The Woes of my Republican Party

What has my Republican Party of Lincoln become and where do we go from here?


Since the birth of this independent country in 1776, our political system has primarily been a two party system which puts both factions at odds with each other in all forms of debates; some social, some political, and some for just the sake of bickering. In a little more than two centuries, our nation has made strides that even our forefathers may have not foreseen. We've made history with various forms of movements that gave the people more power in their hands. We've developed a country that understands national sovereignty in the hands of the people works best; the problem with this though is that we've had far too difficult of a time distinguishing who is part of the American people.

The Democratic party does an effective job in bringing in young voters, college-educated voters, minority voters, catholic voters, union voters and other categories. For my Republican party unfortunately, these voters are typically Democrat-leaning and the numbers will only rise in the future as the minority population goes up, college-education enrollment goes up and various other group populations skyrocket. It's no secret that the recent election in 2008 exposed the not just the weaknesses of my party, but its flaws and mistakes it's accumulated over the past few decades. We abandoned the fundamentals that brought us to the national spotlight in the 18th century. Unfortunately, our party of Reagan and Lincoln is no longer with us and we have no one to blame but ourselves.
Politics is an ugly sport; and like all ugly sports, one must prevail and one must falter. My party has done too much of the latter for the past few years and there is reasoning behind it. I'd like to address just a few of the many reasons why this is so and present what I feel may serve as solutions, difficult as they may be, to my party's predicament.


'Rich White Man's Party'
This belief is the one major barrier to keeping minority groups from voting for several Republican officials. Unfortunately, sincere and selfless Republican officials don't even get acknowledged due to the generalizations made by Republicans past who have not quite embraced the movements of minorities in the past (i.e. Civil Rights and Immigrant protests). While this does not mean all republicans opposed these movements; too many did and failed to acknowledge the future predicaments. The fact of the matter is that most African Americans and Hispanics identify themselves as a group to be more traditional and associate many of their beliefs towards family values and more conservative-minded; something that would typically be an asset and advantage for my Republican party but is canceled out by the grim history of the party towards these two groups. While it is true a Republican president won the civil war and was much of the reason for the emancipation of the slaves, the dire history of the Republican party in the south during the civil rights does away with that. While it is also true that Ronald Reagan signed an amnesty program in the 80's which legalized several undocumented immigrants, the racist remarks and demonizing of the Hispanic community (whether intentional or not, it happened) in the past few years completely erases some of that Hispanic support in states like Florida. My party has come off as too offensive, insensitive and xenophobic in the past few decades and that must change in order to make progress in the future of a nation whose identity is changing. This issue can't be shelved or tabled to be dealt with in the future; that time is now and I urge any Republican who happens to be reading this to acknowledge the mistakes and misconceptions made and created over the past few years. We need to act because the democrats know the situation of the everchanging country and they've jumped on that quite effectively as shown in the statistics of the past election


'Party of Bush'
It's as simple as understanding that Bush was no great president by any means and although there are some things he deserves credit for, it's important to just move on from the Bush era and get back to the drawing board. We need another Reagan revolution where people come to the polls excited to keep a Republican in power. The party of Newt Gingrich, Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan were far different in comparison to the Party of Bush. Let's move on and get to work on portraying the message of accountability and modernity to America. We need innovation and while it may be true that some of the Republican values should stay intact, some need to be done away with and some need to be revamped. Again, we've seen that the past few years and in terms of survival, we must represent the needs and interests of the changing constituency in America.


'Too many oximorons'
Why can't a Republican be both a Republican and progressive? These two things do not need to mean two different things. To be progressive means to obviously make progress in society and the communities; is it so difficult for our Republican representatives to exemplify that and confidently say they do just that?


'Fiscal Conservatism'
The best Republican political victories happened when we ran on a fiscally conservative platform and held that as the message of our entering power over the Democrats. The country appreciates responsibility in our economy and the expenditures of tax money so we must keep true to our platform unlike the years of Bush.


'Focus more on State Rights'
Americans all around the country are infuriated with the increasing size of federal governments; even in blue states is this seen. We must put back more power in the hands of the states and run with that because this is what many concerned Americans are looking for. Federal bureaucracy is growing FAST and as seen in recent poll numbers, this isn't quite a blessing for the majority of Americans.