Note To GOP: All You Need Is Love

M2RB:  The Beatles

 There's nothing you can do that can't be done
Nothing you can sing that can't be sung
Nothing you can say, but you can learn how to play the game
It's easy.

Nothing you can make that can't be made
No one you can save that can't be saved
Nothing you can do, but you can learn how to be you in time
It's easy.

All you need is love
All you need is love
All you need is love, love
Love is all you need...

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Keith Koffler

 

 

Not enough pats on the head!

A growing phalanx of Republican thinkers have concluded that Gov. Mitt Romney lost the election because he didn’t pat enough people on the head.

Not enough pats on the head for Hispanics, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, women, gays, animal rights supporters, you name it.

The solution, they say, is to pat these impressionable little people on the head enough times until they get a nice warm feeling in their breasts about Republicans.

Mint new citizens out of illegal immigrants, and presto – Latinos will love the GOP! Admit the battle against abortion is lost, and the gender gap is but a bad memory!

Stop clinging to your Bibles and accept gay marriage, and homosexuals will come flooding into the Republican Party!

Sorry, it’s not going to happen. Pandering won’t work. Panderers are rightly disdained, because they are disrespecting both themselves and their subjects.

None of these groups vote because of a single issue. If people voted based on one thing, President Barack Obama would be cleaning out his desk, because his signature achievement – Obamacare – is unpopular.

Republicans are unquestionably more supportive of Israel than Democrats. And yet Jews voted overwhelmingly for Obama.

What the various interest groups need that Republicans have failed to give them is respect, attention, and love.

Yes, as weird as it sounds in a political context - love. Because frankly, I don’t think most Republicans care much about these groups.

Republicans often talk about broadening the tent. Well if they did do so, they either didn’t invite a lot of minorities in, or they stuck them over in the corner to talk with the other nerds.

Do you remember all those speeches Romney gave in Latino and black neighborhoods in the cities and inner suburbs?

You don’t? Neither do I. As far as I’m aware, there weren’t any, or at best very few.

If Republicans want to win national elections, the Republican National Committee must today begin a four-year project to bring the message of conservatism to those who aren’t hearing it. Not a message tailored to one group or another. But a message that conservatism works for everyone.

I always found George W. Bush’s term “compassionate conservatism” deeply insulting. It asserts that conservatism isn’t on its own compassionate. But while conservatism sometimes offers tough medicine, the cure it provides is deeply compassionate.

Republicans need to go directly into the black communities and ask, “How has 50 years of an expanding welfare state worked out for you?”

They need to go into the Hispanic communities and say, “If policies that are anti-business prevail, how are you going to make enough money get your kids an education so they can take their place at the highest rungs of society?”

Republicans need to talk to women about why conservative economic policies provide the prosperity that guarantees security for their families, and to support working women by backing efforts to give them the time to be mothers too.

And when some GOP candidates suggest there is a silver lining to rape or use the words “legitimate” and “rape” in the same sentence, the Party leaders – not to mention the presidential nominee – need to travel to their state and publicly demand they withdraw.

They need to stand at the pulpit of synagogues and make the case to the mostly liberal Jewish community that four decades after Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, the poverty rate is right where it was in the mid-1960s.

Republicans need to fan out on college campuses and spread the word that Obama and his Democratic allies are spending trillions of dollars they will have to pay back as they age. They need to tell students that in 2012, they voted to bequeath themselves their parents’ credit card statements.

The face of the country is changing, but the values of conservatism are eternal. That’s what liberals believed about their philosophy: They stuck with it, and finally, forty years after their disastrous 1972 election, the votes for McGovern have come in.

Republicans need to bring their values to people who don’t hear about them often enough, whether because they are stuck in the mainstream media cocoon or because the aggressive Democratic political influence machine got to them first.

And they will only do it by hanging onto and trumpeting their philosophy. Romney’s lack of an obvious philosophy was why millions of GOP voters stayed home on Election Day – it didn’t seem to make much difference who won. Americans like candidates who believe in something.

And who but the true believers are going to go block by block and bring the message to voters?

The people who worked for Obama’s machine did it for love: For the love of their cause, their candidate, and the people they believed they were helping by reelecting the president.

People who work hard for a cause are motivated by one of three things: Money, fear, or passion.

The men and women who will create the Republican renaissance will not be getting paid much, and they presumably won’t be afraid of their candidate.

What they must harbor is love. And mixed messages adulterated for tactical gain don’t inspire ardor.

Keith Koffler, who covered the White House as a reporter for CongressDaily and Roll Call, is editor of the website White House Dossier.

All You Need Is Love - The Beatles

Love, love, love
Love, love, love
Love, love, love

There's nothing you can do that can't be done
Nothing you can sing that can't be sung
Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game
It's easy

Nothing you can make that can't be made
No one you can save that can't be saved
Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time
It's easy

All you need is love
All you need is love
All you need is love, love
Love is all you need

Love, love, love
Love, love, love
Love, love, love

All you need is love
All you need is love
All you need is love, love
Love is all you need

Nothing you can know that isn't known
Nothing you can see that isn't shown
Nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be
It's easy

All you need is love
All you need is love
All you need is love, love
Love is all you need

All you need is love (All together, now!)
All you need is love (Everybody!)
All you need is love, love
Love is all you need
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Yee-hai! (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)

Yesterday (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Oh yeah! (Love is all you need)
She loves you, yeah yeah yeah (Love is all you need)
She loves you, yeah yeah yeah (Love is all you need)