Five months after Election Day, the Republicans are still grappling with how they should reorient their party to win presidential elections in the future, with party leaders divided on almost every major issue and still not sure how to woo minority, female and young voters who largely backed President Obama in 2008 and 2012.
The disarray was illustrated repeatedly over the last few days. In an interview with Fox News, Mitt Romney essentially repeated his view, sharply criticized by even fellow Republicans, that Obama won because young voters and minorities appreciated that Obamacare gave them reduced cost health insurance.
Jeb Bush, one of the party’s hopefuls for 2016, released a book that suggested he did not support a pathway to citizenship for people here illegally, then quickly reversed himself, as other Republican officials distanced themselves from his remarks. Florida Republican legislators suggested they would block the expansion of Medicaid in the state through Obamacare, only days after Florida Gov. Rick Scott, also a Republican, had said he would back accept new federal funds for the program and other Republicans around the country, like New Jersey’s Chris Christie, also were embracing that part of the law.
Right now, Republicans agree on opposition to additional federal spending, but little else. Many leading Republicans, like Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, want to reach a compromise with President Obama on immigration, but others in the House are strongly opposed to any legislation that could be considered rewarding illegal behavior. More moderate Republicans would accept a deficit reduction package that included some tax increases, but others, including House Speaker John Boehner, have signaled strong opposition to such an approach. A group of top party activists last week declared their support for gay marriage, but the GOP’s Christian conservative base has not embraced that stance.
These divides are not surprising. It would have been impossible to expect the party to reorient itself completely so quickly after November. Some of these issues, such as gay marriage, have long bedeviled Republicans and until recently Democrats as well. And a divided GOP has still largely remained unified in opposing President Obama on most issues.
But these issues also point to deeper problems for Republicans. That Romney, months after the election, still is offering such a flawed critique of his loss and repeating that view to conservatives who watch Fox News suggests a lack of understanding of how the American electorate is changing. (It’s unlikely minority and young voters backed Obama purely because of the health care law, since he also carried these groups with large margins in 2008, before the law was passed.)
Bush’s gaffe suggested that one of the party’s brightest lights may not be shining as much as other Republicans believed. And the unwillingness of some Republicans to embrace immigration reform, even after losing the Latino vote by 40 points in 2012, is a signal some in the GOP still think simply having a different candidate than Romney will bring large numbers of minority voters to them.
Follow Perry Bacon Jr. on Twitter at @PerryBaconJr.