In 2013, the party sought to reach out to nonwhite voters, but eight years later, it appears to have opted to simply make it more difficult for them to vote.
NASHVILLE is a city in Tennessee. Eight years after attempting to persuade voters who rejected their presidential nominee to reconsider, Republican leaders are taking a different strategy this time: making it more difficult for such people to vote at all.
Mitt Romney’s four-point loss to then-President Barack Obama in 2012 prompted a months-long introspection that culminated in a presentation at the party’s summer gathering in Boston. It urged Republicans to make a better job of reaching out to nonwhite voters, who had overwhelmingly supported Obama and voted for him to be re-elected for a second term.
Yet, when the Republican National Committee gathers in Tennessee for this year’s summer conference, no attempt is being made to prepare any such “autopsy” of Donald Trump’s November 4-point loss to Joe Biden. Instead, party officials are boosting their calls for “election integrity,” echoing Trump’s never-ending falsehoods about the 2020 presidential race being “stolen” from him.
“It’s gone from an autopsy to an assault on democracy,” Stuart Stevens, a key aide in Romney’s 2012 campaign, said. “Rather than putting in the effort to encourage people to vote for you, let us make it more difficult for those who aren’t going to vote for us to vote. That’s exactly what it is.”
Republicans said that the lack of a formal investigation is due to a previous president who does not hesitate to target members of his own party who do not show him complete loyalty.
“They don’t want to irritate him,” said John Ryder, a veteran RNC member from Tennessee who quit the 168-member organization after it was taken over by Trump supporters after his 2016 election.
Romney, a longtime Republican, would never ruin his party over a negative report, according to one prominent RNC member who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Trump is not Romney,” the member pointed out. “There are consequences for stating what most Americans already know.”
Instead, the RNC formed a special committee to monitor its attempts to pass “election integrity” legislation in states throughout the country, which imposes voting restrictions that disproportionately impact poorer and minority areas. The committee convened on Wednesday and plans to release a report the following week. According to RNC leaders and members, the issue is a top concern for the party’s base, who remain loyal to Trump and, according to polls, accept his readily debunked falsehoods that the election was stolen due to rampant voter fraud.
“Everywhere I go in Florida, election integrity is the number one issue people question me about,” said Florida RNC member Peter Feaman.
Sally Bradshaw, a key adviser to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush for more than a decade and one of the authors of the 2013 post-mortem, said she was shocked by the party’s ongoing acceptance of Trump and his most ardent supporters.
“Isn’t this what the base wants to hear? “That is not what public service entails,” she stated. “Rather than convince, they are attempting to exploit the system. It’s their only chance towards victory. It is the only choice available to them. And it’s disgusting.”
The Public Reckoning of 2012
The slow recovery from the 2007-2009 financial crisis, along with many Republican supporters’ visceral loathing for the first Black president, caused party leaders to assume that defeating Obama in 2012 would be a relatively simple assignment.
Officials in the Romney campaign and the RNC really felt he was on pace to win going into Election Day, only to see results indicate a tremendous turnout of Obama’s base that restored him to the White House.
The RNC immediately set about documenting the causes and correcting course in time for the 2014 midterm elections and the 2016 presidential race, and the results were presented to the RNC membership at the August meeting in Boston, the same city where the former Massachusetts governor’s “victory party” had turned into a concession speech nine months earlier.
The report’s formal title was “Growth and Opportunity Project,” but it was commonly known as “the autopsy.” Its analysis was harsh. Though it offered numerous specific recommendations on how to use voter data for registration and turnout, the report’s heart was on the party’s failure to gain majority support in a constantly changing society.
According to the research, “Republicans have lost the popular vote in five of the previous six presidential elections.” “The country’s demographic shifts heighten the importance of realizing how vulnerable our situation has become…. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, whites will account for 47 percent of the population in 2050, while Hispanics will account for 29 percent and Asians will account for 9 percent. If we want ethnic minority people to vote Republican, we must engage them and demonstrate our sincerity…. If Hispanics believe we do not want them here, they will reject our policies.”
Reince Priebus, then-chair of the Republican National Committee, told reporters that Romney’s comments against illegal immigrants were a major source of the party’s issues with Latino voters. “I mean, using the phrase ‘self-deportation’ is a horrifying remark to make. It has absolutely nothing to do with our party. But when a candidate says things like that, it certainly affects us.”
The party quickly began work on the proposed outreach, creating field offices in Latino areas that had traditionally seen no Republican presence until shortly before an election, and it saw positive outcomes in the 2014 midterm elections across the country.
Then, in June 2015, Trump rode down his escalator, calling Mexicans rapists and promising that as president, he would compel Mexico to pay for a border wall. He swiftly ascended to the top of the Republican presidential primary polls.
It looks that the lesson was learned. Party officials today, including prospective 2024 contenders like as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, blame recent increases in COVID-19 infections on migrants entering the nation rather than the actual culprits: Americans who refuse to be vaccinated.
Stevens, who worked on both of George W. Bush’s successful presidential campaigns before becoming Romney’s senior strategist, said that Trump’s appeal with the party base came as a relief to many Republicans given Priebus’ attempts to broaden the party.
“They reasoned, ‘We don’t have to pretend to care about that crap any more.’ We can only win with white people,’” he explained. “‘Thank you, God. That was a lot of work.’”
Dealing with Trump’s “Big Lie”
Despite Republicans’ confidence about defeating Obama in 2012, history has shown that it was always going to be a difficult road. Incumbent presidents seldom lose in modern times, which makes Trump’s fall in 2020 all the more surprising.
He was just the third president after World War II to lose reelection, and the first since Herbert Hoover to lose the House, the White House, and the Senate all in the same term. Trump’s defeat also extended the Republican Party’s terrible track record in presidential elections to seven popular vote defeats in eight attempts.
Despite a thorough examination of the 2012 election, which was considerably more difficult to win, Republicans have yet to begin an investigation into why Trump lost.
Despite its critiques of Romney’s campaign, Stevens applauded the 2013 report’s suggestions, comparing it to previous attempts to broaden the party, such as former RNC chair Ken Mehlman’s apology to the NAACP in 2005 for the GOP’s decades-long reliance on the racist “Southern Strategy.”
“It was a moral duty, not simply a political necessity,” he added.
Bradshaw, a former Republican who quit politics altogether during Trump’s presidency and now operates a bookshop in Tallahassee, Florida, said the lack of such a review for fear of upsetting a guy who attempted to subvert American democracy after losing his election says loudly.
“It’s the reason I left the party. Because it’s a personality cult, not a problem-solving party,” she explained. “There is no such thing as a lengthy game. There is no such thing as a ‘party growth strategy.’ The Republican leadership is now just concerned with retaining power in the near term. The Republican Party is no longer about ideas. And it makes me sad.”
Party officials, on the other hand, point to their success with atypical Republican candidates in House contests in the 2020 election, with women and Latinos helping bring the party within striking distance of retaking the chamber in 2022.
And, according to a current RNC member who spoke anonymously, officials are merely being pragmatic. They must prepare for the midterm elections, and actively opposing Trump is not the way to do it. Furthermore, RNC officials are fully aware of what occurred in November.
“Trump was defeated in the election. He lost an election that he might have won with simple modifications, according to the member. “He chose a divisive approach that lost him the presidency. And it lost the party the Senate in the end. Nobody needs to explain that to anyone. You don’t need a lengthy study to explain what is self-evident.”
However, Ryder claims that the RNC has evolved to the point where a significant number of its members believe Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, which he claims can be easily debunked by looking at vote totals in historically Republican suburbs populated by college-educated whites across the country.
He claimed to have discovered legislative districts in Tennessee that voted for both GOP Senate candidate Bill Hagerty and Biden at the top of the ticket. “Trump lost because he alienated a significant number of Republicans. You will not comprehend what happened as long as they are engrossed in the idea that the election was stolen.”
Ryder went on to say that he doesn’t see how the party will move beyond Trump if it refuses to accept why he lost.
