Karl Rove provides his party with some bad analysis and some even worse advice. Steve Benen did a completely adequate job of explaining why, and I encourage you to read his piece. But, I want to focus on something else. The Republicans adore Ronald Reagan, but they don’t really understand his success. To understand this, first look at the incumbent he displaced. Whatever you might say in Jimmy Carter’s defense, he was a major downer. This is a guy who put on a sweater to tell us from the Oval Office that the party was over, that we weren’t going to go back to $5 barrels of oil, and that we needed to turn down the thermostat. He told us our country was disillusioned and lacking focus. He may have tried to convey a can-do attitude, but he really just exuded negativity. We’d be a lot better off if we’d listened to more of his advice, especially on energy. But that doesn’t matter for our discussion here. Reagan beat Carter because he radiated optimism. He has a positive message for Americans (those not in need of help, anyway) and his disposition was a tonic much of the country felt we needed.
What’s the Republicans’ message these days? Basically, it’s this message, delivered by Sen. Marco Rubio yesterday in a video that defended Paul Ryan’s gonorrhea.
“But Medicare is going bankrupt,” he said on Thursday. “Anyone who says it is not is simply lying. And anyone who is in favor of doing nothing to deal with this fact is in favor of bankrupting it.”
He then goes on to say that any changes won’t affect current Medicare recipients and that he won’t support any plan that raises taxes. For Karl Rove, speeches like this are the answer.
Next year, Republicans must describe their Medicare reforms plainly, set the record straight vigorously when Democrats demagogue, and go on the attack. Congressional Republicans—especially in the House—need a political war college that schools incumbents and challengers in the best way to explain, defend and attack on the issue of Medicare reform. They have to become as comfortable talking about Medicare in the coming year as they did in talking about health-care reform last year.
There needs to be preparation and self-education, followed by extensive town halls, outreach meetings, visits to senior citizen centers, and the use of every available communications tool to get the reform message across.
A good starting point is Mr. Ryan’s message from his speech at the Economic Club of Chicago that his Medicare reform package “makes no changes for those in or near retirement, and offers future generations a strengthened Medicare program they can count on, with guaranteed coverage options, less help for the wealthy, and more help for the poor and the sick.”
The populist note is especially important..
Benen focuses on the fact that no matter how much you dress it up, people simply don’t want gonorrhea. That’s true, and it’s important. But I want to focus on the spectacle of an army of trained and war college-educated Republican congressmen criss-crossing the country with a message of fiscal doom.
The Republicans are experts at selling what they’re doing as the opposite (clean skies, healthy forests, Operation Iraqi Freedom), but they usually do it by telling us that we’re good, moral, decent people who deserve our awesome greatness. Ronald Reagan never would have run a campaign on how we’re all screwed.
Never mind that we’re in this position because of Republican fiscal and regulatory policies. The GOP is going to run next year on the idea that America sucks and is completely broke.
That’s the kind of malaise it takes a Reagan to overcome. No wonder the rank-and-file are unhappy with their candidates.
