Rand Paul: Without change, GOP will "not win again in my lifetime"

[DamianTV]

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/rand-paul-without-change-gop-will-not-win-again-in-my-lifetime/


Just days after warning his party that it will lose its electoral grip on Texas if it doesn’t broaden its appeal, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., offered an even more dire prediction on Thursday: Forget losing Texas – the GOP might never win a presidential election again if it doesn’t change its tune.

“I think Republicans will not win again in my lifetime…unless they become a new GOP, a new Republican Party,” Paul said during an interview with conservative radio host Glenn Beck that aired Thursday. “And it has to be a transformation. Not a little tweaking at the edges.”

The Kentucky Republican said the GOP needs to do a better job of tailoring specific messages to specific groups.

With young people, he said, he would stress an opposition to excessive government surveillance and a respect for personal privacy. And among minority communities, he said, a message of criminal justice reform – including changes to the “war on drugs” and sentencing laws – would resonate.

“There are many people who are open among all these disaffected groups, who really aren’t steadfast supporters of Obama or an ideology,” he explained. “I think they’re open to listening, but we have to have a better message and a better presentation of it.”

Paul said he welcomes a robust debate within the party about how to move forward.

“There is a struggle going on within the Republican Party,” he said. “I tell people it’s not new, and I’m not ashamed of it. I’m proud of the fact that there is a struggle. And I will struggle to make the Republican Party a different party, a bigger party, a more diverse party, and a party that can win national elections again.”

And he compared this new attempt to rejuvenate the GOP to Ronald Reagan’s own effort to refashion the party after Watergate, when he challenged then-President Gerald Ford for the Republican presidential nomination in 1976.

“Everybody told Reagan to sit back and shut up,” Paul recalled. “They told him it wasn’t his time, and it wasn’t going to be his time. The establishment wanted Ford…It was bitterly fought, but in the end, Reagan won and the party became a better place, at least for a while. We need to have that debate again, and we need to be a bigger, stronger party.”

It may surprise Paul to hear that even some Democrats are hoping the Republican Party can resuscitate itself.

[Working Poor]

bump

[COpatriot]

Even though part of what he is saying is basically that the Dems are better panderers than the GOP, he's right. If the Santorumites have their way, the GOP will continue to get their asses kicked in general elections. They might continue to do well in mid-terms where they have a lot of momentum like in 2010 and perhaps this year too, but too much has changed since 2004 and not for the better for the most part.

[DamianTV]

Even though part of what he is saying is basically that the Dems are better panderers than the GOP, he's right. If the Santorumites have their way, the GOP will continue to get their asses kicked in general elections. They might continue to do well in mid-terms where they have a lot of momentum like in 2010 and perhaps this year too, but too much has changed since 2004 and not for the better for the most part.

True. The Dems need the two party system to maintain the Illusion of Choice. Unless they are ready to pull away the curtains to reveal the cage.

[Dogsoldier]

SERIOUS CHANGE you can believe in....Even Rand is toeing the line...LOL

Not j/k

[anaconda]

The puppet masters would rather have endless Democratic administrations than a "reformed" Republican Party.

[Occam's Banana]

It may surprise Paul to hear that even some Democrats are hoping the Republican Party can resuscitate itself.

Upon reading this, I suspected it was a reference Joe Biden's recent comments. And sure enough, the article continues as follows:


Vice President Biden told the House Democratic caucus at a policy conference on Friday that Democrats should hope Republicans can pull themselves together – if only for the sake of having a viable negotiating partner.

“There isn’t a Republican party,” he lamented. “I wish there were, I wish there was a Republican party. I wish there was one person we could sit across the table from and make a deal and make the compromise and know when you got up from the table that the deal was done.”

“All you had to do was look at their response to the State of the Union, what were there, three or four?” he added. “I think we should get a little focused here, let's get a little focused.”

Of course, what Biden really means here is that he (and the rest of the Democrats - and most of the Repbulicans) would like for the Republicans to be homogenously & monolithically pro-Establishment in composition & attitude - because that would be a continuation of the "two factions of one party" status quo. And that is exactly what the Democrats and the Establishment Republicans want.

I increasingly suspect that we are headed for a long overdue "crack-up" of the GOP. The inherent tensions between the Establishment GOP (which is essentially indistinguishable from the Democrats) and the anti-Establishment factions in the GOP (libertarians, Tea Partiers, etc.) simply cannot be reconciled without a major reckoning. There will be attempts to integrate or merge these vectors, but I think such attempts are doomed to fail. Either the anti-Establishment factions will be co-opted or routed, or the Republican party is going to split apart and fall, to be replaced by something else. (This latter would NOT necessarily be a bad thing, IMO - "good riddance to bad rubbish," and all that.) To the extent that Rand's "grow the GOP" project succeeds, it may ironically hasten the arrival of that day of reckoning ...

[serenityrick]

CBS seems to be wording that article to make it seem like Rand is pro-amnesty whereas after watching that interview myself, he was more pro-constitutional ideals and doing a better job at getting the word out.

When conservatives lay it out like Rand did a couple years back at that Frank Luntz focus group you hit a homerun each and every time. It's principles that almost everyone can agree with. I think that's what Rand was trying to get at.

I think CBS saw those comments about Rand wanting to "diversify" the party and are trying to make him pro-amnesty.

[nobody's_hero]

Dems need the GOP if for no other reason than to have someone to blame. This is what's happening in Chicago. They're ruled 101% by democrats. There is NO GOP to speak of. The dems try to blame everything on those rich republicans but wait . . . there aren't any! The democrats firmly have their hands on the guillotine lever that killed Chicago's economy.

That's what makes me still believe, albeit stubbornly, that the only way to remake the GOP is to let it die completely and sift through the ashes for some sort of phoenix. So long as we have idiots like John Boehner and Reince Priebus (however the F* you spell it) at the helm, the GOP will flounder about like some sort of willing scapegoat for the democratic party.

[RandallFan]

He should be careful about the timing of his comments. Kelly Ayotte who doesn't speak for House Republicans or for the GOP base was pushing amnesty with CBS. Cornyn has said he wants to push amnesty by 2016. Contributing to the myth that the GOP needs amnesty to win a combination of Iowa, PA, WI, OH, CO, NV and some other states.

I think he should talk (in a nice PC way) about how an Obama, Holder or Clinton type Democrat will use the police state to go after bitter clingers and veterans. Rather than the good police state where Bush went after Muzzies and ICE going after illegal aliens.

[Dianne]

He's right... first thing to do is take out Mitch McConnell, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, King from New York, Boehner, and any other democrats parading as republicans ..
Even if you have to vote for a Democrat to remove these maggots, do so !!!! At least the GOP can finally take their 10 year doche of the scum destroying the GOP.

Starting with the aforementioned maggots, will send off a chain reaction to the other maggots in the Congress... Vote these bastards out of office... file lawsuits against them.... seek to prosecute them ... These aforementioned guys are criminals .. they should be getting three hots and a cot... get them the fuck out of my life, please???????

[philipped]

Let's hope that Rand and his future staff do everything they can to turn the army from YAL and S4L as the youth coalition behind Rand. I know I will be one, just go the email for my states convention and I'm a shoe in to be there. It's time to up the game and get ready for midterm elections, use that as stripes for when 2016 comes to get Rand to have an event @ a college in my state during his run.

[RandallFan]

Id like to know if Rand believes if the GOP passes amnesty but does nothing on liberty does he think the 4% gain in Hispanics will give him victory in 2016.