Young people chose Democrats. African-Americans chose Democrats. Suburban voters chose Democrats. Middle class wage earners chose Democrats, and thought they’d be more likely to cut middle class taxes than Republicans. Hispanics chose Democrats.
So to reboot our Republican Party into a majority party again, we’re meeting at…the HOMESTEAD?
Far away from most of Virginia, well above the costs of the exact people we say we want to be active in the Party (it is a fundraiser, you know). Want to know how many people, the exact people who have either left the Republican Party or say that the Party left them can afford to travel to the Homestead and pop for a room during the Christmas shopping season.
The location of the advance used to rotate (we did an awful lot better back then, come to think of it).
Sure, the Homestead is nice. It’s very nice. It proclaims on its website to have played host to “Presidents and princes.” But for a Party stamped with the tag of the party of rich, white guys, isn’t our Advance too much of a playing to type?
And doesn’t a meeting in Hot Springs for a Party that needs a serious rebound from 3 years of electoral drubbings sound a bit too similar to billionaire Auto executives flying in private jets to Washington to ask for a bailout?
We’re going to need a full scale effort to turn our party around. Most of the nation won’t need to show results until 2010. We’re on the stage next year, friends. We have less than a year to turn this around. We should be broadening our tent and not basking in our selectivity.
Our usual leadership style of standing on the top of the mountain and expecting the voters to climb won’t work.
And the Homestead doesn’t make the mountain any smaller.
