I have touched a few times before on the GOP’s 2013 Autopsy report following Mitt Romney’s 2012 spanking by Barack Obama. It has always been done in a kind of background, comparative way. But in light of current events, and the shaping up of the 2024 election, I want to do a deeper dive into what enacting the autopsy report would have entailed, and how it may have affected the dynamics of the 2024 race.
I’d like to start with a brief review of the 2013 GOP Autopsy Report, since it was 13 years ago, and most of you probably didn’t pay it much mind. I did. In fact I was so impressed with it that I read it twice.
What impressed me was the fact that the report was an almost amazingly 37 pages long, and those 37 pages were brutally short and to the point. This is almost unheard of in such exercises in futility. Normally, whomever is tasked with authoring the report goes into it already knowing the preconceived prejudices and opinions of those paying for the report, so it is nothing but a search for sacrificial lambs, the orthodoxy of the party’s ideology left blameless.
RNC Chair Reince Priebus gave the authors free rein to be honest, and offer concrete, workable solutions to make the GOP a more competitive national party going forward. He asked for it, and he got it.
The report basically found that the GOP had become a fringe party, with multiple tassels. Over the years the GOP had become beholden to three disparate and distinct fringe groups. Firs there were the neo-Nazi Klansmen racists. Then there were the scared, older, lower education and income white voters, and then the refried Jesus wheezers. And once they had attracted them, over time the party’s platform and ideology morphed exclusively to retain those groups.
Which is a nightmare scenario. The actuarial table was in the process of winnowing out their old, scared white base. As America becomes more inclusive, the racist population continues to dwindle, as even southern young people, more tolerant than their parents and grandparents, ditch the old dogma. And the Evangelical movements are for the most part undergoing their own crises of faith about their own orthodoxies and restrictions.
The killer for the GOP was that in pandering to those fringe groups, their own platform and orthodoxy had become similarly bigoted and restricted. America is becoming younger, browner, more feminine, and more racially and sexually tolerant every year. And the GOP’s platforms and policies make it literally impossible to attract the kind of younger, fresher blood they desperately need to refresh and replenish the party. The GOP was dying of senescence.
The autopsy report had a specific plan, and estimated that it would take two national presidential cycles to complete. And for once, the plan didn’t require billions pf dollars and complicated matrices and algorithms to work. All it took was time, common sense, and commitment.
Enough of ancient history, let’s have some fun and get down to the nuts and bolts. The first part of the plan was for the party to spend at least the first two years gently disassociating themselves from their undesirable fringe elements. This might seem like a kind of a bitch. After all, how do you gently disassociate yourself from people you’ve spent decades courting and coveting?
Fist of all, you gently stop communicating with them and spouting off their inane claptrap. Then you start announcing policies and positions that are directly antithetical to their own beliefs. When you start talking about welcoming blacks, queers, transgenders and gays into the party, and then don’t take their calls of outrage, they’ll slip you double barrel birds and go muttering back under their rocks.
Then comes the hard part. You have to actually f*cking mean it! You have to loudly and frequently announce these new platforms and policies, and then the incumbents have to go out there and preach the word. And that is what would have taken the most time, making people actually believe that you’re serious. You’d actually have to welcome Latinos and blacks, gays and transgenders, and then actually listen to them. And take their feelings and opinions into account when you were holding your internal discussions and debates. And once they started listening, then you could send the younger acolytes and converts into the streets and the universities to try to convert them to the kinder, gentler conservative GOP.
Now, let’s bring this bus around to the current 2024 cycle, and the possible implications. If there’s one thing that almost all Americans can agree on right now, it’s that they don’t want a Trump-Biden rematch in 2024! Democrats, Republicans, Independents, they’re all sick of politics as usual, two old white farts running for the presidency.
But if the RNC had had the balls and the vision to back Chairman Reince Priebus and start the transition to remodel the GOP into a more nationally competitive model, then There would have been no Donald Trump! Which would have led us, by GOP design and admission, almost certainly to a two term Hillary Clinton -presidency. A bitter pill for the GOP to swallow, but a necessary one to ensure their long term viability as a party.
But here’s the McGuffin. If the GOP had swallowed that bitter pill, and taken their lumps, and seriously revamped their party for the 21st century, where would we be right now? At the end of a two term Clinton presidency, with an older white dude, Tim Kaine waiting to take up the mantle. But what about the GOP side?
We would likely be seeing a spirited GOP primary that isn’t even over yet, containing a younger, more moderate, tolerant breed of Republicans like Nikki Haley, Will Hurd, and Jeff Flake all vying for the nomination. And all without a slobbering MAGA base trying to mick up the works, since the Autopsy Report reclamation would have precluded Trump from getting the nomination in 2016. By my reckoning, the Democrats would also be in the middle of a spirited primary election, with Kaine being unlikely to become the eventual mantle carrier. And on both sides the transition to the younger guard would be complete.
Now granted, this is all speculative conjecture, but you have to admit, it rings plausible. If the GOP had chosen the wise path, took the short term hit for long term viability, there would most likely have been a two term President Clinton, and no President Biden. And with an Iron Lady like Clinton, Putin may well never have invaded Ukraine. But the dynamics of this election, as well as the world in general would be vastly different, and better. You would have two vibrant, modern political parties, exerting that push-and-pull legislatively that democracy thrives on. And best of all, no Marjorie Taylor Greene or Lauren Boebert.
But instead the GOP went for one last hurrah before facing the inevitable journey into the wilderness, and nominated Traitor Tot. I honestly believe that the GOP powers that be never actually realized the depths of his insanity and psychosis, and found themselves tethered to an unhinged madman. But what the hell, at least he was their madman.
And now, if Biden is reelected, the GOP, or what’s left of it can’t even start their grand reclamation project until January of 2025. But where Reince Priebus and the 2013 GOP only had to deal with Nazis, Klansmen, scared old white farts, and Evangelical wingnuts, but whomever tries to clean up this blivet starting next January will also have an entrenched MAGAt faction to fumigate. I’m figuring that this adds at least one cycle to their reclamation project, if it works at all.
As ye sow, so shall ye reap. Nice job, morons.
I thank yhou for the privilege of your time.
