Reince Priebus’s Terrible Case for GOP Reform

by Michael Tomasky Jun 17, 2013 4:45 AM EDT

The RNC chairman’s weekend speech to a “teavangelical” convention demonstrated why Republican efforts to moderate are going nowhere. By Michael Tomasky.

Occasionally, I lose my bearings and permit myself an ounce of sympathy for Republican chairman Reince Priebus. I mean, that’s quite an asylum he’s trying to run. Then I remember (usually in about four seconds) that no one is making him, and I resume the normal contempt posture. I went through this ritual again over the weekend as I watched Priebus’s speech to the Faith and Freedom Coalition. The speech made headlines for the chairman’s promise to shorten the primary calendar and move the convention forward, but it was actually noteworthy because it was painfully clear that Priebus is scared to death of Ralph Reed’s “teavangelicals,” a fact that does not bode well for his much-publicized movement to build a less intolerant GOP.

Priebus took the stage to the kind of applause one might associate with a Broadway understudy filling in for the star—a vague curiosity, a few dollops of encouragement from the kinder souls, but mostly suspicion. This is because, to the rabble-rousers Reed can manage to convene these days, Priebus is Da Man. Mr. Establishment. A sellout, a puller of strings, a molly-coddler of the Roves and other consultants who would have the party sell its soul in exchange for a softer image. He twice had to reassure the audience as he made his case and listed his points that “this is not an establishment takeover,” it’s just common sense or some such.

I loved the way he started: “I just wanna let you know. I’m a Christian. I’m a believer. God lives in my heart. And I’m for changing minds, not changing values. Are you with me?” That was intended as an applause line. To call the response indifferent would be so kind as to be irresponsible.

And that one sentence, about changing minds not values, was as close as Priebus ever got to saying to this caucus of 17th-century minds that the Republican Party ought, to use the preferred euphemism, to modernize. Think of that for a moment: Priebus’s great crusade, supposedly, is to show America that his party is not stuck in the 1950s (or sometimes 1850s). When he is speaking to mainstream journalists and others outside the movement, this is what he tends to emphasize. But here he spoke to a right-wing audience. The truth is that this audience needs to hear that message a lot more than mainstream audiences do. But it is precisely to this audience that Priebus chose not to say one clear word, only one vague sentence.

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/17/reince-priebus-s-terrible-case-for-gop-reform.html