GOP attitudes and incompetence

Anonymous Liberal wrote:

The GOP's problem is twofold. First, we just concluded a period of history in which the GOP ran everything. And they did it really badly. They were corrupt and incompetent. They led us into an unnecessary and costly war; they got themselves embroiled in an endless string of scandals; and they presided over an epic economic collapse. People remember all those things very vividly and it has badly damaged the Republican brand.

But that's only half of the GOP's problem. The reason the Republican Party continues to bleed members has much more to do with the general attitude of the party's political and intellectual leaders than anything else. Rather than admit to any mistakes or take even the slightest bit of responsibility for the state of the country, they insist on blaming everyone but themselves. [...] They watch TV and they see a very intelligent, charismatic President who says a lot of very reasonable sounding things and exudes competence. And then they see a bunch of angry conservatives and Republicans who insist that that same man is some sort of evil communist who's going to destroy the country. In other words, the problem is not the ideas, but the attitude. Republicans are coming across as a bunch of obnoxious, unreasonable a-holes. When you've just been voted out of power for manifest incompetence and your opponents are led by a very popular and reasonable-sounding person, you don't have the luxury of acting smug and uncompromising all the time. You have to acknowledge error and show some humility. You have to act civilly. You have to at least try to appear pragmatic and reasonable. But the GOP is not interested in doing any of these things. Those who are left in the party are ultra-partisan and utterly convinced of their own infallibility and moral righteousness. Until they lose that attitude and general combativeness, it won't matter what their ideas are. They'll just keep turning people off.

Jon Henke agrees:

The Republican brand does not merely need a little tinkering. The Republican brand is not the victim of Democratic rhetoric and framing. The Republican brand is so bad because people accurately perceive the state of the Republican Party.

Rhetorical contrition and promises are insufficient. Fixing that problem requires actual, painful, reform.

Yes, but restoring competent governance requires a high- and middle-brow conservatism. It must reject Bush-Palin anti-intellectualism. It must stop blaming the media and offer serious, non-dismissive responses to criticism.

Fixing attitude requires rebuking Cheney foreign policy and admitting that the Iraq war and use torture were disasters that should have been avoided.

Such are the ways, but there is precious little will. The existing base is committed to doubling down on existing anti-intellectual attitudes. It will get worse before it gets better... certainly not in time for 2010.