Hey gang. Seeing as how I volunteered for the Obama campaign and am completely elated by his victory, I've decided to attack my own happiness.  Because this is the topic Du Jour, I've decided to play Devil's Advocacy here and help out my former Republican Brothers and tell them what they can do to get the party back on the right track.  I'm sure this being a column not bashing the Republicans, it won't get many recs but i've been surprised before.

1.  Create and Champion the cause for serious immigration amnesty and reforms.

It must expand upon The Dream Act allowing children of immigrants to get scholarships, and have a path to citizenship for those that are already here.  John McCain and President Bush tried this already and the far right voted this down.  Someone has to do it again so that the Republican Party can become "The Party of Latinos."

Doing this will counter the automatic African American Voting Block that the Democrats enjoy. Also this is the fastest growing segment of the Voting Population.  Alienate them and you are declaring defeat in the entire southwest and other sections of this country.

Another Bonus, Many Latinos are devout Catholics.  They share many of the same social values the the Social Conservatives hold and cherish.  Once you bring them into the tent you won't have to alter your core message very much.

2.  Oppose but do not block Obama, Reid, and Pelosi Legislation.

There will have to be a couple of Republicans that are willing to jump on the grenade for the Party.  The hope is that with an over reaching Democratic majority they will make some large mistakes.  They will make some costly mistakes.  If you allow them to over reach then you have something that you can run against. Otherwise the Republicans will be scapegoated into being the party that kept change from happening.  You have to give Reid and Pelosi enough rope to allow them to hang themselves.  In the short run, this will cost a couple senators BUT in the long run if they do in fact overstep their boundaries it will give the Republicans a hard Mantra to Run again.

The downside is that if they don't overreach and Democrats accomplish all they set out to and the country is happy then you're screwed.  But really, isn't bottom line that what we all want, a bunch of happy American, regardless of what party they vote for.

3.  Pray Obama doesn't run the government as well as he ran his campaign. 

This will take a large collective prayer from every evangelical and some non-evangelicals.  The Republicans will almost need an act of God to help them out in this regard.  If Barack governs as well as I know that he can, he'll solidify those young voters and the other coalitions of voters that he's mobilized and they'll be Democrats for life.

4.  Recruit Better Leadership.

This cannot be just the party of the South and the Northwest.  There just aren't enough electoral votes to sustain that.  Mitt Romney, who passed health care reforms as Governor of Massachusetts, was the closest thing that the Republicans had to someone that could appeal to independents in Non traditional Areas.  John McCain ran too much as an angry partisan with no ideas.  The electorate wants a solver not a fighter.

How about recruiting a moderate or slightly conservative minority candidate.  Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice serve as great templates.  Bobby Jindal (who maybe too conservative) Michael Steele or Mel Martinez might actually be other great possibilities.  They should be Minority Candidates that do not run as minorities and don't run on minority issues.  Look at Obama as the template. Alan Keyes can't be the face of diversity of the Republican Party.

5.  Come up with some viable policy that can counter that of the Democrats.

Don't just say "Their Health care plans are bad!"  Come up with one that addresses the needs of everyday citizens. Don't just say "Abortion is Murder."  Come up with some solutions to the problem.  Become the party that wants to defend the unborn through preventing abortions but by creating education that allows fewer children to be mistakenly conceived.

We don't live in the 1950s anymore.  The Genie is out of the bottle.  People are going to have sex.  Either you can accept that and try to help those that do have it safely so they don't have unintended pregnancy which leads to less abortion, or you can stick your head in the sand. 

This last thing maybe the hardest to accomplish but I'll say it anyway.  If you want Roe v Wade repealed you'll need a Pro-Choice Republican that believes in States Rights in order for it to happen.  Good luck with the ideologues on the Right allowing that to happen though.

6.  Admit your faults and find some credibility.

It's hard to take the leaders of a party seriously when they never admit they they weren't correct in a situation.  Going into Iraq was a mistake. Admit it.  Wire tapping and torture were mistakes.  Admit it.  Sarah Palin wasn't the wisest choice for V.P.  ADMIT IT!!!

This will allow you to gain the credibility that you are about governing and not just about winning.  Every time you scream the sky is RED when the world is looking at a color wheel and sees it's blue you lose credibility.  When ever you stand there and tell us that Sarah Palin was the most qualified person, man or woman, to be the Vice President of The United States over Romney, Pawlenty, Huckabee, Powell, Rice, Snowe, Hutchinson, you're telling us to not trust you.  We saw the truth for ourselves on television.  You're scaring away independent thinkers.

For that matter Acknowledge that YOUTUBE EXIST!!! We have a public and living record of pretty much everything everyone says in the media.  You can't tell us one thing in one place an another in another place.  There will be tapes cut of you lying all over the internet.  The generation that is computer phobic will be gone in two presidential election cycles.  Embrace that fact and go from there.

7.  Embrace Intellectualism Again.

Faulting someone because they are smart, or they have achieved or because they went to a great school isn't a way to build a party with the best and brightest on your team.  People want to know their leaders are smart.  The great thing is, although you'll anger some of your Southern Base, they're not going to all of a sudden vote for "The Liberal"  BUT this will allow you to capture some of the intellectual in other regions.

The best thing for the party maybe to put in place the proportional delegate system that the Democrats have.  Right now the Republican with the Best Name Recognition will always win the big states.  Proportional voting will allow other candidates that can appeal to several different swaths of the electorate to actually having a shot at representing the party.     

8.  Focus on solutions for this country and not on imperialism in other countries.

I realize this will anger the Tom Clancy Readers in the base.  But you have to start creating solutions for the people at home.  Too many of the right wing think tanks are focused on how to spread democracy.  You must get back to focusing on how to make this democracy work.

9.  Create a message that says you don't want to take anyone's rights away.

You want people to be able to decide for themselves in a state wide manner.  Yeah, you'll be taking away some of people social rights, but you'll make it so that it's the people and not the party.  (See Prop 8)  I personally don't like this approach BUT its a way of selling social issues that Republicans Cling to.  Having a Republican say that he supports gay rights in general but he wants to allow states to make that decision on their own.  Will be much more appealing to independent voters.  That allows the Evangelicals that are concentrated in the South to still get behind you because you don't want them to have to change their traditions BUT those that do in the North are free to.

10.  For the second time, as unlikely as it is to happen, pray for an Obama mistake.
--------------------------------------------------

There are a few broad assumptions that I'm making.  Most Hardcore partisans will be upset with some of these moves, BUT they won't vote for the other side.  This is to reach to those voters in the center.  The truth is we are a CENTER nation (tilting slightly to the left because of the economy).  Although Republicans like to call this place a center right country, they govern from the HARD Right.

They've got to get some other age groups besides the current 65 and older voters because they'll soon die out and be replaced by the middle aged ones of today.  Think of the next crop of 18 year olds, they'll be playing video games with Barack Obama advertisements in them for the next 8 years.  You've got to do something to Hook their parents quick or you'll lose that entire generation too.

For at least 52% of the country, November 4^th 2008 will be a day that everyone remembers for the rest of their lives. Like many moments in history (King & Kennedy Assassinations, OJ Verdict, Rodney King Verdict) we will all be able to recall the exact spot and exact settings and the exact state of being that we experienced when it was finally called that Barack Hussein Obama would become the Next President of the United States of America.

To be clear this is a culmination of years of hard work and sacrifice. Many of you totally destroyed your phone plans phone banking for hours not counting the minutes. Every dollar spent, every door knocked on, every volunteer recruited, every vote counted was worth it to have that one moment we we as a nation could all scream, YES WE DID!

It's been a week now. The parades are over, the crowds have dispersed. There are no more email or robocalls from celebrities. I'm here to talk to you like that best friend you talk to after a break up. "It's time to move on. Barack has found somebody else, you know governing, so its time you do the same."

I know what your saying:

"But, But, But what if he calls and he needs us to like, I don't know, donate or phone bank or... I miss him so much. I miss the emails and the little videos Plouffe use to make." Sniff Sniff, Cry.

We all miss him, and if he calls or shoots you an email, feel free to answer. He's living his life, it time for you to live yours too. Okay, stop crying.

If you've got an Obama sign in the lawn, its about time to take it down. You don't want to be that weird rednecky family in the neighborhood with the bathtub in the front lawn and the Christmas Lights and decorations up until June. Do you remember how many times you made fun of those folks? See, As Vince Vaughn would say "You're better than that."

Oh and for that matter, its also time to put that bad college yearbook photo of you back on Facebook, or Myspace, or whatever social networking site you're on. We get it, you like Barack. But I wanna know if that slovenly drunken girl I met at the bar that said "Add Me" cleans up nice.

Some one came up with a great protest of solidarity for Barack's middle name. It worked, He's going to be president so now you can change your middle name back from Hussein to Leon, or Patrick, or Mary, or Katherine or Elizabeth, whatever douchey name your parents tucked into your birth certificate. I'll say this it's perfectly fine to name that baby you made having unprotected sex celebrating his victory Barack, or Michelle, or Obama or Hussein. I'm sure there will be a few white, and Latino, Sashas and Malias born on August 4^th 2009. If I find a kid named Yeswecan Jones, or Hopenchange Jackson, I will punch the offending parents in the forehead.

Don't feel too bad, you can still wear the Barack T-Shirts. Just put some of your other shirts back in rotation. It still feels good to get thumbs up from old ladies when you walk into restaurants. But that shirt has to last you until the 2012 when Barack will need all the money he can to take on The Minister, The Mormon, and The Barracuda.

I'm sure that there are more than enough postmortems that are floating out in the blogosphere about what are the problems with the Republican Party.  You have answers from those that feel this year John McCain wasn't Republican ENOUGH, then there are those that are saying that John McCain was TOO Republican.  The truth of the matter is that it stems out farther than one candidate.

Let's open our eyes and take a look at the COMPLETE SHELLACKING that the entire Republican Party took this last election cycle.  The lost over 20 seats in the House of Representatives, they've lost 7 seats so far in the Senate, and last but not least they lost the big Prize the Presidency of the United States.

Now I'm going to speak to you all of you as a former Moderate Republican myself.  (You know from the wing of the party that looks at what Bill Clinton accomplished in the White House with the Republicans and says, "Yep, Bill was a Democrat In Name Only")  I've been converted to center left. (Although socially, I'm liberal, my wallet is still very Conservative.)  The Republican Party has had a very serious problem for years that has now started to bubble to the surface.  The party has two completely incongruous messages.

Fiscal Conservatives love to scream about keeping the government out of their lives, keeping the government out of their business.  They scream for deregulation and having the government stand aside and let the the strong survive in the business community.  BUT here is where the dissonance occurs.  At the same time these Social Conservatives want the government to be involved with the personal lives of its citizens.  They want the government to regulate television content.  They want the government to make it illegal for women to control their pregnancy.  They want the government to make sure that gays can't get married.  They want the government to intervene when someone is pulling the plug on a comatose family member.

How can you reconcile the message of Leave the Government OUT of my Business, but Leave the Government IN my house?  That just doesn't resonate with people.  That was the great thing about Ron Paul, as a borderline libertarian he wanted government to be out of everywhere (Although, I think his pro life stance as more because abortion cuts into his OB-GYN business).  There was a certain cohesion with his message.  He knew that government didn't belong in your wallet or in bedroom.

The Current GOP doesn't have any sort of cohesion.  They are a hodgepodge of the Social Conservatives who want Big Brother in the Bedroom and the Fiscal Conservatives who want to murder the brother all together.

The Fiscal Conservatives have brought on a completely different set of problems with the Republican Party.  They eschew big government for big business.  They don't want government handling anything that a business can.  I can see the upsides to that, but also there are some definite downsides.  There used to be a day where the government kept a watch over corporations and made sure none of them grew too large or had too large of a market share in a particular entity.  Remember the break of of Ma Bell.  Can any of you guys remember the last big corporate break up.  Nope. I can't either.  But what I do remember is the number of Mergers, Consolidations, and Acquisitions that I've seen over the last 25 years.

With these companies becoming behemoths large enough to rival small Countries also comes the risk that when they fail they take a significant portion of our GDP with it.  The FisCONS don't want government run health care but they'll take HMO or Kaiser. They don't want government run Utilities, but they'll gladly fork over cash to Enron.  The problem that they cause to the message of the Republican Party is that over the last several years we've seen the result of corporate greed on the individual's life.  We've seen Enron and Tyco destroying the wealth of retirement plans.  We've seen AIG and Lehman destroy the credit of everyday working Americans.  

How can the little guy resolve that we should let these guys have more control of our lives and money when we have no control over them?  At least when the government is screwing you over, as a citizen you know that you can exercise your right to vote the idiot out of office in a few years.  If its the CEO of Enron you don't have any control until you're money is gone and he's in a posh prison.

The Social Conservatives love to rail on about personal responsibility but they don't want any of that responsibility to be personal.  The want to make sure that you're not able to make decisions about whats right and whats wrong or whats moral and whats just.  They want the government to do it for you.  What?  Is God not doing enough in the afterlife?  If God truly believed that Abortion is Murder wouldn't he punish the sinner for eternity in the next life?  Same thing with Gay Marriage, and euthanasia.  It's almost like they think that St. Peter isn't qualified to do the whole Judge, Jury, Executioner bit.  

The truth is this, the Republican Party doesn't have much to be afraid of.  The Democrats will do as they've done in the past, Fix the Problems by raising taxes and making responsible investments in jobs creation and infrastructure projects.  Then once the problems are fixed and all is well in the world the Republicans will run against them saying those taxes and investments are harmful, oh and look, THE GAYS!!!  That's right, once everyone is educated, employed, and enjoying the fruits of economic bliss they'll allow a Republican to ride in on a wedge issue and fuck it up again.  Then we'll be writing about the problems of the Democratic Party.