Form Over Substance
I spent a great deal of time bashing the TV news media for being unable to move away from inconsequential political wrangling and focus on the real issues facing our country. The trouble is that this approach takes real work. It is so much easier to have two or three political writers/reporters on a panel and they can rehash old political stances forever. This added to the fact that most of these pundits live in their own political bubbles makes this discussion even more irrelevant. One of the current topics about the Republicans is a case in point and it is a focus on form instead of substance.
It is not a news flash that the Republican Party is in decline. But the discussions you hear are inane. “They are looking for a new spokesperson, someone who can connect with younger voters.” Or, “They are trying out issues that might stir up the public and see what sticks to the wall.” We all saw Newt Gingrich over the weekend (and other Republicans) claim that being civil to Hugo Chavez would be the fall of Western Civilization as they sense our fear and become more bold. The Chairman of the Republican Party, Michael Steele, is trying to get Republicans to connect more with young blacks by using hip-hop. Sarah Palin’s now ancient connection with the red meat conservatives was seen as the resurrection of the Republican Party. It is all public relations and has nothing to do with their message. It is all form over substance.
Recently one of the cable shows had a real live professor of political science on the show who actually spoke the truth, which of course was roundly ignored. He said something like this: “We have one and a half political parties in the United States and we all know that the half party is the Republican Party. Don’t they understand that minorities today that vote primarily Democratic will be the majority by 2030? They cannot go on being the party of white Southern men and expect to be a force in tomorrow’s politics.”
In a few short sentences he summed up the reality of the Republican Party without laying out their underlying problem: Their message, the substance of who they are, no longer appeals to people in the twenty first century. Well I take that back. There were the tea baggers, that disenfranchised group of irrational souls that just dislikes everything. But as John Stewart described them, that “mono-colored” demonstration, kind of summed up their lack of appeal to most Americans other than the ones desperately trying to hold on to some non-existent past. The Republican’s basic message, the substance of what they believe, is being rejected by average Americans because it has not brought us to a safer place. Yet they are desperately hanging onto that message and it may be their final demise.
Watching John Boehner this weekend was a case in point. Appearing on ABC’s This Week, the Ohio Republican was asked what to describe the GOP plan to dealing with greenhouse gas emissions, “which every major scientific organization said is contributing to climate change.”
Boehner replied: “The idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical. Every time we exhale, we exhale carbon dioxide. Every cow in the world, you know when they do what they do you’ve got more carbon dioxide.”
I could point out that no one has said carbon dioxide is a carcinogen or that cows fart methane, not carbon dioxide, but the point here is the world of denial they are living in to support their fundamental ideas, small government, cut taxes, trickle down economics, and few regulations. Newt Gingrich’s attempt to portray the handshake with Chavez as some earth shaking event is just more evidence that they really have nothing to add to our dialogue about our way forward. Denying federal bailout money as your citizens go to the poor house is the ultimate act of irrelevancy of your ideas. Thank you for the South Carolina student who is suing her governor to failure to responsibly carry out his duties in office when his refusal to take the funds will prevent her from going to college and someday being part of the solution.
The real problem with the Republican Party is that they need a new message, not a new salesman or a new paint job. It is becoming quite obvious that the current crop of Republicans is unable to re-craft their message to recognize the realities of today. Even though many Democratic policies make many in the middle of the road nervous, until the Republicans become even moderately relevant, there is only one choice. The world has changed and Republicans have not. It is the very definition of extinction. Oh I forgot, they don’t believe in evolution. My point exactly.
One last thought about the media: As long as they continue to present Republican ideas with equal weight to the solutions that are being proposed by the Democrats for our future, the discussions will be irrelevant. Most Americans have already rejected these ideas and now it is time to have a real debate about what is being proposed rather than to giving equal weight to old arguments that no longer have any merit.