A clown car with a new paint job and faster internet is still a clown car

I’m hoping that LOLGOP will forgive me for stealing his User Picture but it just seems so apropos to this piece. I say that because, considering how much money political consultants make giving bad advice to Republican candidates and their leadership, the GOP elephant pleasuring itself sums up their party to a tee right now.

The Associated Press put out a piece recently titled “Republicans: GOP needs to get with the times”. In it, they say Republicans are focusing on three things in the wake of Democrats handing them their asses on November 6th:

Some of the early prescriptions offered by officials and operatives to rebuild after devastating elections: retool the party message to appeal to Latinos, women and working-class people; upgrade antiquated get-out-the-vote systems with the latest technology. Teach candidates how to handle the new media landscape.

Retooling the message, upgrading their GOTV system and learning to use the internets are simply putting a new coat of paint on a clown car. What they fail to realize is that after the paint dries, it’s still a clown car, albeit one with a super nice Facebook page.

Some of them seem to get it. From the same article:

‘‘We need to make sure that we’re not perceived as intolerant,’’ said Ron Kaufman, a veteran Republican strategist who advised Romney’s campaign. ‘‘The bottom line is we were perceived to be intolerant on some issues. And tone-deaf on others.’’

Memo to the RNC: people don’t PERCEIVE you as intolerant. You ARE intolerant. The very things that you say you need to reframe, repackage, and remarket are spelled out in your party platform for all to see. Forced birth policies. Anti-immigrant policies. Anti-woman, anti-minority and anti-LGBT policies. These aren’t perceptions, my friends, these are realities and you have codified them into your platform.

Here’s a great quote that perfectly illustrates this:

“The Republican Party is exactly right on the issues,” said Terry Holt, a veteran GOP strategist with close ties to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. The party mainly needs to nominate candidates who can relate to average Americans better than multimillionaire Mitt Romney did, Holt said.

Exactly right on the issues? Are you kidding me? An Average Joe telling Americans that we need to cut taxes on the super-wealthy and raise taxes on the Middle Class is going to get as much support as Mitt Romney did. He’ll just have less money to use packaging the message than Romney had.

As a Democrat, I couldn’t be happier that the Republicans are so self-unaware. The more they keep doing the same failed things over and over again, the more Democrats keep winning. I could hardly contain my glee when Reince Priebus announced he’s going to run again for RNC Chair and has the votes to do it. I chortle heartily to see Newt Gingrich as the mouthpiece on how the GOP needs to move forward.

More of the same only more so.

However, as an American that wants to see democracy work — where two different approaches vie for support and move our country forward through legitimate dialogue, debate, and compromise that results in improving things — I am saddened. I’ve said it before and I will keep saying it: we NEED a strong and legitimate Republican Party to balance a strong and legitimate Democratic Party. Every time a single party of either stripe has gotten too much power, it has resulted in corruption and a roughshod trampling of competing ideas.

But we don’t have a legitimate Republican Party in America right now. Moderate Republicans don’t stand a chance in the primaries and really have no role to play in the GOP right now. I almost feel sorry for moderate Republican voters; they have no political home. The Republicans have sealed themselves inside an echo chamber so air-tight that all they can see is that they didn’t run their campaign correctly. There’s no awareness of how completely out-of-step they are with most of America.

I don’t want them anywhere near the reins of power until they get it together.

So, in the meantime, I’m happy Democrats are gaining ground and I’m happy to watch the Republicans continue down their errant path toward irrelevancy. From all indications, that’s not going to change any time soon.