GOP Autopsy Report Is Out And It's...Meh

Here's the report (pdf)

The short version is...Romney was a terrible candidate and his campaign was awful. They never say that but it's clearly the subtext of everything.

After saying they aren't a policy making board, they make one policy suggestion.

We are not a policy committee, but among the steps Republicans take in the Hispanic community and beyond, we must embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform. If we do not, our Party’s appeal will continue to shrink to its core constituencies only. We also believe that comprehensive immigration reform is consistent with Republican economic policies that promote job growth and opportunity for all.

They don't call for embrace of "same sex marriage" but they hint at it pretty strongly.

Young voters are increasingly rolling their eyes at what the Party represents, and many minorities wrongly think that Republicans do not like them or want them in the country. When someone rolls their eyes at us, they are not likely to open their ears to us.

They suggest spending $10 million on minority outreach. Not sure how that's going to work or be received by the target audience.

Here's my favorite bit. Once upon a time it got you branded as someone who hated capitalism. Now it's key to our growth.

We have to blow the whistle at corporate malfeasance and attack corporate welfare. We should speak out when a company liquidates itself and its executives receive bonuses but rank-and-file workers are left unemployed. We should speak out when CEOs receive tens of millions of dollars in retirement packages but middle-class workers have not had a meaningful raise in years.

Honestly they could have saved a lot of time on the messaging section and just reprinted this post from a week after the election.

You want a free idea on making the GOP more friendly to new voters...move the RNC HQ out of DC and into Pittsburgh or Cleveland. Don't just say you're going to be different, actually BE different.

The "what went wrong" stuff is easy, everyone can see it. The how do you fix it is harder. All this report offers is some gentle prods that basically amount to "we need to rebuild and retrain our base to deal with the modern world".

It's exactly the kind of thing you'd expect from a committee made up of a lobbyist, a long time RNC insider, a "veteran strangest and and top ally of Jeb Bush", and a member of W. Bush's team, Ari Fleischer. Only one member seems to have any grassroots credibility.

This is a pretty vanilla report. That would be fine because that's what these things are. The problem is the RNC hyped it as some important moment in the history of the GOP's renewal. Once again, they are over promising and under delivering. Stopping that bit of terrible marketing would be a major step in the right direction.

posted by DrewM. at 10:47 AM

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