MESA, Ariz. ? In 2008, after Republicans were routed in the presidential and congressional elections, there was widespread consensus within elite GOP circles about the party?s structural problems: The Republican voter base was too old, too white, too male and too strident for the party to prosper long term in a country growing ever more diverse.
Four years later, many of the same GOP leaders are watching with rising dismay as the 2012 presidential campaign has featured excursions into social issues like contraception and a sprint by the candidates to strike the toughest stance against illegal immigration, issues they say are far removed from the workaday concerns of the independent voters Republicans need to evict Barack Obama from the White House.
Continue ReadingTo those Republicans, the probable result looks more and more like a general election fought on a much narrower band of turf than the GOP leaders assumed even a few months ago. As recently as 2010, when Republicans elected historic numbers of women and minorities to high office, a permanent expansion of the conservative coalition looked within the realm of possibility to party strategists.
The phenomenon of a party talking to itself ? rather than reaching out to new voters ? was on sharp display at a candidates debate here Wednesday night marked by nearly two hours of peevish and often confusing exchanges between Mitt Romney and his surging challenger, Rick Santorum.
Even before the debate, an array of prominent Republicans, in interviews with POLITICO, were pleading for the candidates to pay attention to the appearance of tone-deafness and do more to show they desire ? and can deliver ? a more inclusive and forward-looking party.
?We can still be a party that?s for border security and one that at the same time says, ?Hey we?re not an anti-immigrant party,?? said Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, himself the son of Indian immigrants. ?As a country and as a party, we?re not people who are going to turn people away from the emergency room. ? We don?t need to change our ideology. We need to be more articulate in voicing the aspirational spirit of America.?
Jindal suggested that, on the state level, Republicans had been more successful promoting a positive agenda, rather than digging in with an all-negative message about the president?s failures,.
?The party has to offer compelling alternatives,? Jindal said. ?Voters may dislike [Obama] on spending, the economy and ?Obamacare,? but they still think he?s a nice person. Demonizing the president is not gonna win the election.?
?It?s important that voters see a Republican Party that is inclusive and is not exclusive,? agreed House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.).
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