Selling Buggy Whips On The Road To Nowhere

Excerpted from "Road To  Nowhere", by Michael Grunwald, published in the 2/11/13 issue of Time.
For the full article, click the link:
http://www.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,2135136,00.html

The Road To Nowhere

GOP elites have admitted that the party isn't producing enough angry old white guys for them to win national elections, that they can't be the party of no, or the Tea Party, or the stupid party.  That's progress!

Some Republicans have concluded that what needs to change is the electorate.  So they're pushing more of the voter ID laws they designed to suppress Democratic turnout in 2012.  But reality-based Republicans understand that banana-republic shenanigans won't restore their majority.

These days, the party line is that Republicans need to change their "tone" and shouldn't make repulsive comments about rape, question Obama's birth certificate, brag about their unwillingness to compromise, suggest that 47% of their fellow citizens are moochers, or ridicule the First Lady's efforts to promote healthy eating.

Again, this is progress.  But while it may be comforting to blame salesmanship rather than product, Republicans need to change what they're selling.  They're selling buggy whips.  Undeterred by the Iraq debacle, the meltdown of 2008 or the warming of the planet, they're still peddling rah-rah neoconservatism, deregulation and climate denial.

And it's not clear how a GOP that has shed its centrists can offer a more modern product when its anti-government base punishes any deviation from the buggy whip line.