After losing the 2012 election, when President Barack Obama was re-elected and Republicans lost seats in Congress, the Republican National Committee took a hard look at itself. “Our Party knows how to appeal to older voters, but we have lost our way with younger ones. We sound increasingly out of touch,” the Growth and Opportunity Project concluded.
It recommended “a more welcoming conservatism” and called for working with Hispanic, black, Asian and gay Americans to show that the party cares about them.
Rather than heed this needed advice, the GOP, through its 2016 platform, is further isolating itself from a changing America. The platform makes the GOP more anti-gay, more Christian-only and hostile to conservation. This is not how the party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan will remain vibrant and relevant.
The platform, adopted Monday at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, contains the usual language about smaller government and lower tax rates. It also calls for less government regulation of business and industry and a reduction of federal land holdings, including the sale of some public lands.
It is also a mishmash of contradictions, especially on social issues. In a section titled “Rebirth of a constitutional government,” the document states: “We denounce bigotry, racism, anti-Semitism, ethnic prejudice, and religious intolerance. Therefore, we oppose discrimination based on race, sex, religion, creed, disability, or national origin and support statutes to end such discrimination.” Two pages later, however, the platform excoriates the Supreme Court for its rulings that same-sex couples have the same right to marriage as heterosexual couples. It obliquely criticizes the federal government for its recent efforts to protect the rights of transgender students.
Efforts by moderate delegates to include language to ensure gays and lesbians feel welcome in the party were rebuffed. The party, through its platform, pledges to defend business owners who are harassed because of their religious beliefs, but the party says nothing about the gay, lesbian and especially transgender Americans who are much more likely to face harassment and bullying than Christian bakers or wedding planners.
Likewise, the platform highlights the importance of the First Amendment and its protection of religious liberty from government interference, but the GOP platform then calls for using the Bible as part of high school curriculums across the country because “a good understanding of the Bible [is] indispensable for the development of an educated citizenry.” The document, of course, does not say the same thing about the Torah, Quran or other religious texts.
By 2012, Republicans had lost the popular vote in five of the previous six presidential elections, prompting the party to ask questions of more than 50,000 of its members to seek ways to become more relevant — and to win back the presidency.
Republicans who had recently left the party were asked to describe the GOP. They used words like “scary,” “narrow-minded” and “out of touch.” They called the GOP the party of “stuffy old men.”
“Young voters are increasingly rolling their eyes at what the Party represents, and many minorities wrongly think that Republicans do not like them or want them in the country,” the 2013 report warned. “When someone rolls their eyes at us, they are not likely to open their ears to us.”
The party’s soul searching after the the 2012 election offered an opportunity for it to move forward. It is unfortunate that the party, through its 2016 platform, chose instead to move backward.
