GOP Looks To Find Their Purpose

The RNC is about to begin a four day meeting in Washington that is billed as a way to find their way in this new political world. After two consecutive cycles of being handily whipped at the polls, party leaders understand that something different has to happen. Even the theme of the weekend is being called "Republican for a Reason." What that reason is though, fails to grasp me...and most of the country.

From The Washington Post:

"Republican for a reason?" says Stephen Scheffler, a committeeman from Iowa, pausing before a banner carrying the slogan. "I don't know what that means."

This is not an occasion for high-fives. The committee is getting together to choose a new chairman, settling an unusually intense competition that includes former Maryland lieutenant governor and current omnipresent talking head Michael Steele. It will also consider whether to issue a call to put the kibosh on President Obama's stimulus plan and any future industry bailouts. A few young women in blue T-shirts hand out stickers promoting a candidate for chairman, Saul Anuzis, of Michigan. None of the other candidates seem to bother.

The members linger over soup in the hotel restaurant and chat quietly in the hallway. Ron Kaufman -- a committeeman who was tight with Daddy Bush -- tries to sell a couple of fellow members on the virtues of Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead." Eventually the group files behind closed doors to commiserate in secret. Beginning today it will open things up for publicly consumable speechifying.

Making speeches about doing something different, or worse, going back to the "roots" of being a Republican (whatever that means) and casting off the big government ways of the last eight years isn't going to get them anywhere. The Republican way has failed and they know it. The American people have caught on to their game and punished them for it. Yet, Republican leaders are trying to hold on to some mythical image of a glorious party past by.

Like Ayn Rand's writing, the theoretical greatness of being able to take care of yourself sounded like a dream on the pages of her book is much the same as the rhetoric of the speeches given by Boehner, McConnell and the suckers that get to head the party apparatus this year. If the Republicans want to succeed in getting back to being nationally relevant, they had better start compromising with the Democratic majority, or else they'll be tossed into the dustbin of history.