How to Be Your Own Worst Enemy 101

​Though there’s a point to this all that I’ll get to, the background to it all is very substantive on its own.  So, we’ll start with that.

Back in December, 2012, after losing the White House to President Barack Obama for the second time, the Republican Party under then-chairman Reince Priebus (remember him…?) commissioned a story of what Republicans could do better.  Called the Growth & Opportunity Project (GOP, get it?!!), the report was released three months later in March, 2013.

As the co-chairs of the project write in the Introduction, “we were charged with making recommendations and assisting in putting together a plan to grow the Party and improve Republican campaigns. We were asked to dig deep to provide an honest review of the 2012 election cycle…”

After the Introduction, there is second filled with charts and numbers.  And then they finally get into details with the first section, called “Messaging.”  And the very first subject that they dive into is called – “Some People Say ‘Republicans Don’t Care’”

I have to admit, I love that it begins with “Some people say…”  This later because a code phrase for Trump to use when pretty much no one at all said the thing in question, but it let Trump bring up something scurrilous about others.  Here, though, the issue was so important to Republicans looking at their own problems, they made it the very first thing to address!  Yet, as important as it was, important enough to be #1 on the list of problems to fix, they couldn’t find it in themselves to express it as “Republicans Don’t Care” or even “People Say ‘Republicans Don’t Care.’”  No, they had to soften it to just “Some People Say…”  While linguistically and numerically the statement is true, keep in mind (again) that this issue was important enough for Republicans to make it the very first problem that had to solved.  If it was just a minor piffle of a problem, that a mere handful of people say that Republicans Don’t Care, so no big deal, then there would have been no reason to make it…first!!

But there it is, first.  Their top problem to fix.  And what they write is –

“The perception, revealed in polling, that the GOP does not care about people is doing great harm to the Party and its candidates on the federal level, especially in presidential years. It is a major deficiency that must be addressed.”

Don’t take my word for it, though.  Here it is from the report.

​And there you can see in their own words how serious the problem is.  Not that it’s just a smattering of “some” people saying nasty, untrue things about the Republican Party, but rather polling shows that the GOP “does not care about people: to such an extent that it’s doing “great harm to the Party.”  And more to the point, it is a “major deficiency.”  And something that “must” be addressed.

And among those people for whom there is a “major deficiency” because the GOP “does not care” about them (“them” being what the report calls their “demographic partners” – an odd expression, given that the whole point is that they are not partners in the slightest, but people who the Republican Party has pushed away and created a “major deficiency”) are, not surprisingly African Americans.

The report notes that “the RNC must embark on a year-round effort to engage with African American voters. The engagement must include not only persuasion based upon our Party’s principles but also a presence within community organizations.”  And adds later that “The African American community has a lot in common with the Republican Party, and it is important to share this rich history.”

Unfortunately for the Republican Party, that rich history ended in 1965 when Democrats and LBJ passed the Voting Rights Act and Civil Rights Act, and the racist Southern Dixiecrats fled to the Republican Party who heavily courted them with Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” to help him win the presidency in 1968.  So, that was a half-century ago when the GOP’s “rich history” with African Americans came to a crashing halt.  It’s hard to share “What have you done for me lately” when you can’t point to anything “lately” more recent than half-a-century.  And that was written 10 years ago.

There are 10 suggestions of things to do, but let’s just summarize them by saying two things – 1) they were really easy, really basic, and merely surface – like “the RNC should develop a nationwide database of African American leaders” (really!  Besides, it’s sort of amazing that the party didn’t already know who the leaders were…) and “make every effort to feature and use diverse committee members” (however few there may be) – but nothing about helping people and caring, and 2) the GOP has pretty much done none of it in the succeeding decade.

And all that lead to the next section in the report which was about Women.

They devote two whole paragraphs to the women folk (African Americans have three), and begin by saying – “Much was written after the 2012 election regarding the Republican Party’s ‘women’” problem; these conclusions were based on both perception and data.”  What I love here is that the report doesn’t say the GOP has a women problem, but rather a “’women’ problem.”  And also that these conclusions were reached purely by perception – oh, and er…also, by the way, data.

It notes that although Mitt Romney won the married women vote by 11 votes, President Obama won the votes of all women overall by 11 points – and that’s because single women make up 40% of the women-vote, and Barack Obama won that by (and I quote) “a whopping 36 percent.”  Indeed, among the 10 recommendations, the reports notes that women “represent more than half the voting population in the country, and our inability to win their votes is losing us elections.”

That’s pretty blunt.  Alas, their recommendations are also pretty surface.  No policy and meaningful change suggestions, but just sort of PR matters to be in contact with women.  While noting that “Republicans should develop a more aggressive response to Democrat rhetoric regarding a so-called ‘war on women,’” they are unable to actually say what that response should be.  All the report can offer is that “In 2012, the Republican response to this attack was muddled, and too often the attack went undefended altogether.”  Not said is the realization that the response was muddled and undefended because…the GOP didn’t have a defense – and that’s because the Republican “war on women” wasn’t “so-called” at all but real.

You can read the full “Growth & Opportunity Protect” report here.

Which bring us all to the point of this –

The confirmation hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first-ever black woman nominated to be a Supreme Court Justice.

What an opportunity for Republicans!  Two of their “Demographic Partners” rolled into one.  A way to show African Americans and the womenfolk that the GOP actually does care about them!

This is a layup.  A 6-inch gimme putt.  Judge Jackson is…well, a judge.  Already.  On the federal bench, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, arguably the highest-regarded seat in the justice system, outside of the Supreme Court.  It’s a position she was not only already confirmed for – but confirmed by this Congress!!!  In January, 2021, barely over a year ago, she was confirmed by a vote of 53-44.

And the Republican Party has blown it.  Not only blown it, but probably set themselves back with Black and women voters.

This was like Shaquille O’Neal missing a dunk in a basket only 5-feet high and with no one around him.  And having the ball bounce up off the rim, hitting him in the head and knocking him out.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is going to get confirmed.  She’s already been confirmed by this exact same Congress.  And she’s highly qualified – Republicans know that, they heard it all only a year ago during her confirmation hearing.  If some Senate Republicans don’t care for her, okay, fair enough, but the GOP knows she will be confirmed – and should be, because she’s highly qualified.  And she’s even someone just moderately liberal, in the same spirit as Justice Stephen Breyer who she’s replacing.  She’s not a wild-eyed ideologue (like, say, several very conservative justices on the Court, among them Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney-Barrett). 

So, if Republicans wanted to send out a few attack dogs from the far-right to slam her, while the majority of GOP Senators take the high road saying how much they admire her and how it’s time for there to be Black woman on the Supreme Court after 233 years, and what an excellent choice she is…that would have made great sense.   After all, they know what their own “Grown & Opportunity Project” said about the public thinking the GOP doesn’t care and what a “major deficiency” the party has with Black voters and how the Republican “war on women” is helping them lose elections.  So…for goodness take, take the layup.  Tap in the 6-inch putt.  You know she’s qualified, you know she’s already been confirmed, you know she’s going to be confirmed, you know there hasn’t been a black woman on the Supreme Court ever in 233 years.  And you know you have a huge problem with these two “Demographic Partners.”  So…support her.  It doesn’t even have to be unanimous.  Give a wink to your racist, misogynist base, let Josh Hawley go reprehensible and vote “No,” and a few others.  But for the most part, show Black voters, women voters, American voters that…you care.

At the very least, if you feel so obsessed that you have to vote “no” near-unanimously, do it quietly.  Show up, ask some benign questions and vote “no.”  Don’t come in clown suits, tumbling out of the car, honking claxon horns and shouting at the top of your lungs questions that make most rational people cringe.  And which I am sure will push away most Black voters even farther away and peel off even more women voters – who have seen the Republican Party almost united in their attacks on a very smart, graceful, talented, accomplished black woman from finally reaching a position no black woman has ever attained in the history of the United States.

Instead, there are the Republican attacks on her – who, again, was confirmed by this same body a year ago – reaching the levels of smear, slamming her about supposedly defending porn, and pushing Critical Race Theory, and being (horrors!) a public defender who supposedly supports law-breakers, and is a crazy liberal, and on and on and on.

All the while ignoring their party’s own “Growth & Opportunity Project.”  That said the Republican Party has a problem with Black voters, women voters and all voters thinking the GOP doesn’t care.  They were given an opportunity to grow.  And just support a highly-qualified black woman to be on the Supreme Court after 233 years.

And the GOP couldn’t even handle a gimme 6-inch putt.  Instead, they took out their driver and whacked the ball 250 yards in the other direction.  Smacking themselves in the head with the club on their backswing, knocking themselves to the ground.

That’s today’s Republican Party.

And Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will be on the Supreme Court.  And everyone will know that the GOP voted near-unanimously (if not unanimously) against her, screaming and yelling and being dragged crying all the way out of the room.