After failing to win the White House or make significant gains in the House or Senate, the Republican Party is contemplating its next step.
Republican strategist John Feehery and Democratic strategist Chris Kofinis joined msnbc’s Chris Jansing to discuss whether the GOP should rebrand and which demographics they need to concentrate on going forward.
“It’s a good time to regroup,” Feehery said. “It’s a good time to renew what they want to do. It’s really a good time to take a look at the whole apparatus of the Republican Party.”
A major problem the GOP needs to overcome is demographics and their lack of appeal to certain groups. President Obama overwhelmingly won the votes of minorities in Tuesday’s election.
“If we don’t fix our demographic problem—where we got so much of the white vote and so little of anybody else—we’re going to be a minority party,” Feehery told Jansing. “So we have to take a look at all of it and we have to start doing it today.”
Feehery stressed that the Republican Party needs to develop a “broader based strategy” to compete better in more states and achieve a large discussion among key demographics.
Kofinis echoed Feehery.
“The GOP lost because of a demographic hurricane,” Kofinis said. “You cannot lose African-Ameircans and Hispanics by the percentages they did; women by the percentages they did; young people by the percentages they did and think that you can be a national party.”
Feehery also said the GOP spent too much money on super PACs that didn’t have a major impact at the outcome of the election. Kofinis wholeheartedly agreed with Feehery jokingly saying, “it just proves money can’t buy love.” He brought the super PAC conversation into perspective explaining that “in a situation like Iowa or other states you can’t go into and think that you can spend so much money that you’re going to win voters.” Kofinis called it a mistake on behalf of the Republicans. “[It was] too much money spent poorly and the money that was spent wasn’t spent smartly,” Kofinis said. “I think both campaigns had a very different strategy and the Republicans one was flawed from the start.”
Cathy Finkler Recommended
