The New York Times reports:
In a sweeping self-critique of the party’s 2012 election efforts, Republican leaders on Monday unveiled a set of proposals aimed at convincing younger voters, ethnic minorities and women that they have a home in the party, even if they do not agree with all of its positions.
“The report minces no words in telling us that we have to be more inclusive,” Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, said on Monday. “I agree. And as President Reagan said, our 80 percent friend is not our 20 percent enemy.”
The national party’s report, called the Growth and Opportunity Project, is the latest contribution to a conversation among conservatives after disappointing losses in the 2012 presidential and Senate elections.
The report’s introduction is admirably candid:
At our core, Republicans have comfortably remained the Party of Reagan without figuring out what comes next. Ronald Reagan is a Republican hero and role model who was first elected 33 years ago — meaning no one under the age of 51 today was old enough to vote for Reagan when he first ran for President. Our Party knows how to appeal to older voters, but we have lost our way with younger ones. We sound increasingly out of touch.
As Mike Gerson and Pete Wehner wrote recently, “It is no wonder that Republican policies can seem stale; they are very nearly identical to those offered up by the Party more than 30 years ago. For Republicans to design an agenda that applies to the conditions of 1980 is as if Ronald Reagan designed his agenda for conditions that existed in the Truman years.”
The Republican Party needs to stop talking to itself. We have become expert in how to provide ideological reinforcement to like-minded people, but devastatingly we have lost the ability to be persuasive with, or welcoming to, those who do not agree with us on every issue.
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