This coming week, House
Republicans will gather in Williamsburg, Va., to discuss what went wrong in 2012. I’ve
attended more than a dozen such congressional retreats since
1993, and I can already imagine how the conversations will
go. Someone will undoubtedly come to the microphone to
declare that what the GOP needs is a better brand, missing
the essential point that candidates and political parties
are about reputation, trust and ideas. You can’t sell them
like soap or detergent.
But what you say in defense of those ideas matters, and
what people hear matters even more.
Congressional Republicans are currently defined as nothing
more than opponents of the president and friends of the
powerful. This isn’t my opinion — it’s America’s
opinion. My polling firm asked voters nationwide on election
night to identify who or what the GOP was fighting for.
Twice as many said “the wealthy†and “big businessâ€
than “hardworking taxpayers†or “small business.â€
Their image is even worse today. The congressional
Republicans’ message during the “fiscal cliff†debate
last month was confused and chaotic. The debt-ceiling vote next month and
the budget debate after that promise more of the same —
unless House and Senate Republicans stop bickering and start
coordinating and talking differently.
Just saying “no†to the president has its limits. House
Republicans, since they have a megaphone that Senate
Republicans don’t , will continue to
be diminished until they start defining and
stop being defined.
Talk is cheap, of course, but bad language is costly. While
the new GOP House majority is the second-largest since World
War II, more people cast votes for Democratic House
candidates than for Republican candidates. On the Senate
side, the Democratic advantage was even larger. The GOP paid
a price for its out-of-touch language in November and could
pay again in 2014, just as it did in 2006, unless the party
changes course.
Changing course starts with a values-based approach, and
that means talking to Americans about accountability,
personal responsibility and freedom — and linking those
values to GOP policies. For example, in 1994, congressional
Republican candidates developed the Contract With America to
announce “a detailed agenda for national renewal, a
written commitment with no fine print . . . to make us
all proud again of the way free people govern themselves.â€
It was a response to voters who were fed up with
politicians who said one thing in their districts and then
voted differently in Washington. In 2013, House Republicans
need a similar tone that starts with the value of listening,
not speaking. When people feel they’re heard and
understood, they’ll listen.
The next step is to be more empathetic. Voters will not
give you a chance to solve their problems if they think you
don’t understand them, especially at a time when Americans
feel no one is fighting for them. For example, among 2012
voters who wanted their president to “care about people
like me,†President Obama crushed Mitt Romney 81 percent
to 18 percent. In part, that’s because the president’s
rhetoric is always couched in the language of fairness and
justice. He asks the “wealthiest 2 percent†to “pay
their fair share†— without defining what “fair
share†means. He doesn’t have to; voters ascribe their
own definitions.
