Should the GOP Go Away?

The GOP has received a majority of the popular vote in a national election just once since 1988.

Barack Obama won re-election convincingly by campaigning on higher taxes, more spending, and a bigger Welfare Entitlement State.

It’s clear that’s what America wants, at least for now.

And with changing demographics, it looks like America will continue its current slide toward European-style Socialism, or worse.

Also, the gender gap is widening dramatically.  Mitt Romney got just 41 percent of the female vote. Ouch!

More women than men vote in elections, so that pretty well spells doom for the GOP, if this continues.

The Democrat Presidential candidate is now getting 93-95 percent of the black vote, 73 percent of the Hispanic vote, and 72 percent of the Asian vote.

Whites are voting GOP, but whites are a shrinking share of the electorate — soon won’t even be half the electorate.

88 percent of Romney’s voters were white.  So not much room for growth there.

The GOP has become the party of white males.

That’s not a formula for political success.

The question is: Can we prevent America from becoming Greece, or worse?

Can America be saved at all?

Can capitalism and the spirit of enterprise ever again be revived in America?

I would argue yes, but not by the Republican Party.

The GOP brand is dead. It can’t be fixed with minority voters and most women.

But economic conditions in America will likely have to get a whole lot worse before we can see a rebirth of capitalism and the American spirit of enterprise, or even a rebirth of a desire for freedom.

This brings me to my big point. . ..

Perhaps we are making a mistake by fighting Obama and the Democrats.

Perhaps we should just let them do whatever they want to do . . . and really see how their ideas work out.

Perhaps the Republican Party should pull a John Galt and just quit, go away.

It’s not as if the GOP in Congress is putting up much resistance anyway.

It’s the “frog in boiling water” argument.

If you put a frog in tepid water and turn up the heat slowly, the frog will just sit there, not notice the rising heat, and eventually cook to death.

That’s what’s happening to America now. We’re inching toward Socialism a few degrees at a time, but Americans aren’t really noticing what’s happening.

But if you throw the frog in hot water, he’ll notice he’s in big trouble and jump out.

If we allow Obama and the Democrats to just do whatever it is they want to do, one of two things will likely happen:

POSSIBILITY #1: America will go full-blown Socialism. Americans will experience the boiling water, and want to jump out of that pot  . . . or not. But at least we’ll know the answer one way or the other, quickly.

I suspect that once Americans really experience full-blown Socialism, they’ll want out.

This has happened throughout the Communist world.

Communist China is now more capitalist than we are.  As a result,  China’s GDP is growing at a 10 percent rate every year, compared to America’s pathetic two percent per year.

Even hardcore Communist Cuba is slashing its public sector work force and trying to spur private sector growth. Private sector jobs in Cuba have doubled during the past two years.

Fidel Castro has been complaining in his speeches that Cuba has become a place where too many people live off the dole. I especially love this statement issued by the Cuban government with its announcement that it was cutting its government work force as a way to push people into the private sector:

Our state cannot and should not continue maintaining companies, productive entities, services and budgeted sectors with bloated payrolls (and) losses that hurt the economy, are counterproductive, and form bad work habits.”

Sounds like something Milton Friedman would say.  So even Fidel Castro can learn from failure.

But while the Communist world is trying to revive the “Goose that Lays the Golden Eggs” (Capitalism), America is moving in the opposite direction, toward Socialism.

So it’s quite possible Americans will need to find out what Socialism is really like before they reject it, like what’s happening in Cuba.

Or . . . POSSIBILITY #2: The Democrats will have to become a responsible governing party.

My guess is POSSIBILITY #2 is the more likely scenario of what would occur if the GOP just quit and went away — John Galt-style.

The Democrats would be forced by economic and fiscal reality to become a responsible party — instead of just the party that says “no” to everything the GOP proposes.

It’s the “Nixon goes to China” argument.

George McGovern, if he had been President instead of Nixon , could not have undertaken the diplomatic opening with Maoist China. It would have been seen as appeasement, or even as taking America down the road toward Communism.

It required the anti-Communist Richard Nixon to hold out a olive branch to China, to even create a quasi-alliance with China against the Soviet Union — thus helping to accelerate China’s split with the Soviet Union that contributed ultimately to the collapse of the Soviet Empire.

Something like this is needed if we’re to have any hope of bringing any kind of fiscal sanity to the welfare and Entitlement State.

Democrats will have to be the ones to tame the Entitlement State.

Democrats will have to be the ones who raise the retirement age to 70 for receiving Social Security and Medicare, and then indexing the retirement age to life expectancy.

Everyone seems to know and think that’s needed. But it won’t happen if Republicans propose it.

The Democrats have, very effectively, made a living scaring seniors about Republicans wanting to cut their Social Security and Medicare benefits.

Republicans then respond by increasing spending even more than what the Democrats are proposing, to show how compassionate we are (i.e. George W. Bush who added an enormous new entitlement with Medicare Part D).

So let’s make the out-of-control entitlements and $16.4 TRILLION national debt the Democrats’ problem to deal with.

The GOP brand is ruined anyway. I don’t think the GOP brand can be fixed with minorities.

How can today’s GOP move from getting 5 percent of the black vote to something closer to 40 percent?

ANSWER: It can’t.

The same is true with Hispanics.

How does the GOP move from getting 27 percent of the Hispanic vote to 40 percent?

ANSWER: Very difficult, probably impossible.

The GOP can’t even win the Asian vote — the most industrious conservative pro-family,  pro-free enterprise voting bloc in America.

If anyone should be voting GOP, it should be Asians. But Romney was only able to get 28 percent of the Asian vote.

As someone who makes his living as a marketing consultant, I know how difficult it is to change a brand.

Actually, it’s impossible. It’s one of those iron laws of marketing.

A brand is the image people have in their minds of a product or company.

Coca-Cola makes many different drinks and products. But there is only one drink you think of when you think of Coca-Cola.

And even if you could somehow change the brand of the GOP as the white male party, it would still be very difficult to change people’s voting (buying) habits — anther iron law of marketing.

I’ve used Crest tooth paste all my life.  I’m sure there are many other good tooth pastes out there.  But I’m used to Crest.  I’d have to be given a very good reason to change tooth pastes.

So it will be very difficult (almost impossible) to change the brand of the GOP (as the white male party) and people’s voting habits.

That’s a project that would take at least 20 or 30 years, if it can be done at all.

Are voters rejecting the message or the messenger?

I suspect it’s more the messenger — the GOP.

But I’m really not sure.

It’s certainly possible  Americans no longer value freedom, the Constitution, opportunity, or the old American Dream.

It’s quite possible Americans just want to be taken care of by an enormous Nanny State — really don’t want opportunity at all, instead want to be told what to do by government bureaucrats and love the ominpresent surveilance state.

It’s possible that Americans don’t care if they saddle their children and grandchildren with trillions of dollars of debt  that can never be paid off.  It’s possible what Americans really want is economic collapse.

It’s quite possible that what Americans really want is to be more like France, Spain, or Greece (where the unemployment rate is 26 percent).

The GOP needs to go away so we can find out if that’s the future America really wants.

Instead, what we might need are two Democrat parties — responsible JFK-style Democrats (we can come up with a name for this new party) vs the Obama-style full-blown Socialists.

My father (a former Nixon and Reagan speechwriter and senior editor for William F. Buckley, Jr’s NATIONAL REVIEW magazine) voted for JFK in 1960 over Nixon because he thought JFK was more hardline anti-Communist and conservative than Nixon.

It’s possible conservatives are making a strategic mistake trying to take over the Republican Party — which minorities see as the
party of Thurston Howell, III.

Perhaps we should instead try to take over the Democratic Party — split the Democratic Party, create two Democratic Parties — a sane Democratic Party vs the insane San Francisco Democrats..

This might be easier than starting a new political party – perhaps called the Declaration of Independence Party.

That document does a great job of describing what we stand for. All the arguments we were making against the British government in 1776 pretty well apply to our federal government today.

Come to think of it . . .

There’s nothing in the Constitution that requires two major political parties — or political parties at all.

Why not just have one big primary in each state and then a run-off election between the top two vote getters?

This is how Louisiana conducts its elections.

There’s a lot to be said for not having official political parties, with favored treatment in the law.

Of course, we must face the possibility that America really is over and the spirit of capitalism and free-enterprise that made America the most prosperous nation in history will never return.

If so, let’s find out now rather than later.

We can call that POSSIBILITY #3.

Under all these scenarios and possibilities, one thing appears to be clear.

The GOP should disband and disappear — go the way of the Whigs. Then let’s see what happens.

Because, whatever the answer is, it’s clear the GOP is not it.