Staff/Laura Moon
CUMBERLAND — Pollster and political consultant Matt Towery told a group of about 125 people at the Cobb Chamber of Commerce’s Chairman’s Club Luncheon on Wednesday that it was time for the Republican Party to leave Ronald Reagan behind.
Political consultant Heath Garrett moderated a discussion between Towery and Mercer University economics professor Roger Tutterow before a group that lunched at the Cobb Galleria.
“The ghost of Ronald Reagan is finally going to have to leave the Republican Party,” Towery said. “We can’t keep clinging to the hope that we’re going to have a Reaganesque morning in America.”
Towery compared it to the Democrats holding on to FDR until it resulted in their nominee being Walter Mondale.
“We’ve got to see on the Republican side a reinvention of the wheel,” Towery said. “It has to be more inclusive of Hispanic Latinos. It has to drop some of the social issues.”
Towery said when he saw Florida exit polls coming from the Cuban American community, long a mainstay of the Republican Party, that had Romney only five or six points ahead, it is a cause for alarm.
“That’s significant trouble because that’s your most loyal Republican base,” Towery said. “If the party doesn’t deal with that, and you can’t do it by saying, ‘seal the borders and throw everybody out,’ because if you say that you’re saying to them, ‘you don’t belong here in the United States of America.’ So I think there’s going to have to be a reinvention of how do you deal with these issues without simply trying to appeal to the red meat of one core part of the Republican Party.”
Towery said a huge mistake Romney made was failing to choose U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla) as his running mate for vice president. Rubio would have made it easier to win Florida, freeing up the money and time spent in Florida to focus on Virginia, Ohio and Colorado.
The panel also took questions from the audience, among them Clark Hungerford of Vinings Bank, who asked about the impact of the tea party movement.
Garrett, who served as U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson’s former chief of staff, said there are four political issues Republicans need to tackle: the generational gap, the gender gap, the diversity gap, and the fight between the tea party movement and the establishment.
“The new definition by the tea party of the establishment is ‘anybody who’s been elected one day longer than I am,’” he said. “You can’t have that kind of anarchist, ‘throw the bums out even if they’ve only been in office for a couple of weeks’ mentality.”
“If you look back, we should have won the U.S. Senate in 2010, a historic election for Republicans, and we lost it because of the tea party-supported nominees for United States Senate. They did not fit the states where they were running, whether you agree with them and their positions or not. … We were projected to win 54 U.S. Senate seats this year, and a conservative PAC who supported seven upstart tea party nominees for the U.S. Senate got them nominated and lost seven of nine. You just can’t look at that and go ‘OK, that means anybody with the tea party needs to be nominated by the Republican Party at every state in the country’ and expect us to actually win the majority.”
It takes 50 percent plus one in order to govern, Garrett said.
“We now have two data-driven election cycles to show that it’s great to be out there and claim pure principle. But at the end of the day if you’re not winning, so we got to come up with a different formula,” Garrett said.
Towery, who said he agreed with Garrett’s analysis, said he expected to see a war between the establishment and nonestablishment Republicans.
“This is what some of these folks are going to write, they’re going to say ‘we are tired of nominating these people who don’t represent the quote real Republican Party,’” Towery said.
Chamber CEO David Connell asked about the impact of the Benghazi attack and Hurricane Sandy on the election.
Towery said he never understood why Romney soft-pedaled the Benghazi controversy. Perhaps they were afraid that Obama had a piece of intelligence that could make Romney look foolish if he stepped out on the ledge of that issue, Towery said. As for the storm, it froze the momentum that Romney picked up after Obama’s fumbled the first debate. The glowing remarks New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie had for Obama didn’t help Romney either, Towery said.
Tutterow offered up some gloomy news for what the next four years of an Obama presidency will look like.
“Clearly last night was a bad night for the banking industry,” Tutterow said, noting the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was here to stay.
It didn’t help that Democrat Elizabeth Ann Warren, known for going after financial institutions, unseated Republican Sen. Scott Brown in Massachusetts.
Also here to stay is Obama’s health care law, Tutterow said.
“If there was a chance at rolling back Obamacare, it probably died last night,” he said. “Once it gets further integrated with the economy, it’s going to be harder to take it away.”
And one or two U.S. Supreme Court justices are likely to retire in the next four years, giving Obama the opportunity to replace them with justices who can impact economic and political policies for decades to come.
“Republicans are going to have to have a very honest dialogue with themselves about two issues,” Tutterow said.
One is: Does their base need to change? The other is their economic platform. Campaigning on a platform to reduce taxes may no longer be effective. While Reagan was a master at convincing people that such a program would lift all boats, that message didn’t work this time, Tutterow said.
One of the reasons Romney lost in the blue-collar communities of Ohio and parts of Wisconsin and in the South is that there is a perception that the Republican proposals are not designed to lift all ships, Tutterow said.
Among those at the luncheon was Cobb Board of Education chairman Scott Sweeney.
“The biggest thing that you walk away from in this is that the Republicans have I think a little bit of a setback, and the important thing is to figure out how they’re going to reach a broader audience and garner their support for conservative issues,” Sweeney said.
Also in attendance was state Rep. Ed Setzler (R-Acworth), chairman of the Cobb Legislative Delegation. Setzler said there was some penetrating analysis on display at the luncheon.
“The one thing that wasn’t mentioned that I think was the core deciding factor in the election is Gov. Romney’s inability to communicate ideas in a way that’s understandable with voters,” Setzler said. “The real story of this election is the Republican Party had tail winds, they had a very competent candidate who had a competent message that was broader than perhaps other candidates had been in the past, but his ability to communicate who he was, what he represented to the average voter just wasn’t there.”
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“The ghost of Ronald Reagan is finally going to have to leave the Republican Party,” Towery said. “We can’t keep clinging to the hope that we’re going to have a Reaganesque morning in America.”
A Reaganesque morning in America is an American morning where both the Democrats and Republicans stop looting the individual citizens of the states. It is a small government that allows the sovereign people to govern themselves.
“We’ve got to see on the Republican side a reinvention of the wheel,” Towery said. “It has to be more inclusive of Hispanic Latinos. It has to drop some of the social issues.”
The Republican Party must reinvent itself back to the party of liberty and small government. If the Republican Party panders to hispanics, it will become the party of welfare giving out FREE stuff like Democrats already do.
"One of the reasons Romney lost in the blue-collar communities of Ohio and parts of Wisconsin and in the South is that there is a perception that the Republican proposals are not designed to lift all ships, Tutterow said.
Tutterow is wrong. Romney lost Ohio in December of 2008 when George Bush bailed-out the car companies and allowed Chairman Maobama to capture the headlines and bail-out the unions.
Pay no attention to these two men. They are wrong.
But, you see, it didn't "lift all boats." What we see is a huge income disparity that grew over time with growth in income and wealth increasingly concentrated in the upper 10%. Cutting those taxes all those years did not "lift all boats." We saw well-paying manufacturing jobs increasingly moved overseas while lower paying service jobs replaced them. That is the first problem with the Republican message.
The second is this. I know a lot of Republican women who are increasingly agitated at what Republicans are doing in this state and nationally that affect women's health. The Issa Committe meetings and the Blount Amendment were horrors. It is important to include contraceptives in health insurance, even that of Catholic affiliated organizations, and it is important that abortions remain legal. (No one likes abortion or wants abortion, but the decision is not one that should involve the government.) There is also an upset over lack of support by Republicans for bills that protect women against violence and for promoting equal pay for women.
Women are adding it all up and are seeing decades of progress being taken away. If Republicans don't address that growing gap with women voters, they can't win elections.
We don't want to be controlled by the government, and we don't want to pay for other people's entitlements. I don't want my hard working children paying for some other kids' baby. My oldest daughter has three jobs and is finally understanding that when she leaves her apartment for work in the morning, the same neighbors are sitting on their balcony smoking and are there when she gets home and there when she leaves for her second job. "They were Obama voters Mom, I just know it." She was probably right.
Based on their recent positions regarding support of Obama Democrats (i.e. Doug Stoner) and supporting and advocating every tax increase or chance to impose new taxes on the Cobb County taxpayers (i.e. SPLOSt/TSPLOST sales tax increases, property tax increases, etc.) they are the epitomy of the disingenuous group known as RINO's.
EL PLAN DE AZTLAN
El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan
In the spirit of a new people that is conscious not only of its proud historical heritage but also of the brutal "gringo" invasion of our territories, we, the Chicano inhabitants and civilizers of the northern land of Aztlan from whence came our forefathers, reclaiming the land of their birth and consecrating the determination of our people of the sun, declare that the call of our blood is our power, our responsibility, and our inevitable destiny.
We are free and sovereign to determine those tasks which are justly called for by our house, our land, the sweat of our brows, and by our hearts. Aztlan belongs to those who plant the seeds, water the fields, and gather the crops and not to the foreign Europeans. We do not recognize capricious frontiers on the bronze continent
Brotherhood unites us, and love for our brothers makes us a people whose time has come and who struggles against the foreigner gabachowho exploits our riches and destroys our culture. With our heart in our hands and our hands in the soil, we declare the independence of our mestizo nation. We are a bronze people with a bronze culture. Before the world, before all of North America, before all our brothers in the bronze continent, we are a nation, we are a union of free pueblos, we are Aztlan.
Por La Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada.
Good old Matt is smarter than you.
It wasn't so much democratic ideals or the Republicans would have lost the House of Reps and would not have increased in the number of republican governors.
Republicans are right in their beliefs. They need to start now communicating their ideals with hispanics and blacks. They also need a strong effort to define their ideals instead of letting the media spin them.
I have never took much of what Towery says to heart. He basically toes the moderate line to keep getting TV air time.
That's is why your guy lost.
I don't recall Mitt (who was promoted by the so-called moderates of the party, btw) introducing anything about social issues. He just didn't do a good job of responding to them and re-directing to the issue of greatest importance at the moment, the economy!
Hispanics, btw, are among the MOST conservative people in the nation! They truly value their families and faith. Republicans SHOULD reach out to them on that basis and make as a prime focus making the immigration process easier!
Frankly, Mr Towery's mindset screwed us up in 2008 by giving us Milktoast McCain. The Republican party failed to energize the base about Romney, resulting in an even lower turn out this go round.
Repubs, create a pro-business, pro-employee, pro-legal-immigrant platform standing for creating opportunity for all, then focus on turning out your base! It worked for Reagan because it was genuine. People like Towery just aren't.
The fact the the Obama administration let 4 Americans die in Libya (the last 2 were killed 7 hours later)then they lied and covered it up! The media should have NEVER let them get away with it!!!
I just pray we still exist after Obama gets through.
SHAME ON YOU, the MEDIA!!!!
Maybe Obama hired him as part of the Muslim outreach so important to this White House.
The Republican platform grossly contradicts itself, so you can hardly take them seriously.
Only those who get thumped on the head regularly can buy into Republicanism: Smaller Government, except of course for all these "social issues" which require Way Bigger And Intrusive Government.
Also, the Republicans should stop with their "Givers" and "Takers" diatribe. Most everyone is well aware that the federal dollar flow goes FROM Blue TO Red: Blue gives money, Red takes it.
It's time for the Republicans to reinvent themselves. If they keep on keeping on, they won't even be able to win the Old Condeferacy much longer. They will have to change names from the Republican Party to Flyover Party.
Good luck fellas. Michelle absolutely is going to beat you in 2016 unless you dump your religious, well, Christian zealotry, misogyny and white supremacy subtext (which,, yes, all describes you to a Tea, no matter what your Tmedia tells you).
Aim for streamlining immigration, without creating amnesty! The existing process has been made a bureaucratic mess, motivating people to bypass it!
What if a streamlined single page form could be created that required two domestic sponsors (eg - an employer and a creditor such as a utility), background check, etc., and allowed a two-year window for illegals to apply? After two years, you are either accepted in or processed for deportation.
The Republican Party cannot survive as a bastion for disgruntled white men! The Party of "No" has been told no. Let's start working together so that we can make this country great again. A house divided always falls.
to @Social Moderate...Amen!
Romney presented at least as much of his plan as did Obama, who has none. Obama ran on negative advertising, and my question is, we are told people hate that and want unity, yet Obama won on that. Can anyone explain why?
No, Obama won strictly on race, because they cheated in key precincts down to the county level and because they suppressed the military vote. Dems follow the Al Capone-Saul Alinsky model, and the Cobb Chamber is learning to do so as well.
The GOP has had their head in the sand regarding the American voter base for years. The base has changed for the good. The GOP has failed to embrace that change and they want to hold onto the idea that we are a white/Christian nation only. That is why the GOP lost this election and the one before that.
It is going to take years for the GOP to re-brand themselves and if they stopped listenting to these knumbskulls like Rush and O'Rielly and DA King, they would be better off, much better off.
Many in the GOP are political dinosaurs such as Paul Ryan, Newt Gingrich, Todd Akin, Scott Brown, Richard Mourdock, Allen West, Mitt Romney and we all know what happened to the dinosaurs.
To those who prayed for the right man to win the presidential contest, thank you, the right man won.
Don't you have a job--always on the computer lately with your canned talking points from the National Democrat party.
Sure, spare me those hypocritical crocodile tears--you don't give a d--- about the Republican party! What you want is an milquetoast me-too echo so that you can preen about the new society you imagine that you have created.
Save your breath. We are not giving up--no matter how you engage in bullying or what losers (real losers like Towery--why did he lose his representive seat, pray tell?) say at the Chamber.
And, say Lib--your side won--isn't that enough? What personal failing compels people like you to emerge as chest-pounding snarks? Remember, lib, pride goeth before a fall.