http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/07/26/1405717/-Pardon-me-Grand-Old-Party-but-your-slip-is-showing
The precipitous drop in favorability ratings has the GOP brushing its ass and scratching its teeth. Never the type of people to be honestly introspective, when they do take a stab at it they just can't see the forest for all those damned extreme trees. Take for instance Fred Bauer's piece that appeared today in the National Review.
Decrying that "some of this decline in public approval for the GOP can be traced to alienation on the part of Republicans from the national party," Bauer dances around the fact that the GOP has been taken over by teaparty and fundamentalist extremists. This monster of their own creation is what has driven reasonable people to flee the party and now they are at a loss as to what to do about it.
Bauer goes on to delude himself that their higher favorability numbers in the areas of "gun control, the budget deficit, and terrorism" has the potential power to stave off disaster come 2016. While there are a good number of Americans who see these issues as important, they will not override the serious problems the Republican party faces during the next election cycle.
Even more striking is that Republicans fall far short of Democrats on certain perception issues. Democrats have 16- and 22-point leads on governing more ethically and being concerned with average people, respectively. Fifty-two percent of voters think that Republicans are “more extreme” in their policy positions than Democrats; only 35 percent think that Democrats are more extreme. When the party headed by Barack Obama is viewed as less extreme than the one led by John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, clearly Republicans have had a failure to communicate.
The fact of the matter is that the party headed by Barack Obama is not extreme. Saying so does not make it so. The party led by Boehner and McConnell cannot say the same. This isn't a perception issue. This is simply a reality. Americans are not blind to the right wing extremists who have ground progress to a halt, attempting to march us backward in time, not forward.
It is the failure of the GOP to reign in their Louis Gohmerts and return their party to base reason that has caused their brand to moulder. This cannot be pinned on the manufactured labeling of the Obama administration as extremist. Pointing their fingers away from themselves has grown threadbare.
But some of this case will also involve making affirmative steps. Republicans have spent a lot of political capital delivering key policy items for their business allies (such as giving the president trade-promotion authority), but they will need to do more to show how their policies will help Main Street.
On education, Republicans helped pass in the House and the Senate a major, though imperfect, reform of No Child Left Behind. This legislation has been lost in the headlines, and Republicans can do more to show how their educational policies could help American parents have a say in their children’s education.
In offering their own version of health-care reform, Republicans will have to stress how it will improve access to health care for the average family. Instead of pushing for more guest-worker programs, Republicans will need to advance an economic-policy agenda that addresses the concerns of the aspiring worker.
Ah, yes. The perrenial "we have to make changes" trope whenever they paint themselves into a corner. That has grown threadbare too. Republicans have spent their political capital seeing to the interests of their 1% overlords. It's rather cute how he slips in "giving the president trade-promotion authority" as if it gives cover to their compulsive coddling of the monied. Their policies do not benefit Main Street by design. Trying to explain how they do is like explaining their alternative plan for health care reform. It can't be explained because it doesn't exist.
This drop in support is not solely due to the rise of a certain presidential candidate, whose name I can’t remember right now. It points to broader structural challenges. This drop is also not electoral destiny, but it is a warning to the GOP that it still needs a more vigorous and innovative campaign of ideas and policies.
we were aware of their inability to lead mostly from their 2012 klown crashing and like this article says they are republicans what they want to believe that means is not what the majority of the electorate interprets it to be. heartless people willing to snatch food from kids mouths, lie about death panels in ACA while they set about trying to burn the entire social network of those elderly and poor and sick.
republican means going home for Christmas leaving millions of families who through that party's efforts have no job and the refuse to expand unemployment did i say at Christmas as they board planes with presents overflowing the cargo bays.
it also means refusing the Pres.'s jobs bill in favor of trying to give the keystone to big oil in that arrogant refusal neither got done, oh did i mention into 7th year of obstruction which actually failed too as Pres. would not leave we the people hanging they will and are he was able to do quite a bit with no help from his own party too.
as for guns they have proven their loyalty is to the NRA over your lives, education well they are trying to kill common core, change the curriculum to teach the right wing way to be less American and more apathetic, they want to kill the union they fire teachers and replace with privatized schools of their ilk creating the next generation of haters, and the constant lies and hyperbole misleading Americans with misinformation about this Pres. and his desire to make it better for all of us including them, yet they try to claim it but that is a lie they can't spin.
their refusal to levy tax on rich but willingness to use the rest of us to pay their way we can't afford it but they don't care as long as they can protect the Koch's et al they will continue breaking our backs to insure their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and we the people not even a thank you or kiss our butts just do it deny it and the beat goes on.
