Time to Buy Republican

You buy stocks when they're low. You buy cars when a dealer's inventory is high and they gotta move product. Basically, it's wise to get a bargain when a bargain's to be gotten. So, is now the time to "buy" Republican?

If you're a liberal I know what you're thinking - besides how badly you want to raise my taxes: why would any right minded individual (no pun) go over to "the other side?" Besides the fact that "they" don't stand for anything "we" stand for, the Republican party is dead meat. Shattered, captainless and they can't find voters.

First, don't buy the hype. Republican stock is battered, but it's not quite yet junk bond status. Yes, Obama used their hind ends to wipe the electoral map with, but if you read the numbers that wasn't necessarily because the electorate as a whole shifted toward the Left. Republicans, smelling defeat, stayed home. Probably even if they'd made a better showing they wouldn't've won, but they could've made things more competitive. However, should the Rs find somebody who can whip them into a frenzy, by 2012 they might be back in force.

So, before the radical wing of the party has a chance to re-take the reins - sublime fellows like Georgia Rep. Paul Broun who's made the rhetorical leap from "Obama as closet Muslim" to "Obama as Hitler '08" - now's the time to engage the Right-leaning moderates who get that the Neo-Con movement is dead. The small R republicans who understand the party needs to adapt to survive. That means moving toward the center, finding candidates with greater regional appeal and it for sure means finding a whole lot more minorities to get into the mix.

If that strategy sounds crazily brazen or wholly untenable - swelling the depleted Republican ranks with sleeper Centrists - it's just a modified page out of Rahm Emanuel's playbook. By going regional, identifying and supporting Blue Dog Democrats, he helped map the 2006 mid-term victory.

Instead of merely turning a blind eye - or raised middle finger - to the "other side," get in there. Let them know if they want a shot at earning your vote they need listen as much as they have in the past hectored and lectured. And remember, when you go to the polls you can vote how you please, so there's nothing lost by engagement and open mindedness if it forces "them" to do as much as well.

More importantly, let's not for a moment allow the Dems to take their victory and our votes for granted. Competition never hurt anybody, least of all the consumer.

Or in this case, the voter.

For More news and views visit That Minority Thing.com

Comments

[GregJL]

4 million MORE voters in this election than in last, but the Republicans stayed home. Uh huh. Whatever.

[Heru1]

you buy stock when it's low if its undervalued, not when it's worthless.

[Blackberry826]

I'm buying stock in the Whigs. They're beaten down almost as bad as the GOP.

[robtheplumber]

Oh, I don't think that stock has bottomed out yet. Remember, we still have years of indictments before us. Years and years.

[sledmouth]

Let the Republicans slide into far right third party obscurity. May the Democratic party be the centrist main-stream with Greens as a viable left alternative! (wishful thinking...)

[pthesmith]

News on the wire suggests the Rethugs are already planning their big comeback. The minorities, especially Latinos, are definitely in their sights. They lost a significant amout of Latino votes that Bush won in 2004. Minorities should demand the Rethugs engage their communities, understand the issues, and demonstrate a real effort to address them. The last thing I'd want is for minorities (including myself) to surrender their votes to the wolf in a revamped, new and improved, sheep's costume.

[Horus45]

The R's are the ones who drove their party to hate anyone and anything remotely Latino sounding.
They drove the Latinos out of their party, just like they drove the moderates out.
Now if you are NOT Conservative you are not welcome in the party.
If they stuck to being fiscal conservatives and forgot about pushing the Social Conservative policies they might have a chance, but I don't see that happening before 2012.

[dagdavid]

Yet another nonsensical, "I love to hear myself talk" posting by Ridley. Somebody please raise his taxex.

[realpolitic]

You know, at this rate of job loss Bush may be the first president to have created absolutely not one single job during his eight, long, tortuous years in office.

[realpolitic]

I wonder if Ridley agrees with Rush Limbaugh that our current economic meltdown is Obama's fault?

[realpolitic]

A book by Ridley is being advertised to the right of his column called Those Who Walk In Darkness. I wonder if it reads like Those Who Trespass by Bill O'Reilly. Great minds think alike! (Or perhaps it is about the eight years of the Bush administration!)

[realpolitic]

Since buying Republican stock would mean buying Guantanamo Bay prison, torture, illegal spying on Americans, Hurricane Katrina, Abu Gharib, incompetence, demonizing enemies and insulting allies, and politicizing the Justice Department, I will pass, but thanks anyway, Mr. Ridley!

[garcia83]

couldn't have said it better myself.

true justice always finds a way.

[rbenjamin]

John, the GOP is looking like a penny stock.

The small R republicans the big business Republicans and the Social Issues ( Republicans are fighting for the GOP franchise. The Social Issues wing seems in ascendancy, but whoever claims the prize is probably going fall on their butt by cutting the other 2 legs of the stool. This party tends to crucify any member who violates any number of litmus tests. Not to mention unfavorable demographics. The old white males are dying. It's a minority party destined to to get ever smaller unless it broadens it's appeal to younger, nonwhite. less affluent recruits.

It's not a matter of selling THE BRAND better. Over the last 8 years the "family values" party has demonstrated that an alarming number of its members have no family values. The self proclaimed "fiscal responsibility party" has wrecked economy, the global one mind you, not just our own. Finally, the "security first" party has shown it can't win wars or manage national disasters. Smart money has to ask: "do the political liabilities exceed the political assets?"

Can you declare political bankruptcy to avoid electoral foreclosure? I don't think so. Going independent is one option for an up and coming conservative politician, but perhaps a better choice is to join with like minded RATIONAL GOP souls and initiate a migration to, or perhaps a hostile takeover of, the Libertarian Party. Leave the rotting GOP corpse for the Palin wing to feed upon.

[realpolitic]

Republicans are very ideological by nature. Tthey have certain assumptions, like cutting taxes creates revenues, which are not true given the evidence, but conservatives swear by them. Their rigid ideology most often leads to a wrongful definition of the problem and the enemies are always the same, such as the liberal media or unions. With such ideological tendencies, they can not govern. Democrats do not fall into this trap. By nature we are pragmatists who want government to work.

[rbenjamin]

Dems do fall into the ideological trap, they are just too inherently disorganized to throw anybody out (think Lieberman). Ideas rejected today survive to be re-examined, modified and adopted later. Maddening yes, but it can serve the party well during its regular treks to the wilderness. Republicans will just sit patiently starving in the desert, waiting for God to save them, and stoning anybody who suggests otherwise. Now that's discipline!

[thedirtman]

I would hold out at least a year before even considering a Republican trend. You know what happened to the Federalists...

[KYZipster]

When the Libertarians and the Greens are shut out of presidential debates, don't count on any party coming in to take the place of the Republicans, they will re-emerge, it's inevitable. I hope that it takes a decade or more but they will come back. We should encourage what few moderates there are, bring them into the Obama Administration. Heck, I'd vote for Olympia Snowe over some of those "Reagan Democrats".

[lbcyclist]

You don't buy stock when they are low, you buy them when they begin to rise. There is still some time before this happens for the GOP.