Top Five Dumbest Ideas Republicans Had On The Road Back To Relevance

Top Five Dumbest Ideas Republicans Had On The Road Back To Relevance

Brian Beutler

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1. "The Change You Deserve"

This one goes back more than two years, when the slim Democratic majority in Congress was going toe-to-toe on a daily basis with the Bush administration, and Republicans were in free fall. Republican leadership created a new message: Change You Deserve. <...>

2. Hip Hop GOP LOL

Maybe Michael Steele felt sorry for his allies on the Hill after their failures. Or maybe he thought it would be better if the hounds of mockery chased him instead of elected officials. Whatever the reason, he too took a stab at creating a new GOP Maybe he should have called it GOP two-point-baller. "We want to convey that the modern-day GOP looks like the conservative party that stands on principles," Steele told the Washington Times. "But we want to apply them to urban-suburban hip-hop settings."

"It will be avant garde, technically," he posited. "It will come to the table with things that will surprise everyone - off the hook." For good measure: "I don't do 'cutting-edge.' That's what Democrats are doing. We're going beyond cutting-edge." And then he stomped off to take cool pictures with his interns.

3. Cantor's Comeback?

If at first you don't succeed, try the exact same thing over again without making any changes. Or so the saying apparently goes in House Republican Caucus meetings. After "Change You Deserve" died, and Obama swept into office, Republicans created a new initiative last Spring: The National Council for a New America. NCNA was the brainchild of Eric Cantor -- long engaged in a leadership struggle with Minority Leader John Boehner -- meant to counter the Democrats' "party of no" mantra. One ingredient that may have spoiled that effort: Republicans continued voting no on everything.

Another spoiler? It may have violated House ethics rules. NCNA was disbanded after about a year.

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4. The Budget That Wasn't

<...> Not to be outdone, Republicans decided to draw up a plan of their own. Except what they unveiled -- an 18-page glossy white paper of ideas with no actual budget numbers -- made them the laughing stock of wonks and Democrats everywhere.<...>

5. The Budget That Might Have Been

What was that anonymous GOP aide talking about when he said leadership threw Paul Ryan, House Republicans' top budget guy, under the bus? Ryan's been something of a prop for the GOP: a policy guy who they hold forth as an emblem of Republican thinking and big ideas -- until those ideas come under scrutiny and they throw him under the bus. Over the course of months, Ryan had put together a series of policy changes (tax and entitlement cuts, mostly) that he claimed would bring America into fiscal balance over the course of decades. A "Roadmap for America's Future."

His ambitious plan made a splash when it was first unveiled: praised by conservatives, and held forth by Democrats as a serious but flawed Republican plan to slash Medicare. So Republicans ran away from it. Then experts took a look at it and concluded it would probably wreck the economy if it was ever enacted. So much for new ideas, and new faces.