Party Rebranding Quotes

The party was in great disarray as the Tea Party Republicans a movement new to politics tended to be very obstructionist against any proposals or legislation that did not conform to their ideology. They had very little legislative experience and viewed any compromise as an immoral abandonment of principles and ideology. The other republicans were conservative, experienced pragmatists, who were not into continuous confrontation with the Democrats. If the Tea Party did not believe a Republican was ideologically pure enough, they would often run a candidate against the Republican in the next primary election. Often the tea party insurgent would win by taking extreme positions and appealing to the rabid right wing of the party who tend to vote in primaries. But more often than not, the extreme positions the Tea Party candidates took would not appeal to the general electorate, and the Republicans would lose the seat in the general elections. Even if the regular Republican would win in the primary, he/she would have had to take such conservative positions that they were weakened in the general election and their judgment and discretion was limited to the primary election commitments they had made. Ever since the Tea Party elected some members of Congress, that body became more and more ineffective legislatively and passed the fewest laws in the history of Congress. This was fine for the Tea Party ideologues, but harmed the national brand of the Republican party with many different voter constituencies including Blacks, Hispanics, women, young people, intellectuals, and others. At the same time the White males—the backbone of the Republican Party—were demographically becoming a minority of males. The Republicans had not won the popular vote in 27 years, and the elder statesmen of the Republican party strongly urged that the Republican Party stop digging in the hole they had made and step back and reassess the party, its principles, policies and tactics.