than an exodus of hardliners, as evinced by several avowed Tea Party incumbents losing seats they had won in the 2010 midterm elections.
A strong conservative third party garnering at least 15 percent of the popular vote nationally would be unfortunate for the Republican Party due to splitting the conservative vote; the Democrat presidential and Senate candidates are guaranteed to win in that scenario due to maintaining the liberal vote under one party. This is true even when accounting for liberal alternative parties which collectively tend to garner below 2 percent of votes nationally. Although the Socialist Party used to be strong in Milwaukee and Madison, and the Agrarian Party dominant in rural Minnesota, those days have long been over.
Despite the likelihood the absolute number of true conservatives has remained steady, it seems the liberal demographics have literally out-immigrated and out-reproduced the conservatives, even after accounting for all the Title X birth control used. Perhaps that is what David Axelrod meant when he referred to Obama’s campaign as “from the loins” the day prior to this year’s election. Whatever the context, the electorate has made it clear that a majority of its members distrusts anyone wealthy. All it takes is for a single miscue to go viral and enervate opposition voters in a mixture of rage and self-righteous duty to prevent the holder of “ill-gotten” but entirely legitimate wealth from achieving office.
Although many celebrities, millionaires and a few billionaires are Democrats, the average voter somehow does not view the Democrats as a caucus of wealthy Caucasians despite dominance by that group in Democrat primaries. Perhaps this is due to an emphasis on forcible wealth transfers mandated by government rather than on voluntary transactions between property owners. The taxpayers and the government do the dirty work of systematically providing for the needy, while the celebrities remind the recipients of such gifts that the chances of becoming rich are about the same as the likelihood of becoming a celebrity. Much like the common laborer, a typical celebrity has no business acumen or financial literacy and therefore would not have any lucrative deals without a business manager applying good financial sense and making the actual negotiations.
The GOP may counter the “rich folks’ club” stereotype by positioning lower-income members to be the visible icons of the party, especially for presidential and vice presidential candidates, because it is evident that most of U.S. voters today distrust anyone who’s rich. The distinction between inherited “old wealth” and first-generation “new wealth” doesn’t matter to the typical critic of capital. The common thought is, “If you’re rich, then you must have screwed others over!” Such opponents of wealth view passive income from stock exchanges and loan interest as “not real work” and “not truly earned.”
They view those who hold onto their smartly earned wealth, achieved through the hard work of disciplined investment and financial literacy, as “immoral” and “evil” for not divesting the majority of income to those who did nothing beyond their much lower personal market value to earn that wealth. Those are the people who believe capitalism artificially deflates the value of the common laborer while disregarding the intellectual labor of the financial managers and business leaders who make opportunities for wealth happen.
Essentially, the Republican Party needs to market itself as more competent than the Democratic Party in caring for the financially illiterate who will never do anything better in life than work the fast food counter, mop the floors or screw pipes onto threads all day. Refusing to adequately pander to this lowest common denominator will produce continued national electoral losses.
Joseph Ohler, Jr. ([email protected]) is a 2010 graduate of the public administration program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
