Shellacked: How the Virginia GOP Starts To Recover
It’s clear, after the shellacking that the Virginia Republican Party received Tuesday night, that the Virginia GOP is broken close to beyond repair. The Party must do some soul searching and start to do the following immediately to begin the process of being successful.
1. Trump killed the Party. We must begin to allow for more anti-Trump voices to have a say and be heard. We lost not because of how far we ran from Trump, but how close we became. The time to break from Trump is NOW.
2. We must have a message of ideas and effectively communicate those ideas. Instead of calling all Democrats socialists, how about we tell people what we are for and how we can solve the real problems of people. For example, how about we talk about how to fix the DMV, build better roads, support a better way to get around Virginia without a vehicle, find ways to support education and give power back to teachers, establish common sense gun and health care policies that are designed to help and save people, and, finally, ways to encourage businesses to not only start up, but stay open.
3. We must end conventions forever. Primaries are inclusive where we can hear all voices and allow people to build their campaigns and test them in the pubic eye. We will not win ever again in Virginia if we close ourselves off to a few hard core activists to select our nominee.
4. We have to stop attacking each other and end the term “RINO.” Attacking each other for our different views on how our party should go is not a welcoming way to build the party. If we want to grow our tent then we must grow the ideas that we allow in the tent.
5. Virginia and the country are closer to the middle and not the extremes. We are a center right/left country and state. The party for far too long has lived in the Fox News bubble that has made it nearly impossible to see the greater perspective of the country and the Commonwealth. This bubble has prevented the party from seeing the middle and pushed us far to the right.
In the coming weeks and months I will be talking about the road ahead, but these five things are what the Virginia GOP must do starting on November 6th in order to begin to rebuild from the shellacking we took on November 5th.
