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Post-Election Rebuilding Tips From Republicans

Benjy Sarlin and Evan McMorris-Santoro

It’s been a month now since President Obama defeated Mitt Romney and the Great Republican Rebuild is well under way.

But without an obvious leader to replace Romney (and Romney not interested in staying on), the GOP is stuck fielding offers from dozens of applicants who claim they can fix everything the fastest.

Do they go with the former president who says they need immigration reform?

The Senator who wants them to talk about abortion less?

The columnist who thinks they need to have more babies?

To make the process easier, we compiled all the post-election advice we could find into one handy list.

There’s got to be something that works in here.

Move To The Left!
Former Rep. Steve LaTourette’s (R-OH) dismissed the notion the party wasn’t conservative enough in 2012 as “crap” after Romney lost. “The Republican Party cannot be a national party if we give up the entire East Coast of the United States and say — we don’t have any Republicans in New England, we don’t have any Republicans in the Mid-Atlantic states,” he told CNN.

Move To The Right!
Plenty of conservative activists have complained Romney wasn’t hardcore enough for their tastes. “The moderates have had their candidate in 2008 and they had their candidate in 2012. And they got crushed in both elections,” Bob Vander Plaats, an influential evangelical leader, told the Washington Post. “Now they tell us we have to keep moderating. If we do that, will we win?”

Throw Social Conservatives Under The Bus
GOP strategist Mike Murphy warned in Time magazine that the party’s ultra-religious anti-gay wing scared young voters away in 2012. What Republicans need is “a more secular and modernizing conservatism that eschews most social issues to focus on creating a wide-open opportunity society that promises greater economic freedom.”

Throw Rich People Under The Bus
Weekly Standard columnist Bill Kristol doesn’t get why Republicans are so obsessed with defending the Bush tax cuts. “Really? The Republican Party is going to fall on its sword to defend a bunch of millionaires, half of whom voted Democratic and half of whom live in Hollywood?” he complained on FOX News last month.

No, Rich People Are Great!
Romney may have lost the election, but his top strategist Stu Stevens is super proud that they won Americans making over $50,000 — about the median income in America. “[A]ny party that captures the majority of the middle class must be doing something right,” he wrote in the Washington Post.

Convince Latinos That They’re American
Minorities would vote for the GOP, according to National Review’s Jonah Goldberg, if only they realized their true “American-ness.”

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