...enough electrons have died in a collective effort to adequately capture the ridicule that the whole idea of
the new Republican sensing effort known as the National Council for a New America deserves that I won't go there. Wouldn't be right; wouldn't be the sort of thing that a church elder like myself should engage in. No, I believe in reaching out and helping my fellow Americans in their time of trouble. In that light, helpful advice is what is in order...
Since I have to travel occasionally in the line of work, I understand how hard it can be to be alone in a strange city away from my family. There is a clear path, it seems to me, to help the members of this blue ribbon panel to avoid this unpleasant experience since Heaven knows McCain and Romney deserve some time off the road and Jindal needs to take a break from dragging all those heavy bags of campaign contributions back from all those fund-raising trips he's been making all over the United States. The panel members could probably avoid a great deal of separation from their families that love them and miss them by doing two simple things:
1) Have the Council staff round up all the reputable deep-drilled political polling results dating from Jan. 1 to Nov. 4 of last year, for every state and district where Republicans lost when they were thinking they had a shot at winning. This information could be sent - along with the speeches, talking points, platforms, and commercials by each Democratic and Republican candidate in each race - to the panel member's home e-mail addresses, where they could sit in their sumptuously appointed dens and study the information at their leisure.
2) Ask Roger Ailes (the bad one) to burn some DVD's of FAUX news coverage and talk shows covering that same time period and send them next-day-air to each of the panel members to watch either on their massive flat panel TV's or on their computers (John McCain's daughter could probably help his with the technical aspects of this one and maybe even supply some pithy New Republican commentary at the same time, kind of like a live version of those "background information" segments that any movie DVD worth its salt has anymore).
It should be relatively simple - dare one say it, child's play - to be able to compare what their candidates and their official cable network mouthpiece were saying compared to what actually mattered to the American voter. There is, however, an ever-so-slim chance the members of this top-notch blue ribbon panel may not be able to tease out what these particular tea leaves are actually trying to tell them; after all, they and the rest of the party had all of this information in front of them in real time during the campaign and couldn't figure it out. Maybe in the quiet comfort of familiar settings, they will be able to move outside the box a bit, though, and reach that much-needed political epiphany that has so far escaped them and at the same time reduce their individual and collective carbon footprint a bit (OK, so maybe not so much for Jindal, who seems intend on visiting every state in the nation in his effort to not run for president, as Bryan at
Why Now? would say)...
Assuming the members of the blue ribbon panel either aren't interested, capable, or willing to save themselves time away from home by employing the simple steps listed above, they will need to address a few items that will be vitally necessary in order for them to get a true sense of What Americans Want. In fact, if they hope to derive any meaningful value from this journey on which they are about to embark, there are things that they just simply must do:
A) Schedule all travel, lodging, and rental cars through an on-line 'cheap fares' site (I use Orbitz, but there many other fine sites available). Make sure to select the cheapest possible ticket prices, the lowest-cost lodging, and the least expensive rental car. If they need to get in touch with real American people, might as well start off by scheduling travel the same way real American people do, even if it means facing that second layover be an eleven-hour stint in the Salt Lake City airport and the drive from the destination airport at 4:15 am to the CheapBox one-star motel on the outskirts of town is in a Ford Focus (which is a fine American-made car owned by many real American people, by the way)...
B) Travel alone. No staff to make smooth the path; no detours to VIP lounges or special TSA treatment. Find your own gates, boys; get your own luggage, secure your own car and drive to your own motel. The rest of us do it all the time; heck, my college sophomore daughter has done it several times even though she never previously had never flown or been further east than the Orygun/Idaho border. You can do it, too...
C) Only hold forum/town hall meetings in places where Republicans lost. Any meeting held in any Congressional district currently served by a Republican or in any state where the majority of State and Federal office-holders are part of the current crop of Republicans are a waste of time and precious non-renewable energy resources (back to that carbon footprint thing). Anyone who schedules or countenances such a useless venue should be forced to read and write a book report on "
An Inconvenient Truth" and watch everything Michael Moore has ever done...
D) Establish strict admittance requirements for those forum/town hall meetings. Allow no one who voted for a Republican candidate within fifty yards of the entrance. Use tear gas, rubber bullets, or Tasers as necessary to drive away anyone who claims to be a Republican voter. These particular control measures obviously won't need to be employed all that much, since registered Republicans are only slightly less rare than leprechauns these days, but - still - take no chances. These people have little FAUX News icons for eye pupils and will only want to talk about birth certificates, abortion, and gay marriage. The panel can throw them a bone by setting up Free Speech zones somewhere on the far side of the next county (something that Republicans can do in their sleep anymore after eight years of Gee Dub) , surrounded by cyclone fencing and heavily armed local law enforcement personnel (again, staff "in their sleep" work), and hirelings toting dummy FAUX News minicams so these folks think they actually matter, a myth that the most recent election effectively dispelled...
E) Don't ask those assembled groups of Americans "what do you want"; ask them "why do we suck?" "What do you want" isn't a serious question; the American people have expressed pretty clearly in the last two election cycles what they want and Republicans haven't fit very comfortably into that picture. The whole "National Council for a New America" thing may turn out to be more than a dog and pony show if they actually ask the latter question of real Americans who would rather personally pump their own septic tanks than vote for a Republican candidate. Pay attention; take notes; don't make sourpuss faces when they criticize all those useless tax-cut plans, taxation and fund raising policies (
ahem...Haley) or ridicule lame observations about
"volcano monitoring" (especially if you are anywhere in the Pacific Time Zone, Piyush - fair warning and all that). The blue ribbon panel has a couple of strikes against it before the boys even steps into the batter's box (and that's strike number one, "boys"). That other strike is a blue ribbon panel comprised of a failed Republican presidential primary nominee who only struck sparks with the voting public as a result of a story about a dog with stomach problems strapped to the top of the family car, a failed Republican general election presidental nominee who has a great war hero backstory but sometimes appears to be something of an unaimed loose cannon, a likely future Republican presidental primary nominee who scared children during his response to Obama's SOTU address and doesn't come across as a deep thinker in any case, a guy who has a checkered history as Republican National Committee chairman and Mississippi Governor, and the son who Mom and Dad probably wish would have gone on to be President of the United States instead of his brother. There's also the complicating factor that not a single one of these panel members could even most charitably be considered the sort of "moderate" Republican that would have any hope of successfully reaching out to the vast majority of American voters who have rendered that classic Epic Fail verdict on their party over the last couple of elections...
I believe that these natural disadvantages can be overcome if the members of the National Council for a New America blue ribbon panel will simple follow my humbly offered suggestions. I furthermore believe that democracy is best served by competing parties offering compelling and realistic alternative solutions to the problems facing the United States (which, of course, automatically disqualifies most of the Republican party, including pretty much all of the panel members as well as intriguing and highly visible outliers like Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul, right off the bat). In that spirit, I think that a great deal of public value could come from this blue ribbon panel if only it will institute my suggestions, and that's why I'm here to help. That's the kind of guy I am...
