From a new website called New Majority, Rudy! talks about what the GOP has become and how it can get better again:
Yes, to some extent, it’s the same thing over and over again in the “Republican Reboot” posts here — the Republicans have offered too much social red meat, and not paid enough attention to policy issues that actually matter to centrist and suburban voters. But damnit, we need to hear this and more importantly, we need to take action on it. We need to get beyond the point that a criticism like this strikes close to home.
If we don’t start changing our ways, our insufficient-to-win-on-its-own voter base will slowly die out over time and the Democrats will become so ascendant that the whole country will become like the South in the 1940’s — the real election will be the Democratic primary; if a Republican even bothers to run, it will be a formality; and if one manages to win, it will be an aberration that will last a single frustrating term in office. This is not a bright future.
Hizzonner also gives a postmortem on the 2008 election here. It’s at least as good as the embedded video in making the essential point. I linked to the post, rather than embedding that, because a comment there mirrors the point made in my other link (the one that rightly criticizes the current GOP), which in turn dovetails into the point that Giuliani is making in the video. Kind of a great circle of political point-making.
The inaugural address Obama gave is a great example of how to reach out across the aisle to appeal for support from the center, without giving up the essential values that supported him in the first place. That’s the sort of thing Giuliani is talking about here. That’s the sort of thing I and all the other right-of-center writers I keep linking to are appealing for. That’s the sort of thing that will be necessary if the GOP is going to keep itself from joining the Whigs and the Federalists in the dustbin of obsolescent political parties.
