Rush Limbaugh analyzed the GOP problem today on his show.
“The problem is not who you are. It’s what people say about you.”
From the Rush Limbaugh website:
I’ve got a story in the stack today, and it’s a fascinating headline. I’ll paraphrase the headline, but it illustrates the problem, illustrates the point. People are given a list of issues and solutions, and they love the conservative solution to every problem until they find out that they are Republican ideas. Then they reject them. And not because of the ideas. So why are they hating Republicans? It’s not because of who the Republicans are. It’s because of what’s being said about Republicans to them. The Republicans have an image problem and what they’re gonna have to do is change the way they are talked about. They don’t have to change who they are. This is the biggest point I was trying to make yesterday.
Now, there’s an assumption I’m making here. I’m assuming something just for the sake of this discussion. I know that it’s not actually totally true, but I’m assuming in the political spectrum that the Republican Party’s conservative. I know the establishment isn’t. But the Democrat Party’s liberal, far-left extremist. The Republican Party is, by comparison, conservative — without getting into the bowels of the arguments within the Republican Party. It’s not conservatism that’s being rejected by people, is point.
The Republicans think it is.
The Republicans in the establishment think that conservatism is what makes people nervous. If you give people, in a focus group or a poll, a conservative solution to a list of problems, they go for it, they love it; then they find out that they’re “Republican ideas,” quote/unquote, and they reject them. So they’re not rejecting ideas. Voters are not rejecting ideas. They are rejecting who they think Republicans are. That’s the problem the Republican Party has. I started yesterday, as an illustration, something.
