November 5, 2016
 

In late 2012, the Republican Party, noticing that it hadn’t won the presidential election, produced a report entitled "Growth and Opportunity Project," which acknowledged, grudgingly and in limited fashion, that it had a problem: "Public perception of the Party is at record lows. Young voters are increasingly rolling their eyes at what the Party represents, and many minorities wrongly think that Republicans do not like them or want them in the country." Most of the report dealt with perception and messaging, rather than substence, but it took its task seriously enough to make some progressive recommendations, such as this; "We have to blow the whistle at corporate malfeasance and attack corporate welfare. . . . We should speak out when CEOs receive tens of millions of dollars in retirement packages but middle-class workers have not had a meaningful raise in years."

However, the report, while criticizing the Party at the national level, praised its record in state government. "Republican governors are America’s reformers in chief. They continue to deliver on conservative promises of reducing the size of government while making people’s lives better." The only part of that which is accurate is reduction of government. "Reform" is used in an odd sense; the report holds up as examples Sam Brownback of Kansas, who has proved that "conservative" economic theory doesn’t work, and Bobby Jindal, whose state became a fiscal and environmental mess, along with Chris Christie and Scott Walker, none of whom should be a role model. There isn’t a new age visible there.

It will be interesting to see what sort of report, if any, arises out of the Party’s capture by Donald Trump.