Rebranding The Grand Old Party

I'll be honest. I didn't ever think I would see this kind of story published in any daily newspaper, much less a major daily newspaper, at least not in my lifetime. But there it is, right there in the Los Angeles Times, an article describing the panic and division in the Republican Party.

Increasingly, top Republicans are calling on their party to reinvent itself or risk driving away more voters and donors. The GOP image is so stale, said Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), in a memo to colleagues last week, that "if we were a dog food, they would take us off the shelf" because nobody is buying it.

But even while facing crisis, the GOP is finding that change, if it comes, will not come easily.

The difficulty of a swift reinvention was on display last week as the central players in Washington's conservative community gathered for their weekly strategy session, the Wednesday Meeting, held in a conference room of Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform organization. ...

McCain's approach -- tough on taxes, but receptive to immigrants and committed to easing global warming -- could help paint the GOP in new colors, more attractive to independent voters, Latinos and women. Some GOP leaders now say that by embracing McCain and his policy platform, Republicans would instantly "rebrand" and reinvigorate their party.

Sounds pretty reasonable to me. If I were a Republican and I saw what the current brand of Republicanism has done to the economy, the military, governmental erosion of civil liberties, and American standing abroad, I would fear that I had somehow fallen into a bizarre Alice In Wonderland world.

But a lot of people at that meeting hosted by Grover Norquist's anti-tax group weren't buying Carly Fiorina's argument that her candidate could save the GOP from extinction. Global warming hold-outs weren't having it. They want a candidate who will probide a sharp contrast to the Democratic nominee, one who will do as George W. Bush did: go into Appalachia and warn coal-miners that the DFH environmental whackos will cost them their jobs.

And it's not just McCain's stand on global warming that divides his party: his attempt to have it both ways on immigration reform (a secure border, but humane treatment of immigrants already here) is outraging the Tom Tancredo wing of the party. Tancredo has already excoriated McCain for "pandering" to the Latino vote because the senator spoke at a La Raza gathering.

Finally, while the anti-tax conservatives finally drove McCain to announce he will make President Bush's tax cuts permanent, his stance on ending earmarks and paring down pork barrel spending is driving GOP congresscritters crazy. They need jam today and jam tomorrow to keep their contributors happy, the budget be damned.

So, what happens next?

Well, with any luck at all, the same thing that happened when the DLC took power in the Democratic Party. Lots of party regulars, the base, if you will, stayed home on election day.

May it be so.