RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, who is predicting a Republican “tsunami” in the midterms, took to CNN.com to spread the gospel of Reince, explaining to readers Why the RNC built a year-round ground game. The link to his op-ed is a bit misleading, saying, Priebus: How GOP is changing.” But the GOP is not changing, of course. This is the GOP after all. It’s getting more tech savvy, but that’s not really the same thing, is it?
Priebus writes that “the Republican National Committee committed to building a permanent, year-round ground game.” The RNC’s “ground game” is clearly influenced by the Democratic Party’s own efforts to connect with an mobilize voters.
What this entails is less about developing a Republican message that is in tune with voters, let alone the 21st century, and more about making cyanide look like a tasty snack. It is, as it always is with the GOP, about packaging a medieval platform so that it looks better. All change is cosmetic where this dinosaur of a party is concerned, but they don’t seem to understand that all the perfume in the world isn’t going to make the 13th century smell good.
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To better present this decrepit message, the RNC began building their “permanent, year-round ground game” and “began locating and hiring field staff all across the country,” arming them with “the full support of the RNC” and its resources, which include a “multimillion-dollar investment in technology.” They’re even using “predictive analytics” to revolutionize “how our campaigns understand what matters to each individual voter.”
I guess the idea must be to snag a few more of those angry old white men they might have missed because it’s obvious from their rhetoric they don’t care what anybody else thinks. And let’s face it: they are going to need every vote they can get. They can only suppress so much of the vote before the courts and the attorney general’s office catch up with them.
But Priebus wants you to think the GOP is actually reaching outside of its ever-shrinking tent to engage people who are not old and white and fanatically devoted to theocracy:
It’s the story of our field staffers across the country — state directors, data directors, and Hispanic, black, and Asian-American engagement staffers. The RNC has also hired staff dedicated to engaging better with women, youth, people of faith and conservative allies and groups. We have hundreds of staff fanned out, especially in critical midterm states, supporting our candidates and growing our party. Today, 91% of our political staff is in the field.
Yeah, good luck with engaging women while you’re telling them they don’t deserve equal pay or sick leave and that, as Ralph Reed said on Morning Joe just the other morning, it’s far too easy for women to get a divorce these days and making divorce more difficult is a “better solution” than food stamps.
I suspect he will have far more luck with his outreach to “faith and conservative” allies who are already on board with the war on women. Republican outreach to everyone who isn’t one of those angry white males is always so awkward: You know, sort of like Tom Tancredo thinking he can get Latino votes in Colorado while working against Latinos by blocking immigration reform. That kind of outreach.
If Priebus wants to make a difference, he should spend some of his budget on information the GOP about what voters really want, because, increasingly, voters don’t want the GOP. The country is experiencing a shift to the left while the right remains in denial, not even trying to maintain the status quo but actually crawling backward, further into the past, when Joe McCarthy was right.
I really don’t think fancy technology is going to dress up a medieval message and sell it to a 21st century audience. Disappointed in Obama or not, millennials aren’t going to buy this. Priebus says the RNC is starting an ad campaign in 14 Senate target seats this week, “answering the question, ‘Why should I be a Republican?’ People have told us that we need to better communicate what it is Republicans stand for.”
You mean you have to lie better about what it is Republicans stand for, don’t you, Reince?
Priebus says,
As for me, I’m a Republican because I believe all Americans, regardless of where they come from, regardless of where they’re going, should have the chance to create their own American Dreams.
Except for all those Latinos people like Tom Tancredo want to send back to their places of origin, or the women you refuse to pay equally or the gays you refuse to hire or the Muslims you disparage as terrorists, or all those people to whom you refuse to pay a living wage, or the children you won’t feed or educate, or the unemployed to whom you will not pay unemployment benefits. You get the idea.
But Priebus assures readers that, “We’re going to keep working to earn every voter’s trust, and we’re going keep fighting to earn every American’s vote. We’re guided by the principle that no voter should be taken for granted; no voter should be overlooked.”
Except all those liberal voters you are trying so diligently to disenfranchise in Red States, and all those votes for Democratic candidates.
As Rep. Mark Pocan, a Democrat representing Wisconsin’s second congressional district, wrote in a CNN op-ed last year, it took no time at all for Republicans to begin voter suppression efforts after the Supreme Court struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act. Wrote Pocan, “According to the Brennan Center for Justice, already in 2013 more than 30 states, including my home state of Wisconsin, have introduced more than 80 bills that would restrict the right to vote. These bills would do everything from requiring photo identification at the polls, to limiting early voting opportunities, to creating burdensome registration requirements.” We’ve seen voter suppression from Ohio to North Carolina.
What was that you said again, Mr. Priebus? “We’re guided by the principle that no voter should be taken for granted; no voter should be overlooked”?
Here, in a nutshell, is what all Republican efforts come down to: they want to sell you a cr*p sandwich, and they want to make you believe it’s steak. And for some reason, they think if they dress up in a suit and a tie and smile while they lie, that you won’t notice that it’s a lie. But it’s a lie, and that’s all Priebus’ efforts in this CNN op-ed were about: selling a lie.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
