McConnell Tells GOP "We have to adapt"

Speaking to the winter meeting of the GOP Kentucky's Mitch McConnell said this:

"We're all concerned about the fact that the very wealthy and the very poor, the most and least educated, and a majority of minority voters, seem to have more or less stopped paying attention to us. And we should be concerned that, as a result of all this, the Republican Party seems to be slipping into a position of being more of a regional party than a national one.

"Now, in politics, there is a name for a regional party: It's called a minority party. And I didn't sign up to be a member of a regional party. I know you didn't either,"

Of course McConnell was speaking to a group still suffering from shell shock after losing the White House and the Congress last November.  McConnell is very smart and he was no doubt keenly aware of their feelings.  As such he was exploiting their pre-disposition to believe that they had done something wrong, combining in his remarks words which played to their lust for regaining what they incorrectly perceived as a loss of respect among a majority of the American people.

As a cure for their ills McConnell said this:

"… My concern is that unless we do something to adapt, our status as a minority party may become too pronounced for an easy recovery,"

First let me be clear.  McConnell spends most of his time inside the beltway of Washington DC.  He hobknobs with the east coast snobbery who poo-poo things like, guns, religion, being pro-life and patriotic. And I am not talking only east coast democrats, the New England bunch of republicans are not much better at accepting these planks in our platform either.

Oh, trust me, McConnell knows what the red-blue county by county maps look like following the November elections.  He knows all too well that by and large America is still very much covered by red ink, not only on the map, but also on our balance sheet.

But he knows that as the most powerful republican in the nation right now, he has it within his grasp to move the party in the direction he wants it to go.  Question is, why the hell would we want to go there?  Just to win elections, to win favor with the "Rockefeller Republicans", so McConnell can get invited to the White House for wagyu steak and vodka martinis?

McConnell is urging the GOP to "adapt".  Do you know what adapt means?

adapt

verb

1.  make fit for or change to suit a new purpose.

Is he serious?  Who thinks we need a new purpose in the GOP?  If we abandon our current purpose, to advance the cause of conservatism, then to whom will we look in Washington or elsewhere to represent us?  Who can we then count on to stand up for the rights of the unborn, to defend the Second Amendment, to step up and loudly proclaim that we are still a nation "under God"?

No, Mitch, sorry.  I know that it is key to having power that you must win elections.  And I know that you are a master at that process.  But the first order of business is not winning elections at any cost, the first order of business is finding men and women of PRINCIPLE to become involved, to run, to vote, to go door to door, to give money and to take it upon themselves to right this ship of state guided by their conscience, not their lust for power and its trappings.

We are engaged in a monumental struggle to set the agenda for this nation.  We did not lose the White House because the conscience of America has changed, we lost the White House because the candidate we ran was weak on conservative principles, because we allowed democrats to vote in republican primaries, because we have not, other than talk radio, brought media bias under control and because a vote for Obama became one way in which many disenfranchised voters could feel like they were part of making history.

Many of Obama's voters were swept up in the "awe" of it all.  That will soon be over.  And sooner or later you and the other old white guys at the GOP need to get with the program, recognize the power and influence of the "new media", stand up boldly for what makes America strong, quit playing footsie with the liberals and start doing battle for our principles.

"Adapt" you say?  Sounds like surrender to me.

Comments

AMEN!!!

[bro43]

Forever and ever.

[BimBeau]

Marc - Let all Republicans honor your vision.
PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Eschew McConnell, after all he's Howdy Doody, the Clown prince of Capitol Hill and DunDee Avenue.
He is correct about the social and political Darwinism at work here. Darwin didn't hypothesize that the strong survive - often they don't. His hypothesis is that the successful adapt. We all know the deeply rooted distrust of real science espoused by your (collective) conservative movement and its reliance on pseudoscience promoted by fundamental religiosity.
Dinosaurs like your fundamentalists are STRONG, but dinosaurs refused to adapt. Rats, mice and other mammals adapted, proliferated and other forms of life evolved. You may be accurate when you refer to me as a real rat!!!!!!!
Your admonition to your faithful to be strong and to resist change and to resist adaptivity is welcome.

Thank you for such a fervent defense of your vision.

Remember:
No choice; no capitalism, no democracy -
Choice is not an option it is a way of life!
.

I hope the Republicans in KY open their eyes next time around to the hypocrisy of our so called "leader" in the Senate.

Marc - Crowley in today's had more that would fit the "adapt" mode. Not giving up on pricipals, but explaining R values to African Amer and Hispainics