GOP just needs to tweak stance on migrants

WASHINGTON

They lose, and immediately the chorus begins. Republicans must change or die. A rump party of White America, it must adapt to evolving demographics or forever be the minority.

The only part of this that is even partially true regards Hispanics. They should be a natural Republican constituency: striving immigrant community, religious, Catholic, family-oriented and socially conservative (on abortion, for example).

The principal reason they go Democratic is the issue of illegal immigrants. In securing the Republican nomination, Mitt Romney made the strategic error of (unnecessarily) going to the right of Rick Perry. Romney could never successfully tack back.

For the party in general, however, the problem is hardly structural. It requires but a single policy change: border fence plus amnesty. Yes, amnesty. Use the word. Shock and awe -- full legal normalization (just short of citizenship) in return for full border enforcement.

I've always been of the "enforcement first" school, with the subsequent promise of legalization. I still think it's the better policy. But many Hispanics fear that there will be nothing beyond enforcement.

So, promise amnesty right up front. Secure the border with guaranteed legalization to follow on the day the four border-state governors affirm that illegal immigration has slowed to a trickle.

Imagine Marco Rubio advancing such a policy on the road to 2016. It would transform the landscape. He'd win the Hispanic vote. Yes, win it. A problem fixable with a single policy initiative is not structural. It is solvable.

The other part of the current lament is that the Republican Party consistently trails among Blacks, young people and (unmarried) women. (Republicans are plus-7 among married women.) But this is not for reasons of culture, identity or even affinity. It is because these constituencies tend to be more politically liberal -- and Republicans are the conservative party.

The country doesn't need two liberal parties. Yes, Republicans need to weed out candidates who talk like morons about rape. But this doesn't mean the country needs two pro-choice parties, either. In fact, more women are pro-life than are pro-choice.

The problem here for Republicans is not policy but delicacy -- speaking about culturally sensitive and philosophically complex issues with reflection and prudence. Additionally, the doomsayers warn, Republicans must change not just ethnically but ideologically. Back to the center. Moderation above all!

More nonsense. Tuesday's exit polls showed that by an 8-point margin (51-43), Americans believe that government does too much. And Republicans are the party of smaller government.

So, why give it up? Republicans lost the election not because they advanced a bad argument but because they advanced a good argument not well enough. Romney ran a solid campaign, but he is by nature a Northeastern moderate. He sincerely adopted the new conservatism but still spoke it as a second language.

More Gerald Ford 1976 than Ronald Reagan 1980, Romney is a transitional figure, both generationally and ideologically. Behind him, the party has an extraordinarily strong bench. In Congress -- Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, Kelly Ayotte, (the incoming) Ted Cruz and others. And the governors -- Bobby Jindal, Scott Walker, Nikki Haley, plus former Gov. Jeb Bush and the soon retiring Mitch Daniels. (Chris Christie is currently in rehab.)

They were all either a little too young or just not personally prepared to run in 2012. No longer. There may not be a Reagan among them, but this generation of rising leaders is philosophically rooted and politically fluent in the new constitutional conservatism.

Ignore the trimmers. There's no need for radical change. The other party thinks it owns the demographic future -- counter that in one stroke by fixing the Latino problem. Do not, however, abandon the party's philosophical anchor. In a world where European social democracy is imploding before our eyes, the party of smaller, more modernized government owns the ideological future.

The answer to Romney's failure is not retreat, not aping the Democrats' patchwork pandering. It is to make the case for restrained, rationalized and reformed government in stark contradistinction to President Barack Obama's increasingly unsustainable big-spending, big-government paternalism.

Republicans: No whimpering. No whining. No reinvention when none is needed. Do conservatism, but do it better.

There's a whole generation of leaders ready to do just that.

Copyright 2012 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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Social issues keep creeping in to muddle what needs fixing

We shouldn't be talking about this silliness -- Big Bird, "bull-----er," or a girl's "first time."

We should be talking about The Issues, we keep telling ourselves. But in the waning days of the presidential campaign, these are the issues -- binders full of cultural issues that continue to divide us and by which Barack Obama hopes to win re-election.

It is no accident that the war of competing economic theories has devolved into the same old culture war, beginning with the debate about the contraception mandate under the Affordable Care Act. Ever since, the Obama campaign has strategically tried to push the Republican Party and Mitt Romney into a corner by advancing the war-on-women narrative.

That Obama has had ample help from certain outspoken players (Missouri and Indiana Senate candidates Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, respectively, to name the most notorious) has made Romney's challenges only greater. But the war against women has always been a red herring.

Random comments by a couple of outliers provided wind for Obama's sails. Akin's remarks, that women don't get pregnant when "legitimately" raped, was just idiotic and immediately dismissed by Republican Party leadership, including Romney. Yet Mourdock's view, that a child conceived by rape is God's will, deserves some perspective.

Obviously, he wasn't endorsing rape. He apparently belongs to that sliver of pro-lifers who insist that even babies conceived of rape are worthy of protection. They, too, are God's children.

Although most Americans, including those who are enthusiastically pro-life, support exemptions for rape and incest, Mourdock's argument is not nonsensical. If life begins at conception, then one life is not worth less than another owing to the circumstances of creation. The embryo bears no blame.

Given this context, Mourdock's argument is logical.

But we bend logic as needed. We weigh pros and cons and make difficult choices. Thus, most would resolve Mourdock's Muddle as follows: Given the horror of rape and the consequences for the woman, we find for the woman. It is no good solution, certainly not for the gestating human. It is also certainly not a decision one should make for another.

Mourdock may have been indelicate in stating his position, but he is hardly a monster for believing that the definition of life, like the definition of rape, should not be parsed. As to Romney's choice to not comment, why would he? This is the ultimate no-win.

Romney's position on the subject is clear. He supports exceptions for rape and incest. He also said early in the primary season: "Contraception, it's working just fine. Just leave it alone."

So, why are we still talking about it? This pseudo-debate is, as Joe Biden would put it, "malarkey." Just possibly, a child could recognize the "bull-----er" aspect to this non-issue, to borrow the phrasing of Obama during a recent Rolling Stone interview.

The contraception issue never would have come up but for Obama's decision to force the hand of the Catholic Church. By placing religious institutions in the position of having to provide health insurance to pay for contraception as well as sterilization, which, agree or not, are against church teaching, Obama created the conversation.

Obama reasoned correctly that he had the majority with him, especially among women and youths, for many of whom these debates seem antiquated to not-applicable. Hence, a new Obama ad by HBO "Girls" creator and star Lena Dunham in which she compares voting for the first time to, you know, "doing it" for the first time. It's … what it is: A message to young women that losing one's virginity is top of the bucket list, but first, you gotta vote for the president who touts free contraception.

The same ol' culture wars. But, of course, women have had access to birth control for decades, and no one is trying to take it away. Anyone who suggests otherwise may have been spending too much time with Big Bird.

Copyright 2012 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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News analysis: Ryan says 'America needs a turnaround'

TAMPA – It is Paul Ryan's party now.

By H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY

Paul Ryan walks to the podium at the Republican National Convention Wednesday night in Tampa.

By H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY

Paul Ryan walks to the podium at the Republican National Convention Wednesday night in Tampa.

The 42-year-old Wisconsin congressman strode on stage at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night to a cheering welcome as he accepted the party's nomination as vice president and signaled the emergence of a more conservative, more combative generation of leaders who are reshaping the Republican Party.

Of course, it is the 65-year-old Romney who will be in the spotlight today at the convention's closing night and during the two-month campaign that follows. The outcome in November will depend on voters' judgment of him and President Obama, not on their running mates.

However, Ryan and the GOP "young guns" he helps lead, boosted by the Tea Party movement, are providing much of the energy in the grass-roots, the enthusiasm in the hall and the ideological stamp that has the GOP ticket playing offense on an issue such as Medicare, long seen by the party establishment as a snare certain to rebound to Democrats' advantage.

"We're a full generation apart, Gov. Romney and I," Ryan said in his speech to laughter. "And in some ways, we're a little different. There are songs on his iPod which I've heard on the campaign bus and on many hotel elevators. He actually urged me to play some of these songs at campaign rallies. I said, 'I hope it's not a deal-breaker, Mitt, but my playlist starts with AC/DC and ends with Zeppelin.' …

"A generation apart. That makes us different, but not in any of the things that matter."

'Where is the debt clock?'

A few hours earlier, Ryan had stopped by the convention hall to check out the stage and test out the teleprompter. By his side were his wife, Janna, their three young children and his older brother, Tobin.

"Where is the debt clock?" Ryan asked, looking around the arena for two digital screens that have been ticking the increase in the national debt since the convention opened. A series of speakers have used them as touchstones. "Oh," he said, spotting one. "It's up there."

The congressman and his family practiced waving to a nearly empty hall, a maneuver they would repeat when the arena was full. Liza, 10, tried to speak into the microphone on the podium. "It's not on," her father advised.

Thursday’s Republican National Convention highlights (all times ET):

7-8 p.m.

Reagan legacy video

Newt and Callista Gingrich

Craig Romney

8-9 p.m.

Former Fla. governor Jeb Bush

Former Romney business associates Grant Bennett and Tom Stemberg

9-10 p.m.

Former Romney state government colleagues

Olympians Michael Eruzione, Derek Parra and Kim Rhode

Surprise speaker

10-11 p.m.

Sen. Marco Rubio, Fla.

Mitt Romney acceptance speech

Convention adjourns

A few hours later, the microphone was on and the hall was jammed. When Ryan spoke, he referred to "the calling of my generation."

That was, he said, "to give our children the America that was given to us, with opportunity for the young and security for the old — and I know that we are ready. Our nominee is sure ready. His whole life has prepared him for this moment: to meet serious challenges in a serious way, without excuses and idle words. After four years of getting the runaround, America needs a turnaround, and the man for the job is Gov. Mitt Romney."

Dressed in a somber black suit and silver-blue tie, Ryan seemed a bit nervous and tentative at the start but spoke with increasing confidence as he continued. At one point, he paid tribute to his mother, Betty Ryan Douglas, 78, who was sitting in the hall, prompting daughter Liza to give him a grin and a thumbs-up sign. By the end of a speech full of urgency over denying Obama a second term, the crowd roared its approval.

Many of the speakers who have sparked the strongest response from the convention audience have been relatively new officeholders, many of them in their 40s, including South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Texas Senate candidate Ted Cruz. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who survived a recall election this year, got a hero's welcome.

They tend to talk less about compromising across party lines to get things done — an argument Romney has made about his tenure as governor of Democratic-dominated Massachusetts — and more about standing firm on principles even when it leads to pitched political warfare.

Cruz called the emerging party "a very exciting transformation" at a USA TODAY Newsmaker session. "One of the reasons Barack Obama got elected is because a lot of Republicans in Washington lost their principles," including exacerbating the federal deficit. "The single best consequence of Republicans getting our teeth kicked in in 2008 is it has produced a new generation of leaders for the Republican Party."

Cruz, 41, noted he was 10 when Ronald Reagan was elected president and 18 when he left the Oval Office. Reagan was the defining president for his generation of Republicans in the same way Franklin Roosevelt was for a generation of Democrats growing up during World War II, he said.

As for influential leaders now, he cited Sarah Palin, the party's vice presidential nominee in 2008. "A great many conservatives look to her judgment, look to her assessment of who will stand for principle," he said.

For McCain, polite applause

If Ryan represented the party's future, the program featured figures from its past.

The party's 2008 presidential nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain received polite applause for a speech that included a call for tougher U.S. action to help democratic protesters in Iran and Syria.

The last two Republican presidents, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, appeared only in a nostalgic video tribute and joint interview that also aired Wednesday. Former vice presidents Dick Cheney and Dan Quayle were absent, though former Bush secretary of State Condoleezza Rice got an enthusiastic reception as she spoke about the need for robust national security policies.

However, the hall didn't seem fully energized until Ryan appeared on stage. While Palin's acceptance speech four years ago was full of defiance and emotion, Ryan's was laced with economic policy and principles — including a goal of generating 12 million new jobs over the next four years — and blasts at Obama's leadership.

"College graduates should not have to live out their 20s in their childhood bedrooms, staring up at fading Obama posters and wondering when they can move out and get going with life," he said at one point. At another: "None of us should have to settle for the best this administration offers."

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