Republicans already proclaim the obvious fact that their policies are more friendly than Democrats’ to “everybody.” They do so until they are blue in the face.
Republicans would have carried the last election handsomely had the set of Americans that passively polled in favor of them showed up in at least equal proportion at the polls as did the bums that the Democrats scared up from sea to shining sea.
I think one of our problems is our appearance as a party, that is, as she said, what people see. We have some great people - Ryan, Rubio, Gingrich pere himself (Jackie’s not a bad speaker, either), and a host of others - but then we have the old guard that either won’t let them reach our or is actively embarrassed by the message. So we don’t look very committed, and it seems that every time we elect even good people, the “old” GOP comes out and stifles them and they don’t accomplish anything.
During the last campaign, it was Ryan’s plan to go to lower-income urban areas - including black ones - and give them this message of opportunity, inclusion (that is, we’re all in this together and we all progress together) and hope. But Romney and the GOP campaign managers wouldn’t let him do it.
My only hope is that this most recent failure may have discredited the Romney-Old Guard component of the GOP or at any rate weakened them so severely that they won’t have the crushing influence they have had over the last several years.