Two weeks ago, Missouri Republican candidates were trounced in the statewide races. In fact, out of the six races at a statewide level, only one Republican candidate came out on top: incumbent Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder. In what many consider to be an increasingly red state, how did the Republican Party lose?
A week after the conservative losses at the polls, about twenty tea partiers gathered at a restaurant in North St. Louis County to listen to lecturers talk about a few ideas for the future, the flat tax and the fair tax, and yes, to commiserate about the recent past.
Bill Hennessy helped found the St. Louis Tea Party.
“If we can’t even elect a Republican president with Obama as his opponent, how the hell do we propose, well we’re going to eliminate the tax code,” asked Hennessy.
He didn’t spend much time talking numbers from the election, instead he talked about how to move forward.
If he had talked about the past more, he would have had to talk about how the statewide races weren’t even close. The average Democratic win was nearly 10% points. And this was with the Republican Presidential candidate carrying the state by a large margin, and the GOP gaining an historic amount of power in the state legislature, where the party has a veto-proof majority in both the House and the Senate.
So how did this happen? How did a party that was so seemingly set up to succeed, fail at the statewide level?
Saint Louis University Political Scientist Ken Warren says Republicans have to make a change.
“It’s just impossible to win if you’re turning off women, minorities and young voters,” Warren said.
Warren points to exit polls that show the Republican Party did a poor job of courting those demographics.
Warren says part of the blame for the loss should fall on tea party groups and the religious right. Tea parties and the religious right were fundamental in getting Congressman Todd Akin on the ticket.
Akin’s now infamous comments concerning the biology of rape, which is believed in some firmly conservative groups, hurt the Republican Party, according to Warren.
“The Republican Party does not really represent that kind of extremism, but they can’t help but be associated with it,” Warren said.
It’s not only political scientists that are saying the Republican Party needs to change.
“We’ve certainly blown it,” former Senator John Danforth said.
He was instrumental in shaping the Missouri Republican Party 30 years ago. He says his party should have a majority in the U.S. Senate.
“Why don’t we? We nominated people like Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock,” Danforth said. “They were far out. I think they were viewed by their constituents as far out and unelectable.”
Danforth says “off-the-wall candidates like Akin damaged the Republican brand.” Akin has said there should be no exception for abortion or emergency contraception, even in instances of rape. But Danforth, who is an ordained episcopal minister, says Republicans have to step back from social issues.
“The social issues have pretty much run their course. The social issues tend to energize people one way or another and are divisive,” Danforth said.
But the prospect of moderating viewpoints on social issues isn’t an argument that many in the Republican Party will be ready to hear.
Kathie Wimmer was at the St. Louis Tea Party meeting after the election.
“The farther we go and the more we try to change who we are, the more diluted we’ll become the less we’ll win,” Wimmer said.
Wimmer says Danforth went “off the reservation.” She calls him a RINO, a term used in tea party circles to refer to Republicans that aren’t conservative enough. It stands for a “Republican In Name Only.”
But Danforth says conservatives have to get away from statements like that.
He says Republicans have to unite behind fiscal conservatism, which he says resonates with a lot of voters.
Do conservatives believe the Republican Party will change for 2016?
Wimmer, the tea partier, says the GOP better not abandon its conservative base.
Danforth says he hopes so.
Political scientist Ken Warren says the Republican Party doesn’t have a choice.
“You better move to the center or you’re going to have a bleak future,” Warren said.