Relevance

One of the big problems the GOP faces today is relevance. We talk about smaller governnment, lower taxes and family values, but to most voters this is just meaningless sound bytes. We have overpromised and underdelivered, so to be blunt people don't trust us to govern anymore.

Take the economy as a good example. On the whole things throughout most of the GW Bush years were pretty good for the economy even great, but when you polled Americans they were apprehensive even in the best of times post the dot-com bubble. The reason was that the old structures of the 50's were now totally gone. People weren't anxious about their current economic situation they were nervous about their future economic situation. They weren't worried about the economy they were worried about economic security.

As someone who has worked on many campaigns, I've seen how over in just a few short years the ability for our message to penetrate the electorate has disappeared. Put simply, we need to restate our principles. We still have to be the party of lower taxes, limited government, and family values, but we need to find ways to be relevant to the voters.

Too many Republican campaigns, arguably this was the case in LA-6 and MS-1, use the talking points and the scare tactics that used to win us elecitons  but voters quite simply don't beleive them anymore. Rather than labeling someone a "liberal" we need to say they are for raising taxes, wasting money, huge corporate welfare, etc. We need to walk voters through the path because the old shortcuts don't work like they used to.