So, how’s it going with that VTGOP rebranding project? The one certain to vault the party from the poop chute of 2012 to the glorious heights of the Aiken Era?
About as well as you might expect. The news this week: State party chair Angry Jack Lindley endorsed the national GOP’s sad little rebranding document, the “Growth and Opportunity Report.” Which is kind of a mess, and which wouldn’t do much of anything to cure the party’s Vermont woes. Also — Diversity Ho! — there’s an upcoming Vermont appearance by K. Carl Smith, a black Republican who’s expropriated the image of Frederick Douglass in a desperate bid to get the GOP’s black vote out of the single digits. This is the same black Republican whose recent speech at CPAC was derailed by a white segregationist who noisily insisted that slavery was a fun ol’ time for the N-words. That interruption was kind of a shame, because it drew attention away from the odiousness of Smith’s own message.
Let’s tackle Smith first, and then circle back to Angry Jack.
K. Carl Smith, “Liberty MESSENGER” (caps his), will appear at the Country Club of Vermont in Waterbury on April 7. Smith argues that black people should vote Republican because, you know, Lincoln freed the slaves and stuff. He conveniently ignores the last 50-odd years of Republican catering to angry white folks, starting with Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” and continuing to this day with the GOP’s anti-ACORN campaign and voter-suppression tactics. But Smith takes the “Party of Lincoln” (not Nixon, Reagan, Rush, Hannity or Hans von Spakovsky) nonsense one step further, by recasting civil-rights pioneer Frederick Douglass as a wealthy capitalist and defender of the free market. Oh, and he blames slavery on the Muslims. No shit.
And if you need any more proof of Smith’s hatefulness, here’s a screencap from a short video on Smith’s website:
Nice, eh? The only thing missing from that list is “Douglass, American” vs. “Obama, Kenyan.”
Yep, K. Carl Smith, voice of inclusiveness. Just the guy to make the GOP more appealing to undecideds and moderates.
And lest you doubt that our Vermont Republicans are directly involved in this, the announcement of Smith’s Waterbury event was distributed by the VTGOP. And at the bottom of the announcement you’ll find this: “Paid for by the Vermont Republican State Committee.”
This could be just as bad for the VTGOP as Maine Governor Paul LePage’s disastrous visit on behalf of Randy Brock last July.
And now, the other Republican news of the week.
VTGOP Chair Angry Jack Lindley, who promised a youth outreach program back in November, which probably consisted of Jack hanging around the UVM campus wearing a pleather jacket and aviator shades, has jumped on the Reince Priebus Bandwagon, i.e. the National Republican Party’s “Growth and Opportunity Project Report.”
Angry Jack hailed the report as…
…”a new and exciting day for the Republican Party. The Growth and Opportunity Project Report charts a new path for the GOP that all Vermont Republicans can get behind as we grow and build our party for the future. After months of painstaking review both nationally and locally, I’m confident that this new pathway for the GOP is the right direction for our party as we expand our tent to elect more Republicans that will improve the lives of all Americans and Vermont residents. The Republican Party is committed to a pro growth strategy not only for Vermont residents but for growing our organization and we look forward to working together with the RNC to build a party for all Americans.”
Your Power Vocabulary Word of the Day: “GROW.” Two “grows” plus two “growths” and one “expand” just to make sure we get the point. And we do: the Republican Party Opposes Shrinkage. (Photo: the heartbreak of shrinkage.)
That’s settled. Now, let’s take a closer look at how the Priebus Priescription (see what I did there?) will f’sho rebuild the Vermont GOP.
The report notes that people have stopped listening to the GOP. But in the authors’ minds, this isn’t because the message is faulty; it’s just the delivery. “We too often sound like bookkeepers,” adept in policy but unconcerned with the real lives of real people.
Yeah, that’s it: the trouble with Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry and Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich and Rand Paul and Ron Paul and Sarah Palin and Sharron Angle and Ted Cruz and Todd Akin and Joe Walsh and Paul Broun and Allen West and Bob McDonnell and Tom Corbett and Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity (and Wendy Wilton, heh) is that they’re too dry and dispassionate and technocratic.
The report also calls for a more inclusive party, especially for racial and ethnic minorities. This doesn’t mean any softening of policy — although they do call for the GOP to work toward comprehensive immigration reform, which probably means smearing lots of lipstick on the GOP “deport ’em all and build a wall” policy pig. And they want to recruit a younger and more diverse pool of potential candidates “whose values and beliefs are consistent with [those of] the Republican Party…” See, we don’t need to change; we just need to convince others to drink our Kool-Aid.
Oh, here’s a good one: They want the party to “train and prepare ethnic conservatives for media presentations.” In other words, Affirmative Action! Gee, I thought the GOP didn’t believe in that.
The report also wants the GOP to increase its appeal to women. Again, not by changing policy, but by convincing women “that we are fighting for them.” Yeah, that’ll work. They also want to “develop a more aggressive response to Democrat (sic) rhetoric regarding a so-called ‘war on women.'” As if transvaginal ultrasounds, an all-out attack on abortion rights, efforts to end affirmative action (except when it comes to conservative ethnics and women, who are on the GOP’s fast track), and exclude birth control from health care coverage. The problem wasn’t all the shit Republicans were saying or doing; it was that dastardly “Democrat” rhetoric.
The report calls for new outreach efforts at young voters, including “quarterly discussions on your issues with Chairman Priebus” (shoot me) and an RNC Celebrity Task Force. Oh, good God, how shameless and clueless can you get? The Republicans whined endlessly about liberal celebrities; now they want to develop conservative celebs?
And who, aside from Kid Rock, is going to headline this alleged Republican Woodstock? The GOP’s idea of a celebrity with youth appeal is probably Ted Nugent. Who else? Fred Thompson? Clint “empty chair” Eastwood? Elizabeth Hasselbeck?
Julia Barnes, Executive Director of the Vermont Democrats, put out a statement that tidily summarizes this whole mess:
“Instead of admitting that the GOP has failed to represent the values of middle class Vermonters and middle class Americans, they blame messaging strategies instead. You know a party will always remain out of touch when it takes them years to come to the conclusion that: ‘women need to be part of this process’ and that: ‘We need to campaign among Hispanic, black, Asian, and gay Americans and demonstrate we care about them, too.’ Including everyone in our political process shouldn’t be a matter of electoral expediency, but a matter of course.”
“The Republicans aren’t failing because their ideas aren’t being communicated well to voters. They’re failing because their message is being heard loud and clear.”
Back to the G.O.P. report. There’s a huge section on campaign mechanics, with a heavy emphasis on social media, databases, software and hardware. This would be the same GOP whose national website still lists Mike Bertrand as Vermont GOP Executive Director. That’s the “Mike Bertrand” who left the job almost a year and a half ago because he wasn’t getting regular paychecks.
There’s an interesting section on “Vendor Selection,” which implies that the GOP is finally beginning to realize that the vast network of conservative campaign consultancies, polling outfits, advertising agencies and fundraisers is a big fat scam whose practitioners are much more concerned with getting paid than with electoral victory. (cough*DarcieJohnston*cough)
And now we come to the proposals for revising the Presidential selection process, which are entirely focused on giving a huge advantage to well-funded, establishment candidates. You know, like Mitt Romney. The GOP apparently still believes that Romney was a strong candidate who was undone, Gulliver-style, by his months-long battle with Lilliputians like Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. When actually it was the other way around: Romney’s inability to put those jokers away revealed him as the deeply-flawed, unappealing candidate he’d been all along. And if you grease the skids for the 2016 version of Mitt Romney, and make it harder for insurgents like Rand Paul to cause trouble, then the Future Mitt will sail into the regular election untested and unproven, and he’ll be depantsed by Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden or whoever the Democrats nominate.
I wouldn’t expect the national GOP to fashion its appeal to the Vermont electorate. People like Reince Priebus and Ari Fleischer have probably written off the Green Mountain State as irretrievably liberal, and not terribly important anyway. And really, I wouldn’t expect the national GOP to have the self-awareness and courage to correctly diagnose its fundamental problems.
And really, I wouldn’t expect Jack Lindley to display any insight or self-awareness either. He’s much too comfortable in the closed, cosseted world of the Republican insider.
But his endorsement of the Priebus Priescription shows, yet again, that he is the wrong man for the Herculean task of restoring the VTGOP to electoral relevance.