Sometimes a moment of clarity can come from the most unexpected of places. It happened to me while I was tweeting with a liberal troll on Twitter who said, “GOP candidates in 2008 reflected party's moral/intellectual bankruptcy is the party of religious fanatics & hyper-wealthy”. While this statement is factually untrue, the troll makes a valid point regarding how the GOP has a serious messaging problem in terms of the people who represent us and how we are being perceived because of them.
Lets look at the two Republicans who got closest to being POTUS in 2008 (and are arguably at the top of the GOP list of contenders to take on Obama in 2012): our VP nominee Sarah Palin, and the person who came in 2nd place during the primaries Mitt Romney. These two people (along with Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh) are the people who come to mind when the average American thinks about the GOP.
Unfortunately, Palin is part of the reason why Republicans are being perceived as “religious fanatics”. There is footage of her being prayed over by a Kenyan pastor who prayed for her protection from “witchcraft” as she prepared to run for Governor. A church she attended advertised a program to “cure” homosexuals of their gayness. And as mayor, she inquired about banning books from the library. She has also turned her family into a poster for the Pro-Life and Abstinence causes with her Downs-Syndrome baby, and teenage daughter Bristol (positions based on her religious beliefs).
Sarah Palin supporters argue that she is fully qualified to be president because she is Governor of a very large state. But Alaska has only half a million people in it (New York City has over 8 million, Los Angeles almost 4 million, Chicago 3 million), which is not very impressive. She had a “down to earth” life story that sounded all-American and unpretentious last fall, but the controversy over all the money spent on her wardrobe during the campaign, and her recent book-deal have destroyed almost everything she had going for her in that department.
The GOP seriously hurt its own credibility with the McCain/Palin ticket. With McCain, we sold out our values by nominating a “maverick” who doesn’t possess a strong conservative core (I didn’t hear him complaining about TARP and the auto-bailouts); and with Palin, we sold out our self-respect by nominating somebody who was no more qualified to be VP than Obama was to be POTUS. We will never hear the end of the jokes about Sarah’s ability to see Russia from Alaska qualifying as foreign policy experience.
Mitt Romney is even worse because he is double the trouble. He is part of an often misunderstood religion, and he is very wealthy. He was so rich, he spent millions and millions of his fortune on his own campaign, and he STILL lost to John McCain. He is exactly the kind of “fat cat tycoon” that the Left likes to point to (erroneously) as an example of how the GOP is the party of super rich people who are out of touch with the concerns of regular “working folks”.
In terms of Romney’s Mormon faith, I don’t know much about that religion or the role it plays in his life. But what I do know is how the Mormon religion is perceived by the majority of Americans. People hear Mormon, and they think “Big Love” and Polygamy. They think Proposition 8 in California. They think people going door to door with the “Book of Mormon” trying to “spread the word”. In essence, they think, “Nut Case”. This is exactly the kind of thing we DON’T want our party to be associated with.
So what do we do now? We could try to find somebody new. Jindal, Sanford, Perry, or maybe somebody we haven’t heard of yet. Somebody who has solid conservative beliefs, minimal baggage, unassociated with religious zealotry, was not part of any prior failed presidential campaigns, not a super rich person who has either made or inherited a ton of money, and doesn’t have the last name “Bush”. We need somebody who can criticize Obama on issues and policies (not going on stupid “listening tours” like Romney or signing book deals and cozying up to Ms. California like Palin). The only problem is, does such a person actually exist?
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