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SPEECH: GOP – It’s Own Worst Enemy, A Party in Flux

Unfortunately, delivering a truthful message has distorted and damaged the GOP’s image.

Take the story of ex-Congressman Todd Akin, whose comments that women who are victims of “legitimate rape” rarely get pregnant. It cost him re-election.

It is almost as if the Republican Party needs to go through a change, but they are not even sure what that adjustment is.

That’s one point of many made recently by political strategist Alex Castellanos, who spoke to a room full of college students in mid-June at the 60th biennial College Republican National Committee gathering in Washington, D.C.

Castellanos, a Cuban native, CNN pundit, founder of Purple Strategies, and creator of New Republican, offered solutions for fixing that image; not a policy and platform change, but one involving better communication and the conveying of ideas.

Freedom is always a new idea,” he said, adding Republicans must inspire others to believe in its light again.

He said there must be a push to look toward the future with hope, that it’s what successful politicians such as FDR, Reagan, JFK and Obama talk about all the time.

Castellanos noted:

FDR talked about a “new generation of democracy,” and only “fearing fear itself.”

JKF discussed a “new frontier” and the journey to the moon.

Reagan announced “we had a rendezvous with destiny.”

Obama, of course had his iconic “hope and change.”

Yet the Democrat philosophy is flawed, and doesn’t preserve the future of individuals, Castellanos said.

Democrats, he said, cannot claim the high ground on hope and freedom because they believe in a mechanical approach to solving solutions, a one-size government solution that fits all, and as a result limits human innovation and potential.

“We are not cogs in a machine, but an organism,” Castellanos said, referring to the notion that Americans do better when given wide-open opportunity and freedom.

GOP leaders and followers must learn a new language to preserve an “eternal principle,” he said.

In the end, Castellanos summarized his solutions for the Republican Party:

1.  Ease up on the social conservative battle

Castellanos said using government to promote a social conservative agenda has gone against the Republican Party’s principles of limited government.

“Stay out of each other’s underpants,” Castellanos said.

Castellanos added conservatives do not need to abandon their values on issues like traditional marriage, but instead stop trying to utilize government to be society’s moral enforcement.  

It doesn’t mean you can’t be pro-life or traditional marriage – I am not talking about changing values,” Castellanos said. “Yet, we can’t be the moral policeman. … Government can’t force moral values.”

2.  The GOP can’t appear to favor the elite or big business

“We need to get money and power out of Washington,” he said.

3.  The economic solution is not technology driven

Castellanos said technology is often portrayed as a temporary panacea for solving the economy’s problems. However, he argued tech is not the reason America’s economy became prosperous; the driving force was its bold entrepreneurial spirit.

“Build a church without Jesus, and what do you get? A warehouse,” he said.

IMAGE/ Read more: http://www.newrepublican.org

Fix contributor Aslinn Scott is a student at CU Boulder.

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