Iowa Republicans today will begin to decide which version of the Republican Party will prevail for this election year but more so the immediate future. Not really understanding how the world has changed around them, Republicans have allowed anger to walk them into a social and demographic trap. In almost every way, Republicans do not understand that their perception of the world does not remotely comport with reality – and that most people are tired of nastiness. Let us be clear about something: The Republican electoral sweep in 2010 was not so much an aberration as the miscasting of the country by the 70 million voters who cast ballots in that election – a far different set of voters than the 130 million who voted in 2008…and the more than 130 million who will vote this year.
Serious and experienced people are not paying much attention to the Republican circus. They know certain things almost as they know how to breathe. These things are known: Neither Michele Bachmann nor Ron Paul nor Rick Perry nor Rick Santorum nor Newt Gingrich is a credible candidate for the Presidency. Were any one of them nominated they would vanquished. Only Jon Huntsman or Mitt Romney gives the Republican Party a nominal chance to win.
Serious and experienced people also know that the true and defining moment of the 2012 election could have occurred already, and it happened in 2010 when in Colorado and Nevada the new electorate that has changed American politics held fast against a Republican tide. In those states – whose Democratic senatorial campaigns were managed by presidential-caliber professionals – the HispanicLatino vote was the deciding factor. But not just HispanicLatinos stood firm against the GOP onslaught. So did vital components of those states’ electorates that view the Republican Party as outdated, mean, hateful and clueless about how to fix the economy. More tax cuts for the wealthy, really? Or just for half of the top one percent?
Thus what happens in Iowa today and next week in New Hampshire is of absolute importance. Will the GOP be able to fashion itself as something other than a party that wants to return to the past – when the rights of many Americans were suppressed? When the only answer to the country’s foreign policy challenges was to dispatch soldiers off to war or to build walls to hold back the very demographic growth the country needs to survive? When economic elites ruled the country and usurped democracy?
The manner by which the 60-million-plus voters who did not vote in 2010 but who will vote this year view today’s results in Iowa, next week in New Hampshire and in the southern primaries thereafter will influence greatly how they view the Republican Party. And that could be by far more important than who the GOP eventually nominates to take on a President whom most people accept as not being as successful as everyone hoped — due to the horrendous mess the GOP created in the first place.
If Republicans in the course of their nominating process come off as the party of the old, they will have given those who live in the new world around them little or nothing to support.
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