1. AdamG | 04.30.09

The Republicans found themselves incredibly successful over the past two decades. Only recently have they been stuck in a rut. They found their success by becoming incredibly organized and united within the party. They established talking points on all of the major issues, made a point to call out their successes while downplaying their failures. The failures eventually caught up to them.

Moving forward, I think they have to take that unity and strategy they implemented within the party, and use that energy to restructure not only the GOP, but the government as a whole. Rather than voicing the concerns of the party and their constituents, they need to develop actual policy. Rather than criticizing what the Dems and the White House are doing, offer alternative policy, new strategy and give their colleagues across the isle something they’d be foolish not to use.

There’s a reason that conservatives are more likely to follow Rush Limbaugh than Michael Steele. The Republicans are still stuck in the last administration’s mindset of leading saying, rather than leading by doing. That is, become a party of substance, rather than rhetoric.

2. AJBopp | 04.30.09

Nussle would know. He is a prime example of everything that is wrong with the GOP.

3. Marie M. | 04.30.09

oh the GOP needs a CEO? I thought CEO’s were evil & were to be vilified…

4. Laura | 04.30.09

Republicans are failures because they aren’t responsive to the real world. They are clinging to their myth that the free market, tax cuts and small government will be the solution to social ills. Well, Republican ideology is not the solution. Republican ideology is the problem.

5. Don | 04.30.09

I was raised a Republican and always voted Republican until the second time George Bush ran. I can no longer call myself a Republican. I consider myself a practical person and I think the extreme move to the right and the closed mind attitude of the current Republican party is not good for this country.

6. Greg | 04.30.09

The Republicans squandered their opportunity on manufactured wars that benefited the military industrial complex at the expense of all other Americans - A COMPLETE LACK OF VISION. Rush Limbaugh is a bombastic bag of hot air and both milquetoast Michael Steele and Piyush “Bobby” Jindal exude all the power and charisma of a shoe salesman for Hush Puppies. The Republicans need a leader that talks and votes like Ron Paul but looks and sounds like a younger Clint Eastwood or Denzel Washington. There’s nothing to Obama other than being the ideal spokesman for the cigarette industry. A talking head who will spout whatever his handlers put on the teleprompter - bought and owned by the global bankers and war mongers. When the ‘real’ Afro-Americans finally figure out who he is there will be riots in the streets. The effete liberals who sponsored him are already awakening to who Obama is with his protection of Telecom/NSA illegal program protection, expanded adventures in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran, and banker bailout of $13 trillion.

7. MC | 04.30.09

I would hazard that Democrats are hoping and praying that the Republican leadership does decide to ‘purify the party’ and get back to ‘their conservative principles.’ At least as they are described by this strategy’s architects, those ‘core principles’ are so backwards and out of touch with contemporary American society and values that it will mark the final demise of the Republican party as a real political player.
In order not to become a fringe right-wing party of angry, disenfranchised, underclass whites, they have to jettison the religious extremists (or, I suppose, jettison the fiscally conservative, ‘every man for himself’ wing, but then that brings us back to the question: what is the party’s most important core value?)

8. tonyt | 04.30.09

The Republicans “success” is all in how you look at it. Even with a majority in the House, Bill Clinton made them march to his tune. Most of Reagan’s policies were reversed by Bush 1 and then even more by Clinton. If you measure success by taking the majority in the House ad Senate, then I suppose you could say they were successful. However, the fact is, that all they accomplished was to destroy their own party and nearly take the country down with it.

The “god” of the Republican Party, Rush, spilled the beans when he said that he hoped Obama fails. The fact is, he let out their plan to try to make Obama fail and take the country down with it. Their reasoning is that if the country falls low enough, that they will beg for the Republicans to bring them back. The big problem is that they have sold their souls to the devil. Instead of working with Obama, which would make them appear to have some plan that helps all Americans, they simply vote against any measures put before them. Watch next year and see how many House and Senate seats they lose. Yeah, the Democrats may lose one Senate seat (Dodd), but really don’t count on it. The Republican will lose a KY seat, Gregg’s set will go Democrat, Specter will be elected as a Democrat, and the Voinovich seat will go Democrat. Talk about a hole to dig out of. They are going to be relegated to a third party position of right-wing radicals. I cannot believe that they cannot see that.

9. Concerned | 04.30.09

The ideas and planning that elected both President Bushes to office are no longer appropriate for the new era. The new generation of voters is looking for new ideas, leaders and not managers. I look at the Republican party and see managers, but no leaders, great ideas for 1990 that are no longer appropriate for 2010. The Democrats are still able to use Bush and Republican acts to bolster their own agenda as contra to the “conservative” mindeset, but the Republicans need to lead with new ideas and “new age” thinking, not counter punch and follow the Democrat agenda. The past is the past, let’s look to the future. The “new” Republican agenda needs to look to the future and stop trying to re-enact the successes of the past. Those successes failed in 2008. We need a leader to take charge boldly, not manage the situation.

10. David Jay Crispin | 04.30.09

I hear Bob Nardeli is available. He left Home Depot with $210 Million in his pocket after hurting that company badly. He has now driven Chrysler into bankruptsy. He would be perfect to lead the Republican party into the 18th century.

11. Erik Kengaard | 04.30.09

The Republican party made major mistakes in embracing the radical religious right, in emulating the Democrats in their spending ways, in supporting the entry and employment of unauthorized aliens, in expanding medicaid, and in not strengthening regulation of Fannie Mae and business.
Neither party serves the public interest. Instead, members of both parties sell the country out in return for campaign contributions. Ask which interests Senator Dodd will serve, when the major part of his funding comes from out of state. Geographical representation is dead. Those who pay to play are represented.

12. basementfrog | 04.30.09

What really needs to be done is end all political parties, limit contributions, elimininate lobbyists, and establish term limits as we have for the executive branch, ending entrenched dynasties.

Anyone who wants to run for political office must run on their own platform with no party apparatus controlling their fate. Let the people determine their fate from beginning to end.

ELIMINATE POLITICAL PARTIES, period.

13. César | 04.30.09

The Republican Party in order of influence: Limbaugh, Cheney, Palin, Hannity, Fox News, Boehner, Gingrich, and the Penguin… with a line-up like that, how can decent ordinary people trust them? Their base is down to 21% of the registered voters and falling. Maybe finding the promised WMD in Iraq might redeem them from their woes.

14. Dave | 04.30.09

The single biggest obstical the Republican party has to overcome is it’s record. I understand they would like to reinvent themselves, but their record on wars, overspending, pork, big government, incompetent regulation, partisn behavior, and everything else puts the lie to what they say. After the Hoover administration there was a loong stretch where Republican’s couldn’t be elected dog catchers, we may be looking at a similar long stretch.

15. Abarafi | 04.30.09

The reason the Republicans had rebounded (after Nixon) in 1980 had more to do with Carter’s failures than Reagan’s successes. Year after year the hardcore GOP right-wing has pushed out those whose purity was suspect. Goldwater was the GOP’s real turn to the right, but Barry wasn’t a racist or someone who championed the rich over the poor. He was a classic conservative but not an ideologue. Reagan spelled the beginning of the end. Bush 2 drove the final nails in the coffin. The lunatic fringe in America may be calling Obama a socialist, but a large number of normal GOP voters have fled. That’s why Murphy won in upstate New York in a district with an overwhelming majority of GOP voters. Wake up. The handwriting is on the wall. It wasn’t Bush’s deficits that toppled the GOP; it was Cheney’s neo-fascist hubris. No one really believed George W. was “the decider.” It was Tom DeLay, and Cheney, and Rush who were the drum beaters. If you decide to go for purity, you’ll have a homogenous, marginalized presence. You’ll be like the Whig Party before the ascension of the GOP. Personally, I hope you do go the purity route. I’ve been ashamed of my government for the eight years of the Bush administration, and would like to see your party become a footnote in history. Don’t delude yourselves that if Obama’s policies don’t bring immediate relief that Americans will flock back to you. They won’t. It’s nice for a change to have a president who is intelligent and articulate, who doesn’t think tax cuts are the magic-bullet solution to everything, and who has raised the respect for America among the peoples of the world.

16. kenneth | 04.30.09

The GOP is doomed because they are ideologically and intellectually bankrupt. What have they got to trade on these days? They can’t claim to be the party of fiscal responsibility anymore. Yes, they like tax cuts, but they’ve spent money like a sailon on his first shore leave, and pile it all on the credit card, and pray to God that the Chinese never decide to shut off the credit tap.

They claim to be the party of small government, except that they assert the right to force their religious beliefs into every aspect of a person’s life, to read our mail and tap our phones, or throw us in a foreign dungeon without a warrant for any reason or no reason at all.

The small government part only means zero oversight or accountability for market speculators, and we’ve seen how that bears fruit. Their recent approach to “strong defense” made us a pariah state and failed to even engage the real enemy. Their only “plan” for energy security and climate change is whatever the oil lobbyists hand to them. Their only answer to any kind of government assistance or collective responsibility for anyone outside of Fortune 500 companies is to call it “socialism.”

This failure of ideas is also evident in their leaders of late. The first vote I ever cast was for George Bush Sr. I came to have my differences with his policies, but the man understood the world as a complex place. He read books, and traveled, and knew that people in other countries weren’t all just unformed Americans with funny accents. His kid, and Palin demonstrated that the only qualifications for a Republican nowadays are to be anti-abortion and hate gays. The party, influeced by its radical fundamentalists elements, not only tolerates ignorance, but celebrates it as a virtue. The party needs to take a good hard look at itself and answer this basic question - “What do we have to sell that any reasonable forward-looking American will want to buy”?

17. Ridahoan | 04.30.09

I cannot imagine how the GOP will get out of the hole they are furiously digging. Their only hope for unity is the party of ‘NO,’ and though they will try to brand their opposition to Obama as led by a new found faith to the principles of small government, I expect that this attempt to remake their image will fail. True belief in a small government is an abstract and intellectually challenging ideology only attractive to a relative few libertarians. Actually, most people, on the left or right, want government to do what they want, and little more. On the left this may mean expanding health care or education, while on the right it may mean expanding the military, building walls to separate Mexico and the United States, and increasing funding on policing. None of it is free.

As the Republican party currently exists, it seems to stand for big government in terms of military, security, immigration and border control, gun-control, and bedroom morality. If you take away these issues in order to try to define a party of small government, you are left only with Ron Paul, and he probably doesn’t want anything more to do with you.

18. John G. | 05.01.09

The key error that the Republican Party made, starting in the 1980s, was to embrace the religious right, a group that tends to be fanatical, uncompromising, and - critically - increasingly out of touch with an increasingly secular U.S. (Europe has been moving that way for decades). Deeply religious people tend to think that they are “absolutely right” in their beliefs because “god” has provided their guidance. That tends to make them very dogmatic and unwilling to accept anything but close adherence to their believes - which means a lack of willingness to compromise with others. Meanwhile, the country is without question becoming more secular, and “progressive”. Therefore, as the Republican Party became increasingly dominated by the religious right it moved farther away from where the mainstream of the country is headed. It has been a disaster for the Republican Party. Their only hope is to dramatically diminish (not completely eliminate) the influence and visibility of this group with the party. If the Republicans do not do that, they will become increasingly marginalized as the years go by. By the way, I am a moderate, independent.

19. Paul C. | 05.01.09

I personally do not think that religious conservatism is the primary problem of the Republican party. I am very religious and almost always voted Republican until after 2000. The problem that I see is the blatant hypocrisy. Why is it morally wrong to kill an unborn child, but it is fine to torture our prisoners? Where do you find Bible justification for torture or for starting unprovoked wars? The Republicans talk about being fiscal conservatives. Why do they spend like drunken sailors and refuse to find income to pay for their excess? Democrats may be tax and spend politicians, but why should we believe that spending while refusing to pay the bill is so much better? Plot the deficit year by year since WWII against the party of the president. The Republicans are not ‘conservative’ at all. The Republicans present themselves as protectors of the constitution, strict constructionists. They remind me more of John Adams and the Alien and Sedition Acts. I am religious and want a true moral anchor for the United States. But I will not vote based on what the Republicans say. I see their actions as being just as morally repugnant as some of the Democrats, just more hypocritical. Besides that, they cannot govern.

20. Sylvester J. Taylor, IV | 05.02.09

Until the GOP surrenders itself to liberty it will remain irrelevant and disgustingly fascist. I am and as long as I can remember, have been a small “r” republican. Our nation is a Republic that is supposed to be governed by the US Constitution which was the supreme law of the land. A small group of fascist bullies in my party took over, called themselves conservatives and have been expanding government at every opportunity. As a liberal I find this repugnant and offer the following solutions starting from the State level:

1. Ignore Rush Limbaugh
2. Decriminalize marijuana
3. Legalize Hemp which is not marijuana
4. Decriminalize profits, capital and property
5. Call anti-liberty conservatives what they are, fascists
6. Call corporate Republicans who want to unify business and government what THEY are, fascist
7. Stop blaming the poor for everything while ignoring the dirt accomplished by a small but powerful group of billionaires
8. Stop speaking in terms of class and tax payer status, instead call us what we are, Citizens
9. End the crime spree, prosecute government officials by the dozens
10. Print our own money then, indict the members of the federal reserve, end the fed and pass a Constitutional amendment forbidding the establishment of a central bank.

Everyone should be a Citizen first and whatever comes natural second.

21. Neken | 05.02.09

@10 - You nailed it, DJ Crispin. Republicans are headed to the 18th century and Bob Nardeli is just the guy to get them there!

22. John G. | 05.04.09

Another problem the Republicans have - in addition to the religious right - is the neocons. They have also been an utter disaster for the nation and the Republican Party. A couple people on this site have used the term “fascist”. That is a bit extreme, but it must be said that the neocons come as close to that title as anyone. Elitist, arrogant, convinced of their own brilliance, and of the opinion that the Executive branch (especially in times of crisis) should have virtually unlimited power, that tiny fringe group hijacked the foreign policy agenda of the nation. They cooked the intelligence books in order to come up with “justification” for the war in Iraq in 2003 (which many of them had been pleading for, years prior to the event - that is a matter of record). Shouting down or ignoring anyone who disagreed with them, they took the country into war. It has been a disaster for the U.S. and an utter catastrophe for the Republican Party. So, if the Republican Party does not want to be reduced to a small, fringe element seen as being in the control of the religious right and the (still out there) neocons, the Party’s moderates had better wake up and pull their party back into the center where they can be seen as as force of reason.