Reviving the GOP

By GottaLaff

Allow me to throw a few excerpts at you via Douglas MacKinnon, who was Bob Dole's press secretary and a former White House and Pentagon official:

I am a former Republican and now an independent conservative, and what is going on with the GOP right now makes my skin crawl. What has happened to the party of morals, character and traditional beliefs?

Ensign, Sanford and Vitter should join Craig in the private sector and resign immediately. Not because they cheated on their wives but because of their hypocrisy and the sleazy things they've done in concert with their philandering.

Too many of my Republican friends offer excuses: "Democrats do the same thing," they say. But that won't play with the American people. [...]

Now that it's the party on the outside looking in, the GOP has to stop sending out the next candidate in line to chase the largest car going by and instead figure out what it stands for and how to connect with the changing complexion of our nation. That, or prepare for political extinction.

So what can the party do? Two things. Reclaim the principles of honor, decency and morality, and connect with the extremely broad base of Americans who embrace those attributes.

Earlier this year, Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush -- supported by Haley Barbour, John McCain and others -- gathered at a pizza parlor in Arlington, Va., to announce something called the "National Council for a New America." But the true "new America" isn't one inhabited by older, wealthy, white politicians. [...]

To make itself relevant again, the GOP needs to shed the morally bankrupt leaders who have violated the trust of their families and their constituents and embrace a broader base, a broader definition of what it is to be a conservative.

For what it's worth -- and as one who comes from the unwashed masses -- I'd tell the Republican leaders to go silent, get off the screen and get out among the American people for a few months and simply listen. Just listen. By doing so, they just might rediscover their lost convictions.

Not their strong suit, just listening. But if they ever they needed to do that, right now would be a very good time to start.

But from what I'm seeing, they're still doing an awful lot of talking... and talking... and talking.