ONCE AGAIN, THE GOP TRASHES THE “2012 ELECTION AUTOPSY REPORT”

…Reince Priebus, RNC Chairman

 

The 2012 Autopsy Report was spot-on….but don’t confuse them with the facts.

 

Do you recall an item that the Republican National Committee (RNC) paid good money for: the 100 page, “2012 Election Autopsy Report”.  This was Reince Priebus, the RNC Chairman’s answer for what was needed to win it all in 2016.

 

Let’s look at some of the recommendations from that autopsy report.

 

Since women are more likely to vote than men, and when they do, most have previously voted for Democrats, here is what the report said the party should do: “…make a better effort at listening to female voters, directing their policy proposals at what they learn from women, and communicating that they understand what a woman who is balancing many responsibilities is going through.” 

 

To do this, they decided to, “use Women’s History Month as an opportunity to remind voters of the Republican’s Party historical role in advancing the women’s rights movement.”

 

So based on all this, how did Donald Trump deal with taking that approach?

 

During the month of March, which is “Women’s History Month”, Trump decided to “advance women’s rights” by: tweeting a demeaning photo of Ted Cruz’ wife Heidi, suggesting that she was not “hot enough”.  Then he maligned a woman reporter’s character that was manhandled and bruised on camera by Trump’s own campaign manager.  He finished Women’s History Month by suggesting that women who seek abortions should be punished by law.

 

As one female reporter for The Post has written, “If he indeed set out to destroy the second sex’s confidence in himself and his party, he’s succeeding quite well.”

 

With the Wisconsin primary about to happen, Trump has dropped to 2^nd place and 77% of the polled Wisconsin women voters said they couldn’t imagine voting for Trump.  Three-quarters of all American women voters now view Trump unfavorably, that’s according to a new Post-ABC News poll.  A separate poll, from NBC / Wall Street Journal found that almost half of Republican female voters have said the same.

 

But the autopsy report didn’t stop with women voters.

 

In another part of the report, it described other minorities that the GOP needed to woo, or at least, stop ticking them off.

 

Those individuals included blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Pacific Islanders, Indian Americans and Native Americans. In other words, all nonwhite American voters. Non-white Americans are growing as a serious share of the electorate.  The autopsy report recognized this and stated that it would be party suicide to assume Republicans could win elections through their traditional and shrinking, white base alone.

 

The report also suggested that Republicans taking a hard line on gay rights threatened to permanently repulse younger voters.  This fact has been sending these younger voters to support Democrats over the past two decades.   According to the report, “The pervasive mentality of writing off blocks of states or demographic votes for the Republican Party must be completely forgotten.”

The autopsy advised forming a “new Growth and Opportunity Inclusion Council,” which would “develop a program designed to educate Republicans on the importance of developing a message that is inclusive to all.”

 

More generally the party must “emphasize the importance of a welcoming, inclusive message in particular when discussing issues that relate directly to a minority group.”

 

It also argued that the GOP “must invest financial resources in Hispanic media,” and pass immigration reform ASAP.

 

Sounds pretty good doesn’t it?  So, what has “The Donald” done about that part of the report?

 

Trump has accused Mexican immigrants of being criminals and rapists.  He adopted a racist, Asian accent at a campaign rally while he wavered on condemning the KKK and white supremacists in general.  He vowed to ban all Muslim immigrants from entering the country.  To top it off, he has advocated rolling back nationwide same-sex marriage. He currently has a lawsuit against the nation’s largest Hispanic TV network.  And in addition, Trump still insists on deporting 11 million undocumented immigrants.

 

With Trump’s almost overwhelming use of Twitter, the only part of the autopsy report that Trump has fulfilled is the section where it recommended that the party should have more of an “active social media presence”.  Bingo!

 

The overall results of Donald Trump’s attitude toward the RNC Chairman’s autopsy report is that he has managed to alienate parts of every major Republican constituency.  That constituency includes the usually reliable established Republican base of white men, those poorly educated whites and the mid-western evangelical Christians.

 

As has been reported by various political watchers and analysts, no one in the GOP should be surprised at why someone like Donald Trump is sitting where he is as the GOP front-runner. 

 

The Republican Party has been digging this hole, going back to when they tried to scare people saying that “affirmative action was going to take away white workers jobs”.  Then they went after gay rights and that put them after gay marriage.  They fueled the Tea Party extremists and that ended up shutting down the US government.  Don’t forget that they selected another know-nothing, Ms. Sarah Palin, for their failed VP spot.  Finally, it’s hilarious that Mitt Romney has been going after Donald Trump, after Mitt was the one that had “binders full of women”, and he tried selling us that 47% of Americans were all free-loaders looking for free handouts.

 

But once again, Trump still doesn’t stop here.

 

There are other parts of the 2012 Election Autopsy Report that are being ignored such as their not attacking corporate welfare, stopping their beating-up on the poor, abandoning their stale 30-year-old policy ideas and ditching their insistence on maintaining their conservative ideological purity.

 

It is true that at least having Trump as a front-runner is causing them to talk more about making the necessary changes, but will it eventually become “too little, too late”.  As one national opinion writer wrote, “How many more lives can the GOP possibly have left?”

 

Copyright G.Ater  2016