The GOP Lacks A Leader and a Plan - Must Haves for Winning

Dear readers, I can sympathize with you if you are all at sea over what's going on in the Republican Party and how the outcome will affect the future of America. Depending on who's talking into the TV camera, we can hear - that the House GOP majority was abandoned by the GOP Senate minority, that the entire GOP rolled over and played dead instead of standing and fighting during the shutdown/debt ceiling crisis, or that those who chose to stand and fight President Obama and Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid were on a fool's errand doomed to fail. Most Republicans, Democrats and the supposedly objective media blame the tea party, for good or bad, for standing and fighting and thereby damaging the GOP "brand" forever. Of course, the same thing was said in 1964 after the Goldwater presidential debacle, but 16 years later, Republican Ronald Reagan was elected President by a landslide. So, what is going on today in the GOP? First, everyone agrees that the Republican Party is leaderless. This is really not surprising for a party that just lost two presidential elections. Consider the Democrats from 2000 to 2008. Leaderless, except on those few occasions when Bill Clinton tried to offer advice in his public speeches. But what is puzzling about this GOP "leaderless-ness" is that it seems to include the Republican National Committee and its chairman Reince Preibus, who could at least try to forge a consensus by offering GOP congressional leaders opportunities for private discussions that would keep the most unpleasant name-calling incidents out of the public eye. At best, Preibus should abandon his often-stated position that he will not meddle in GOP "tactics" - one of the most naive comments I have ever heard an RNC chairman utter - preferring to let the GOP congressional delegation be responsible for tactics. Wrong, Mr. Preibus. In the absence of a consensus party leader, you are it. You should insist on helping House Speaker Boehner and Senate Minority leader McConnell make order and keep all Republican members of Congress on the same page of the GOP hymnbook. You are, after all, the sole national GOP figure who has a continuing non-personal-election-related presence in all 50 states. And, the Republican Governors Conference that represents 2/3 of all American states should use its chairman and bully pulpit to hammer home the GOP position on major national issues - even if this requires governors eyeing the 2016 White House to get in line with a broader non-personal message. Which brings us to the second problem facing the Republican Party. It has no agreed message, no plan. In the 2012 presidential election campaign, the Republican Party used the tactic of attacking Barack Obama's programs without really saying what the GOP would do instead. That should have been a red flag to Party pro's. A party without a plan cannot succeed because it has nothing for voters to identify with. Worse, it allows the Democrat Party to proclaim that their negative take on the GOP is accurate. But, instead of developing the general outline of a plan to lead the GOP toward 2016, individual national Republican figures just keep attacking Obama. The two exceptions are the John McCain-Lindsey Graham effort to present a united front on military and foreign affairs issues, which has resulted in a much more cohesive Republican "plan" to confront Obama on these issues. The other exception is Paul Ryan's decade-long budget plan, which has found traction with most Republicans. The GOP must agree on a "Plan." Without one in place soon, the party will be playing catch-up to a Democrat Party that really has no plan either...but that does have a President, and however much Americans may disagree with and fear Obama's plan, it keeps his Democrat troops in line and marching to his tune. ~~~~~ Tomorrow, dear readers, we'll look at the tea party and its role in either creating or making it impossible to create a GOP Plan.