Republicans of all stripes are out running for the 2016 Republican Party nomination. The candidates are talking about policies from amnesty to Common Core education standards. They are talking about “winability” as a Republican virtue.
Yet no Republican is talking about what it will take to win in 2016.
There is one factor that will determine if a Republican can win in 2016, and as much as conservatives want to talk about how the nation longs for a change in direction, unless there is a candidate willing to make a major change, Elizabeth Warren can start on the first draft of her inauguration address.
Any Republican candidate who wants to have any prayer of winning has to drop something. It is not a policy. It has nothing to do with amnesty, taxes, spending or even the price of gas.
The Republican candidate who wants to win has to drop the Republican consultant playbook and start from scratch. Each has to contest the Great Blue Wall.
Since 1992, there have been six presidential elections. In that time, there are 18 states plus the District of Columbia that have voted Democratic in every one of those six elections. Those states total 242 electoral votes. The Democrats start 2016 within 28 electoral votes of winning the election.
Also since 1992, there have been only 13 states that voted Republican in every one of the last six elections, and they only total 102 electoral votes.
Someone needs to tell the Republican Party it is in serious trouble. If the party nominates the next guy in line, like it did with John McCain in ’08 and Mitt Romney in 12, it will be in trouble.
If the Republican Party nominates someone like Jeb Bush, the next guy in line, he will run a campaign dictated by consultants. Those are the same guys who blew the 2012 campaign where Mr. Romney could not lose.
All the Warren campaign will have to do is blast hundreds of millions of dollars from the legal and illegal campaign contributions the Democrats receive from liberal billionaires, liberal dark money groups, unions and illegal overseas contributors. The race will come down to Florida. Florida is a battleground state. In 2000 and 2004 it went Republican. In 2008 and 2012 it went Democrat. If the Democrat nominee wins Florida in 2016, it is game over. The Democrat wins.
In order for the generic Republican candidate to win, he must win every state the Republicans won in the last six elections. He must win every state the Republicans have carried in the last five presidential elections. He must also win every state the Republicans have carried in four of the last six presidential elections. In addition, he must carry every state the Republicans have won in only three of the last six elections. Then, the Republicans must win Ohio, which they have carried only twice in the last six elections; or win Nevada and two of the three states they have carried only once in the last six presidential elections; or if Ohio and Nevada are lost, carry all three states that have only gone Republican once in the last six elections.
If that sounds complicated, it is.
It is also terrifying for a Republican.
The Republican Party has to do two things to win the presidency in the future. First, it must find a candidate who will throw away the consultant play book, which says run content-free campaigns and do not embrace conservative values. Republicans must penetrate the Great Blue Wall because if they fail and the Democrats succeed in turning Florida blue, it will be mathematically impossible for a Republican to ever win the presidency.
The second thing the GOP is going to have to do is embrace change in the Electoral College. The National Popular Vote is one way of doing that.
The U.S. Constitution is purposefully vague on the method of choosing electors for the Electoral College, and it also leaves that job to the states. The winner-take-all model used now is the 11th different way the nation has chosen electors since 1792.
The Republican Party has a simple choice in 2016. It can nominate someone like Ted Cruz who will throw away the playbook and kick out the consultants, or it can pick the next guy in line and never win another presidential election.
The fate of liberty and freedom depend on what the Republican Party chooses.
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