Republicans’ Rhetoric Needs to Match the Record
GOP U.S. Senate candidate Mike Braun had a very dire warning for his fellow Republicans at their state convention a couple of weeks ago. He cited a statistic saying that if only millennials voted in the last election, Donald Trump would have only won two states, Kentucky and Tennessee.
That’s right. If you just counted the millennial vote, Donald Trump would have lost reliably red states like Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, Kansas, the Dakotas, etc. etc. Now luckily for Republicans, a lot more people voted than just those in the 18-29 category and Hillary Clinton did not do as well as Barack Obama did with younger voters, Clinton 55 percent of the youth vote while Obama got 60 percent. Trump’s performance with younger voters was the same as Mitt Romney’s in 2012, 37 percent.
But Braun’s warning is good advice, especially when it comes to the long run, which is something smart businessmen do, they don’t just look at the next day, month or year, but they look five, 10, 20 years down the road. Since 1992, Republicans have only won the popular vote once for the Presidency and that was 2004. The 2000 and 2016 victories were “electoral college” only. Now before some of you try to lecture the guy with a Master’s Degree in Government in Politics, I know that’s how our system is supposed to work and I don’t have a problem with it.
What I am saying though is you can’t rely on fewer than 600 votes in Florida to win you the Presidency, or a combined 80,000 votes in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania to get you to the White House. You are eventually going to need more people than the other guy or gal. And as America trends a lot younger, female, blacker and browner, you definitely can’t rely on older and white because death will eventually take out your potential voter base. The census is already projecting America will become a “majority-minority” nation in 2045.
So what’s a Republican to do? Well, it doesn’t mean changing your core values, per se. However, you are definitely going to have to meet your audience where they are and adapt your message accordingly. I am a firm believer that free markets, personal freedom, open trade and a solid national defense are good for everyone. Beating up on people because of whom they choose to love, or because their definition of a family doesn’t match yours, never gets you anywhere in the long-term. I also believe we should be doing things to strengthen all families, regardless of whether they are a two-parent household, single-parent, foster, etc.
And even on issues, where Republicans don’t tend to do well, modifying that message can do a world of good. The data shows there is a split among older and Millennial Republicans on climate change and energy. There doesn’t have to be. I believe in climate change, but I don’t think people are as responsible for it as some would like the public to believe. With that said, I think we should be good stewards of the environment and try to leave the land in better shape than we found it, using free market principles when it comes to climate change and efficient energy consumption. This isn’t hard folks. You can apply the same principles to health care.
In the area of tax reform, which is a GOP signature issue, the data shows while many Americans support it, a lot of them don’t think they will see a long-term benefit, especially if their health care costs increase as they are expected to do. Giving Americans a universal tax break or credit for all their health insurance costs would go a long way to addressing that issue.
Those are just a few examples of what Republicans can do now to adapt to tomorrow’s political climate. And if they can craft their message so it matches what I think are fundamentally good policies for America overall, the GOP can avoid in 2052 what happened to the Whig Party in 1852.
