Republican ‘re-branding’ effort stumbles badly

December 13, 2007

Two months ago, congressional Republicans quietly announced that they were crafting a comeback plan, which would get the party back on track. It would include new attacks on Dems, a new GOP policy agenda, and a series of new bills. The whole package was going to be awesome.

So, how’s that coming along? Apparently, not very well.

[House Minority Leader John] Boehner has undertaken a study, consulting corporate image experts, to “re-brand” the party. But so far, no big ideas have emerged.

No, of course not.

To reiterate a point I raised when this little venture was launched in October, corporate advertising and “rebranding” experts aren’t going to help the Republican Party right now, and it’s rather foolish to think they will. The problem isn’t that the party has great ideas that it’s having trouble selling or a brilliant agenda lying just below the surface; the problem is the party has no ideas, has consistently backed a disastrous war, is led by the least popular president of the modern political era, and would rather obstruct than govern.

Private-sector marketing concepts are usually built around accentuating positives. What’s the GOP good at? Smearing people? Feigning outrage? Using bumper-sticker slogans?

Dems may be struggling to overcome GOP obstructionism, frustrating their base, and giving the appearance of weakness, but it’s the minority party that has deep, long-term structural problems right now.

And Boehner knows it.

Polls show the public holds congressional Republicans in low esteem. Boehner’s effort to craft a new agenda for Republicans remains under wraps. And in the minority leader’s own words, their fundraising “sucks.”

“Now the money sucks for two reasons,” Boehner said in a Politico interview. “People are mad at the president; they are mad at the party. And then [there is] this whole immigration fight. People just turned off the spigot.”

You don’t say. A depressed base and a disgusted public hold the GOP in low regard. And that hurts fundraising? Good to know.

This is not to say that Republicans don’t deserve credit for being shrewd. They’ve figured out a way to call the shots in Congress after losing control of both chambers in a sweeping and historic defeat last year.

But in light of the polls, the retirements, the weak recruting efforts, the fundraising, and the complete inability to come up with a policy agenda, the landscape is likely to get worse for the GOP before it gets better.

I’ve said it before here on the CBR, and I’ll say it again. If ANYTHING positive has come out of the last nightmarish 7 years, it’s that Bu$h, sticking to his pattern of destroying everything he touches, has for all intents and purposes destroyed the Republican party.

He’s come close to destroying America, but we are a resilient nation, and have bounced back from far worse predicaments than that of a feeble minded simpleton’s attempt to turn over the federal government to his corporate business partners.

  • The Republicans are now playing the spoiler. They probably can’t win in the next election but they will do everything in their power to cripple the Democrats by making them look like failures, thieves and degenerates to the voters. Totally eliminate any vestiges of respect and support for the political process. They are saying “If I can’t be in control, no one can.”

  • It may be the case that the Democrats’ best selling point right now is that they’re not Republicans, but that puts them one up on Republicans, whose only selling point, now and for the foreseeable future, is that they’re not evil, evil, liberals, which is a really tough sell against the center-to-center-right opposition that is the Democrats. Republicans trying to sell this point have made sure that a generation of centrist independents will never, ever vote for them.

    The last actual reality based idea that Republicans had is probably “protectionism is bad,” but because of Republican insistence on not addressing distribution of wealth issues they can’t even get that idea right.

  • The Republican Odyssey (Idiodyssey?) has been a macrocosm of what I’ve seen in right-wing libertarianism. It starts as some sort of idealism (even though a crappy ideal) but gets co-opted by those who just see the ideal as a way to exploit the system and serve their greed. You could listen to a Goldwater speak and think that he was a man of some integrity. You hear George Bush speak and you see that not a shred of integrity remains.

  • This is not to say that Republicans don’t deserve credit for being shrewd. They’ve figured out a way to call the shots in Congress after losing control of both chambers in a sweeping and historic defeat last year.

    Whoa, doesn’t something sound really wrong about that?

  • I really don’t understand how the Republican positions are supposed to attract new voters,

    1 – Cut taxes. OK, this one gets them votes. Everyone loves a tax cut but are the Republicans going to get any NEW votes by promising to cut taxes and raise the deficit and help the rich???

    2 – Allow torture. Violating the Constitution and doing things that we considered war crimes until recently won’t attract new voters.

    3 – Border fences and deport 3% of the country. I suppose this could actually attract new voters if the Republicans were willing to punish the people who break the law by employing workers illegally. Romney are you listening?

    4 – Stop stem cell research but allow in vitro fertilization which kills far more embryos than stem cell research ever will. The logic here is so twisted and stem cell research is so popular that this is a net vote loser.

    5 – Prevent abortions. As abortions become harder to get the anti abortion position is a vote loser.

    The scary part is that the Republicans are doing everything they can to lose.

    Unfortunately, the Democrats won’t accept victory. The Democrats need to attack anyone with any moderate position. If the Democrats require their candidates to drink the left wing kool-aid then the Republicans will still have a chance.

  • I think we’re finally getting to the point where enough of the electorate has finally kissed that pig enough times, the lipstick just isn’t doing for them any more. I seriously doubt that better lipstick is going to turn out to be the answer for them.

  • neil wilson –

    I really don’t understand how the Republican positions are supposed to attract new voters,

    They aren’t. Republicans are conservative – they don’t like “new” things. They like things the way they are/were, thank you very much.

    To get “new” voters they would have to change positions on SOMETHING. Change is hard for conservatives. Bush/Rove/Mehlman tried to get the elephant to change one thing that would have allowed them to attract some new voters – immigration. But the racist block refused to budge and have dragged them even more rightward.

    It’s going to take years out of power before the GOPers change enough to actually attract new voters. Of course, the Dems will probably push some voters their way over the next decade or so because of corruption issues. Right now the Dems have been out of power for a while so their hands are relatively clean compared to GOPers. A few years sitting on the throne of power and we’ll be back to the “throw da bums out” mentality of the early 90s and now. It’s cyclic – I just hope the GOP has moved towards sanity before it’s time to roust the Dems out of office.

    The Democrats need to attack anyone with any moderate position. If the Democrats require their candidates to drink the left wing kool-aid then the Republicans will still have a chance.

    Oh please. Point to the Dems who “attack anyone with any moderate position” who actually affect discourse in this country. They don’t exist. The Dems who affect the politicians and the discourse are all moderates. It’s only out here on the Internet frontier where you see the attacks – partly because the media gatekeepers aren’t here to restrain them, and partly because actual liberals are overrepresented on the Internets (much like libertarians are overrepresented).

    Contrast that with the Republicans where they actually DO have to drink the right-wing Kool Aid or be subjected to attacks from their Noise Machine and their evangelical voting base. We’re gnats out here on the Internets compared to the folks the GOPers deal with.

  • I know this is not the polite thing to think, but for 2008 I not only think it will be a very ugly nasty campaign, I think it should be. Increasingly I think the single most important criteria in a Democratic nominee for President is that they not be remotely squemish about getting down in the gutter. Yeah, it would be nice if we could unite the country, hold hands from coast to coast and teach the world to sing in perfect harmony yada yada yada. Reality: not gonna happen as long as the current Republican party is still the current Republican party. It matters not one bit who the Democrats are or what their positions are or how they try to get along.

    Sometimes in anything contested – not to diminish governing with sports analogies, but its the best one I can think of – you really have to have that instinct for putting your rival away, not letting them get back into the game. This is one of those times. The Republicans are completely vulnerable, and we can bring a long overdue end to a very very dark time in America. But we can’t get from here to there by being nice — the Rethugs bank on our good nature. We have to totally put them away, completely discredit their philosophy, make it embarassing to be a “conservative.” We want to make it so schoolchildren point and laugh and throw rotten vegetables when a Tom DeLay or Alberto Gonzales walks down the street. That is how — and that is the only way — to truly cure what ails this country: to leave the Republican party no choice but to rebuild and redefine itself from the ground up, wholly unrecognizable from what it is today.

    Moreover, “running up the score” might actually remind Dems what it is like to be potent, to be able to lead, to control the levers of power. Clearly having a simple majority has not done so; we still seem to ask permission to do what we were elected to do.

    The Rethugs surely have not shown us any mercy or civility since we won in 2006. Like a judge handing out a sentence to a convict who has shown no remorse or repentance, I say we throw the book at them until they finally learn a lesson (and here I have no problem analogizing them to Michael Vick). This is not the time to be the “bigger person” or take the “high road.” There will be plenty of time to act civilized with the rest of the citizens after the bully has been driven from the schoolyard. But not until.

  • The most frustrating thing about the top is that no one ever learns anything. They literally ALL operate according to the definition of insanity — repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results.

    I’ve given up on the MSM ever trying not to be GOP shills. For the Republicans, screwing up is the reason to dig in your heels and screw up twice as hard because otherwise, people might think you screwed up. Will the Dems keep doing the same, inane, centrist, cowering, spinelessness that failed so much for them in the past? Of course they will.

    It doesn’t matter. The public has changed, and they know they’re on a runaway train, hurtling towards the end of the tracks. So, the good news is, no one HAS to change for this to be another route election.

  • NonyNony:

    “Oh please. Point to the Dems who “attack anyone with any moderate position” who actually affect discourse in this country.”

    CB for one.

    Of course, he is no where nearly as bad a the huge portion of the people who post comments on this site.

    Do they actually affect discourse?

  • Zeitgeist says: (and here I have no problem analogizing them to Michael Vick)

    I agree, but Vick apologized.

    Vick tortured dogs and was thrown in jail.
    The Republican SS tortures humans and….??????

    heck of a job Darth Cheney?
    heck of a job Bushwacker?

  • Evergreen – not to digress too far, but most legal observers found that the reason Vick got a 23 month sentence when the maximum was 24 is that the judge felt he had lied during his pre-sentence investigations and was not sincere in showing understanding or remorse about the nature of his crime. That was what I was referring to.

  • neil w @ 11, i really can’t imagine how you come to that conclusion about CB. earlier in the year i saw snipes in the comments about how easy CB was going on HRC, which was a sin because she is insufficiently left. so how exactly is it that CB has no tolerance for moderates?

    you appear to be defining “moderate” as “people who only back BushCo 90% of the time instead of 95%+”

    review the Nixon/Republican platform and record from the early 1970s — it was to the left of the DLC positions today. the point being that a truly “moderate” position is likely that which is demonized by the right as “liberal” – Obama, Edwards.

  • Shortly after the 2004 election, when Bush re-stole the Presidency, Molly Ivins had a great anecdote about how they train chicken killling dogs in texas to quit killing the damned chickens. I’m paraphrasing of course ” you can just shoot the dog, and that will end the problem right there. But in Texas we have another way to stop it. We tie a dead chicken around the neck of the perpetrator of the crime and let the carcas rot. You leave it hanging there as the dog lives in utter misery every minute of every day from the smell. And the dog will never ever look at another chicken again. Geroge Bush will be the rotten chicken carcas around the neck of the Republican party for a generation to come.”

    Our job is to make sure none of those dogs ever forget that George W Bush was theirs. And that none of the other dogs will ever come near them again.

  • Zeitgeist:

    Can you show me where I back the Republicans 10% of the time?

    Did you read my original post about Republican ideas?

    Does that sound like someone who supports Bush at all?

    However, you groundless attack on me basically proves my point. Far to many Democrats, like Zeitgeist as an obvious example, attack anyone who strays from the ‘reservation’.

    The Democrats could pick up a ton of seats in the House and the Senate and the White House if they accepted the fact that not everyone is as far left as the activists.

    Don’t forget, even if we get the White House that we can’t pass anything that the 40th most conservative member of the Senate is against.

    Have you seen how far to the right people like Senator Nelson is? and he is a Democrat!!!

  • Neil: If you seriously interpret Zeitgeist’s post as a personal attack against you, then you are being very over-sensitive. Thicken your skin a bit.

  • What zeitgesit said in #9.

    Dems need to kick Republican asses to hell, not let them keep a foothold. Those people screwed the planet for too long, and they’ll do it again if you give them a chance.

    No mercy.

    • Comments are closed.