While it ought to be obvious to anyone sentient why the GOP lost the presidency, lost rather than gained seats in the U. S. Senate, and saw its majority in the House of Representatives shrink, the Republican National Committee is launching an official autopsy on the 2012 election. God forbid that they have a clue that hate, bigotry, racism, pandering to religious extremists, and engaging in a reverse Robin Hood social policy are not the easiest things to sell nowadays in light of the nation's rapidly changing demographics. On the other hand, perhaps an official investigation may cause a few in the GOP outside of the lunatic Christianist/Tea Party base to grasp that the party needs a major overhaul on its positions and that Christofascists and anti-immigrant extremists should not be allowed to draft the party platform. An article in Politico looks at this effort to discover what ought to be obvious. Here are excerpts:
The Republican National Committee is rolling out a plan to review what worked and what didn't for the party in the 2012 cycle, appointing five people at the top of a committee that will make recommendations on things like demographics, messaging and fundraising.
The Growth and Opportunity Project is going to be chaired by RNC committee member Henry Barbour, longtime Jeb Bush adviser and political operative Sally Bradshaw, former George W. Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer, Puerto Rico RNC committee member Zori Fonalledas, and South Carolina RNC member Glenn McCall. Priebus, who is running for a second term, is holding a call with committee members to roll out the plan this afternoon.
The plan is to focus on: campaign mechanics, fundraising, demographics, messaging, outside groups, campaign finance, the national primary process and, last but not least, what the successful Democratic efforts revealed about the way forward, and recommend plans for the way forward, sources familiar with the plan said.
Priebus had told a large group of donors in New York last week that the review would be conducted outside the building and would not be led by RNC staff. But sources familiar with the project said that there are 2 RNC senior staffers, Ben Kay and Sara Armstrong, assigned to the project as support staff, saying the goal between them and the RNC members involved was to have, as one source said, "both inside and outside influence" to bring in a several different points of view. Still, the source insisted that "the GOP has problems but they are solvable.
Still, given the complaints about the party, the composition of the committee includes at least one Priebus ally - Barbour - and others with ties to Bush-world. It includes demographic diversity, but less so ideologically. Officials said the review will include a broad swath of people within the party, including donors and grassroots members, but it remains to be seen how conservative activists react. The main focus of the review is inclusion of new voters for future victories, the sources said.
The RNC isn’t the only group assessing how 2012 went so terribly wrong. The high command of American Crossroads, the most powerful of the GOP SuperPACs, met last week in Washington, Republican sources tell POLITICO. Heavyweight advisers Haley Barbour, Ed Gillespie and Karl Rove were all in town for the meeting, which featured a discussion of the campaign and the first extensive conversation about how the group should approach the 2014 mid-terms.
Yet even as they attempt to learn from what happened, Crossroads also is preparing to make clear to their donors that they weren’t blind to the difficulties of Romney’s winning the presidency. One of the internal memos prepared for the meeting detailed on a state-by-state basis the group’s final polling in each state and the actual results. Their surveys were closer to the outcome than Romney’s internal data.
Messaging isn't the GOP's problem. The problem is horrific policies and pandering to religious zealots and white supremacists and robbing the poor and middle class to give tax breaks to the wealthy.
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