GOP’s New Strategy to Attract Voters? More Abortion Restrictions, Duh!
LatestOkay, so let’s say you’ve slipped momentarily into the lizard-skin of a GOP politician. How are you going to attract young, non-white voters to your party in the ashes of a Mitt Romney campaign that burned faster than a pile of autumn leaves soaked in butane? Well, if you’re listening to the advice of Jason Weingartner of New York, the newly elected chairman of the Young Republican National Federation, you might consider dialing-down your stances against social issues such as same-sex marriage and abortion because, in the eyes of most Americans, voting to curtail marital freedom and reproductive rights makes you look a teensie bit like a bigoted misogynist. Just a touch. Then again, maybe you’re not what Malcolm Gladwell might call a “big picture” kind of thinker. No sir! You’re narrow-minded, focused like a laser beam on raking in the most fervent support among a small slice of the American electorate. That way, you can be assured to secure support within a party increasingly dominated by fringe lunatics while simultaneously ensuring that the political entity known as the Republican Party sinks even deeper into cultural obsolescence.
Earlier this morning, the AP reported that Weingartner joined other under-40 Republican Party activists recently in Mobile, Ala. (home of the occasional dolphin jubilee) for a group-therapy session about how to yank their party back from the brink of general election irrelevance. Sure, GOP politicians might be winning House elections in solidly conservative districts across the country, but winning a presidential election seems, in the GOP’s current state of disarray, like an increasingly remote possibility. The meeting avoided making concrete policy recommendations, but Weingartner did urge Republicans to be more tolerant on issues such as same-sex marriage and abortion, because the party must try very, very hard to encourage people who don’t regularly renew their AARP subscription and NRA membership.
Ah, but if only real-time politicking were so simple! Though the under-40 GOP activists may be at least acknowledging their party’s growing disconnect from mainstream American values, the next generation of actual GOP politicians is setting its sights on a social issue that will help its members gain some traction with solidly-conservative voters: abortion. According to the New York Times, GOP leaders like Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Rob Portman are all trying to bolster their image among the party’s shrinking base by (very discreetly) talking about a way to advance a bill in the Senate that would ban abortion at 20 weeks after fertilization.