Candidates, not Tactics, Will Save the GOP

Any Republican with enough strength to make his or her way to a TV camera, talk show, news service reporter or computer keyboard has been bewailing...yes, bewailing...the imminent death of the GOP following Barack Obama's presidential victory last November. The first was Newt Gingrich, who in November called on the Party to radically revamp itself or lose relevancy and die. Newt was followed by everyone from Jindal to Trump to Christie. Well, Newt has decided his first warning was insufficient. So, Tuesday he admonished us again, this time slamming - and he is not the only one to do so - former presidential adviser Karl Rove's new super PAC, Conservative Victory Project, saying it is “repugnant” for Rove to use the PAC against conservative Republican candidates he doesn't think are fit to run. “I am unalterably opposed to a bunch of billionaires financing a boss to pick candidates in 50 states,” the former House speaker wrote in an op-ed piece published Tuesday in the weekly conservative newspaper Human Events.“This is the opposite of the Republican tradition of freedom and grassroots, small- town conservatism. No one person is smart enough, nor do they have the moral right, to buy nominations across the country.“ Rove's PAC has been criticized by other conservatives and tea party activists who say he should not determine who runs for office. Rove, however, asks what is the difference between what he's doing and what other groups are doing who have put millions of dollars behind tea party candidates including Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Marco Rubio of Florida. Gingrich's answer? "Our problems are deeper and more complex than candidates....” Tuesday's comments were out in an op-ed piece because Newt wanted to get his criticism down in words “in a very direct, no baloney effort to get across how much trouble we Republicans are in and how real the internal party fight is going to be.” He said he strongly supported Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus’s efforts to learn from the mistakes of 2012. He had strong words for party consultants — particularly Mitt Romney’s senior strategist Stuart Stevens.“These consultants have made an amazing amount of money asserting an expertise they clearly don't have,” Gingrich wrote. “They have existed in a system in which the candidate was supposed to focus on raising money and the smart consultant would design the strategy, spend the money and do the thinking....Republicans need to drop the consultant-centric model and go back to a system in which candidates have to think and consultants are adviser and implementers but understand that the elected official is the one who has to represent the voters and make the key decisions.” Gingrich also said the GOP has failed to grasp technological improvements or adapt to an altered demographic.“ Gingrich even took his criticism to TV, telling “CBS This Morning” that the main reason the GOP lost was because it failed to respond to the changing demographic landscape, noting that Obama's campaign was “eight, maybe 10 years ahead” of the Republican Party in understanding how the American electorate was changing. “You can't just be an opposition party,” he said. “You have to be a party that has a better alternative.” Democrats, Gingrich said, have accepted and adapted to voters who are “in many ways younger, more Latino and more African American than Republican strategists are capable of dealing with." ~~~~~ Let's consider these charges, dear readers. They are undoubtedly correct in a "Campaign Tactics 101" sense, but they are incorrect in two very important ways. First, the criticisms of Gingrich and most others address how to find and talk to voters...usually computer-savvy younger voters. They are all about how to deliver the message and are reminiscent of the period between 1964's catastrophically one-sided victory of Johnson over Goldwater and 1976 when Reagan addressed the GOP convention that nominated Ford. In those 12 years the GOP was demoralized and uncertain that it would survive, despite the election of Nixon, who was a practical politician par excellence. He was also an excellent President until he decided to cover up the stupid mistakes of campaign operatives and dealt an almost fatal body blow to the GOP. But Richard Nixon lacked one thing, the same thing missing in Newt Gingrich's and Karl Rove's approaches. Everyone is incorrect in believing that techniques and tactics can win elections or save the GOP. Ronald Reagan didn't capture the heart and soul of the GOP because he tweeted or understood how to identify and talk to various voter blocks. Reagan won the Party and the nation because he had a message that touched the very core of every American -- it was wrapped in 1980s technology and tactics but...it was the message, Stupid! Instead of wiring up and tweeting out, the Republican Party needs to find the person who understands what Americans and the Republican Party have in common. The Constitution. Patriotism. Free Markets. Small Government. Personal Liberties. And then find the person who not only understands but who can deliver the message simply and with love and conviction in the future of America. There is no computer, social issues strategist, or campaign manager who can beat that. And no Democrat candidate. Not Obama or Hillary or Biden or whoever the Democrats throw at us. No, Newt...the GOP problems are not deeper and more complex than candidates. Candidates are the GOP problem right now...and candidates will be the GOP's salvation.