The Northeast Republican Leadership Forum is in town, so I stopped in for a few hours yesterday, thereby spending 50-plus dollars and missing all the major candidates. (We're going to New York later this afternoon, and I'm not spending $35 on Rick Santorum.) It was an interesting experience but also a little bit frustrating.
The interesting part is that Republicans are, well, very polite and generally full of sunshine as we reach the twilight of the Obama years. Everything was in place and they even had a fee structure ($50 for Scott Walker or Chris Christie, $35 for Santorum, George Pataki and Lindsey Graham free) that pretty well reflects the market. Pataki gave a better speech than I expected, talking about things like religion, military service, and other forms of sacrifice, although why that would make him a good President I have no idea.
The down side is that it's basically the same crowd that's attended these events for the last 20 years. Almost everybody is white and there aren't many young people except the staff. It looks like the same people who go to hockey games, which I suppose it more or less is.
The arguments are a little stale too. Basically a lot of people are still running against Jimmy Carter. We'll cut your taxes, we'll beat up on (ISIS/Saddam Hussein/The Soviet Union), we'll uphold traditional values. It was a great message in 1978, but a lot of voters weren't born then.
In fairness, this is a summer gathering of people with nothing better to do on a weekday afternoon. This morning I watched videos of Marco Rubio and Scott Walker and they're rather more in touch with the times, or at least a slice of them. Rubio in particular as a compelling life story if he can resist the tendency to be a bit goofy. I suspect that either he or Walker would have more appeal to young voters than many people imagine.
But I think the party as a whole needs to get a little more culturally in touch if it is to win on more than a cyclical, reactive basis. Small towns, churches, and the military are all important but most people live in cities and haven't served in the army. It's less a question of the message than getting people to listen to you in the first place. A Republican espresso bar, anyone?
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