The Week (Opinion)
By Teagan Goddard
June 1, 2015
After
Mitt Romney's bruising defeat in the 2012 presidential election,
Republicans spent several months looking at what went wrong, and
proposed a series of changes to
make sure it didn't happen again.
The
97-page report was an extraordinary public acknowledgement of the
party's weaknesses. It did not mince words. The report said the GOP was
"marginalizing itself," and
that without major changes "it will be increasingly difficult for
Republicans to win a presidential election in the near future."
Three
key groups of voters were highlighted for special attention: Latinos,
women, and young people. All were found to be moving away from the
party.
If the last few months are any indication, Republicans have done little to pull these voters back into the GOP tent.
Latino
voters are especially critical. The GOP autopsy report called for
abandonment of the party's anti-immigration stance, declaring that "we
must embrace and champion
comprehensive immigration reform."
More
than two years later, however, Republicans are no closer to passing
immigration reform, even though they control both houses of Congress. In
fact, the party remains
bitterly divided over the issue.
The
party is so conflicted on immigration that even Sen. Marco Rubio
(R-Fla.) — who along with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is one of two Latino
GOP presidential candidates
— had to back away from his own reform plan when he found it
incompatible with wooing GOP primary voters.
Women
voters are another key voting group that the GOP has failed to
reconnect with. The autopsy report concluded the GOP "must improve its
efforts to include female voters
and promote women to leadership ranks" and that "when developing our
Party's message, women need to be part of this process to represent some
of the unique concerns that female voters may have."
But
even with a record number of candidates either currently seeking or
planning to run for the GOP presidential nomination, only one — Carly
Fiorina — is a woman. And
she's never held public office before.
Finally,
young voters continue to abandon the GOP in record numbers. The autopsy
report noted that young people were "rolling their eyes at what the
party represents"
and focus groups described Republicans as "scary," "narrow-minded'" and
"out of touch." A recent Pew Research survey put numbers behind these
observations and found a "wide ideological divide" between young voters
and the Republican Party.
But
if you listen to the Republicans running for president, the reason the
party hasn't won the White House in recent years is because their
candidates haven't been conservative
enough. Younger voters — including younger Republicans — are much less
conservative than the party. They don't agree with the party on many
issues, from gay marriage to immigration to the role of government
itself.
It's almost as if no Republicans bothered to read the Republican autopsy report. They're making the same mistakes once again.
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