The Republican Party needs a clearer message if it’s going to survive the 2016 elections.
Although the recent midterm elections may seem like a landslide victory for the Republican Party, the Democratic Party now stands to gain the most in 2016. The unpredictable voting public has once again shown its willingness to scuttle from one political ship and board another, but most would agree that the stakes are much higher in the 2016 elections, and the Republican Party cannot continue to weather its blunders of the past two years. At least, it can’t if it wants to maintain its majority position in Congress (and possible return to the White House).
Democrats are often described as wild-eyed idealists, but the Republican Party suffers more from this diagnosis. The Republican Party has shunned practical, hands-on grassroots politicking as it squabbles about how to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, manage super-PAC money in politics (something that both parties benefit tremendously from), resist pushes for gun control and handle the budget deficit and national debt. The problem with idealistic positions is that they are entirely open to interpretation and hyperbole from one’s political opponents, and they often don’t reflect the changing social tide in the country. A great example of this is same-sex marriage.
A lightning rod for many social conservatives, the party has had to make an uneasy truce with rapidly expanding gay rights. For many social conservatives, this may be seen as a loss, but there’s a big issue the Republican Party consistently misses: A party that truly values “small government” would be entirely in favor of expanding the rights of the populace. Even if gay marriage is a mistake, it surely isn’t consistent for small government politicians to regulate such an intimate detail of a person’s life. And most self-proclaimed Conservatives would wholeheartedly champion this tide of change in the Republican Party. Pierre Trudeau, a great Canadian politician, once remarked, “There’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.”
It would be easy for the Republican Party to claim gay marriage as a victory—that not worrying about gay spouses is one small step toward reining in government largesse. And, it would give many millennials pause to look again at the Republican Party; a party that, for many, is a stodgy harbinger of a socially awkward time they thankfully didn’t have to live through.
Change comes slowly. As much as I’d love to see a reinvented, “two point oh” version Republican Party on the ballot in 2016, I fear that this election will again entail picking between the lesser of two evils. I fear that both parties will talk in broad “motherhood statements,” proclamations about “what Americans want,” and that confirmation bias among voters will create a storm of support and derision for the various parties.
If there’s one clear thing that the 2014 midterm elections revealed, it’s that the American public is ready for a new way of doing business. And the Republican Party could sweep the polls in 2016, if it could only get out of its own way.
