An attitude adjustment

By Creature

As the GOP looks to "rebrand" themselves as the party of ideas (through a series of listening tours made up of people who just don't listen, go figure), I think A.L. has it basically right: "the problem is not the ideas, but the attitude."

Republicans are coming across as a bunch of obnoxious, unreasonable a-holes. When you've just been voted out of power for manifest incompetence and your opponents are led by a very popular and reasonable-sounding person, you don't have the luxury of acting smug and uncompromising all the time. You have to acknowledge error and show some humility. You have to act civilly. You have to at least try to appear pragmatic and reasonable. But the GOP is not interested in doing any of these things. Those who are left in the party are ultra-partisan and utterly convinced of their own infallibility and moral righteousness. Until they lose that attitude and general combativeness, it won't matter what their ideas are. They'll just keep turning people off.

Now, of course, ideas matter too, but there are only a finite number of times one can scream, "tax cuts," and still be taken seriously. Overall, I'm kind of amazed that the GOP hasn't yet figured out that coming across like petulant children does not play well, but I'm glad that they haven't.