Well a lot of things actually. So here we go...
1) First and foremost, they have to ditch the social baggage. A recent NYTimes article highlighted that many young voters rejected Mitt Romney because of his stance on social issues. This is a very good reason to reject Republicans. They're ass-backwards socially. Stop fighting battles that have already been lost and embrace equal rights for everyone.
2) Do math. This is kind of a big deal. You can't pretend to care about the deficit and then present budget proposals that add to the deficit. It's easy to say we have to cut spending and lower the deficit, but when your policies actually do just the opposite you lose a lot of credibility. Math is big. Also science. The world is older than 6000 years. It is also getting warmer, and yes, we did evolve from a common ancestor with apes. These things are true. It's okay that you didn't believe them 100 years ago perhaps. At one point most smart people thought the world was flat and that the sun revolved around it. We can't fault them in their time. We can fault you for living in 2013 and still refusing to accept science. Try acknowledging facts.
3) Stop lying. See point two above. When you claim that your budget plan decreases the deficit, but then when the math is done and it adds to the deficit, and yet you repeatedly claim that it decreases the deficit, you are lying. When you continue to espouse the idea that Obama is from Kenya or that Obamacare mandates death panels, you are lying. The reason I'm happiest that Mitt Romney lost the election - even more so than disagreeing with some of his ideas - is that he was willing to stand in front of the American people and lie over and over and over again to get elected. Had we chosen to elect him we would have shown the world that we are willing to be duped. I'm glad we showed otherwise, but our rejection of Romney shows that if Republicans want to be a viable political party, they should cut down on the lies.
4) And this is really the crux of the whole issue because as I've said time and time again, Republicans have a lot of good ideas. They really do. Their overall platform is abhorrent, but there are big pieces of it that would do the country good. The problem is Republicans won't put their money where their mouth is. The basic Republican platform of self-empowerment is a good one. It's too bad Republicans don't actually believe in it. I wish that we could cut down on spending and rectify some of our social issues - crime and poverty for example - by empowering individuals. But in order to do that we actually have to take action steps and this is where Republicans fail. I've mentioned in previous posts that good businesspeople link spending to outcomes, they don't eschew spending money altogether.
If we are going to empower people, we need to invest in them, and this is exactly what Republicans won't do. It's easy to stand at a podium and talk about the American dream, or even - if you're Marco Rubio - to talk about how YOU are the American dream. But the American dream is dying, we're less socially mobile than socialist, economically sclerotic Europe! Preaching about the American dream puts the onus on failing to achieve it on those who don't, an increasing number of people, most of whom strive nobly everyday despite playing with the odds stacked against them. This rhetoric of empowerment sounds good put does nothing to fix the problem; Republicans don't invest in the American people. They blame those who haven't for their failures rather than providing them with opportunities, thereby creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Until Republicans actually show that the believe in their narrative and accept investments in education, infrastructure, job training programs, and a refined social safety net (as opposed to no social safety net), then they are guilty of what Mitt Romney proved they were guilty of - dismissing half the country without considering what steps we could take as a society to empower the infamous 47% of moochers; that number, by the way, is a lie.
The Republican issue can be boiled down simply. They fit facts to their world view rather than adapting their world view to facts. There is no denying that Democrats are guilty of some of these things, no one would deny that liberal politicians lie or struggle with facts, but one party is far guiltier of this than the other, and the Republican narrative, which is at its root a good one - empower the people - has become massively corrupted by their refusal to acknowledge that if we are going to create a society in which individuals feel as though they have the means to take a risk and do something great, we must have equality of opportunity. This is far different from equal outcomes for which we should not be striving, but Republicans are content to let many Americans languish and blame them for being lazy. It's a worldview unique to a group of people who are increasingly disconnected from reality.
I would be a Republican if they actually put forth policies designed to create equal opportunity, if they really believed in small-government, market-oriented solutions to problems and presented budgets based around investing wisely, cutting waste including in the defense budget, and reforming entitlements. If they were willing to apply those solutions to problems such as global warming without denying that the earth is getting hotter. I would be a Republican if they gave up on outdated economic ideology and stopped trying to convince us that if we only give the rich more the rest of us may get a little too. None of these things are impossible. There are actually Republicans talking about some of these things, but alas, as a group, they party is nowhere close to changing its ideas or its image, and as a result, I am nowhere close to becoming a Republican. Too bad for them, much of the rest of the country isn't either.
very nice, dude
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