A New GOP? Not Yet - by Michael Tomasky

Feb 7, 2013 11:12 AM EST

Why it’s going to take four more years before Republicans truly hit rock bottom—and begin moving back to the center. By Michael Tomasky.

You remember the famous Bertolt Brecht line about how the government should just “dissolve the people and elect another”? I keep thinking about it as I read more and more about the Republican attempts at redefinition—Eric Cantor’s speech, Karl Rove’s new group, Fox’s quasi makeover, Marco Rubio’s beer with Ben Smith, and so on. They have all these fancy ideas about how to rebrand. But they can have all the fancy ideas they want. They still have an electoral base that sees politics basically as an arena to exact revenge for a series of resentments and grudges. Until they change that, they are stuck—and it isn’t happening anytime soon.

Cantor’s “Make Life Work” speech Tuesday was more about repackaging than rethinking. He put forward one actually excellent idea, for which I give him credit. He proposed that colleges be required to make public data revealing employment and earning patterns among their graduates. Universities fear this to death, for reasons that education expert Kevin Carey explained in an article in the journal I edit, Democracy, as it could ultimately lead to a reduction in tuition costs.

So I applaud that one. Otherwise, the ideas ranged from OK to largely irrelevant to done before to actively bad. You’ve got to hold on to your wallet any time a Republican talks about “modernizing” Medicare. Endorsing a path to citizenship for DREAM Act recipients is fine, but small potatoes. It is interesting, though, as E.J. Dionne observed, that Cantor was mostly playing on the Democrats’ side of the field, talking about using government to improve people’s lives. Noted.

The Rove–Tea Party feud is a joyous thing to watch. Rove, after an utterly disastrous run around the track in 2012, is now suckering people into writing him checks for a new outfit that will allegedly hold the zanies at bay, filter out the Sharron Angles and Richard Mourdocks of the world, and promote electable conservatives.

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