When Barack Obama first won the presidency in 2008 in an electoral landslide, there was much talk about how the Republican Party needed to do some “soul searching.” People spoke about how something at the core of the GOP might need to change.
But after said soul searching, the GOP came to 2012 presidential primaries with a slate that defined orthodox Republicanism: Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich — the first person you think of when someone mentions “political insider.”
After this election, it’s time for the Grand Old Party to do some real soul searching. This year, Obama won with the Black vote, the Latino vote, the Asian American vote, the women’s vote, the youth vote, and the LGBT vote.
According to the New York Times’ Nate Silver, “forty-five percent of those who voted for Mr. Obama were racial minorities, a record number.”
Being the “Old Party” might not be working out for the GOP anymore.
In fact, many are calling for the end of Republican relevancy on the national level. Richard Borreca of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser said “On a national level, the GOP has yet to address its very real demographic dilemma: Republicans cannot be a national political party if it is dominated by white people.”
It might be time that the Republican Party experience real change and go back to their roots; it might be time for the GOP to actually become the party of small government, fiscal responsibility, and personal freedom.
What does that mean?
It’s time for them to stop forcing on social values onto Americans.
Their stance on abortion, for one, is completely contrary to the idea of personal freedoms as is their intolerance to the LGBT community. If the Republican Party was truly the party of personal freedom and small government, they wouldn’t deal in how people have sex or how they love or when they decide to give birth, or whether or not they wear seat belts or smoke or any other personal decision like that. As today’s youth get not so young and tomorrow’s youth get more socially liberal, the GOP’s current stance on the right to choose and the right to marry and the right to do anything else is going to greatly hurt them.
The Republican Party used to be great; it used to be the party of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt but, today, it is the party of white, male Christians.
The GOP can’t survive being the part of white, male Christians; this country is made up of White, Black, Latino, Asian, Native, and every other race and ethnicity in existence. It’s made up of men and women, of Catholics, Protestant, Buddhist, Taoist, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and everything else.
It’s time for the Republican Party to wake up. (end)