GOP Considering Name Change Before 2016 Elections; âReagan Partyâ A Top Choice
Last week, the Republican Party won big in the midterm elections, seizing control of the Senate while retaining control over the House, while also picking up governor mansions all across the nation. But for many Republican campaign strategists, the party has a lot of work to do if it hopes to repeat the magic in 2016â¦ and that work might include renaming the party completely. According toÂ GOP Chairman Reince Priebus, he and his partyâs leadership got together back in July of this year to begin discussing plans for the 2016 presidential election, with the goal of figuring out how to take back the White House. Since then, Republicans have come up with a number of ideas regarding how they might reach their ultimate political goal, but many of the ideas their strategists came up with werenât favorable to the party leadership. âThey want us to shift our partyâs political ideology more toward the center. More toward the polls,â says Priebus. âMost Americans actually disagree with GOP policies. Poll after poll shows theyâre falling in love with Obamacare. They want green energy and a safer environment, and background checks and stricter laws for gun ownership, and evolution taught in schools. It isnât enough for us to just yell `lower taxesâ and expect mainstream Americans to vote for us. The people are too smart for that now.â Priebus says the GOP will be doing some of that, admitting informally that the GOP will begin moving toward embracing climate change science, gay marriage, and green energy, pitched to Republicans as an intelligent business incentive. And all of those major ideological shifts are meant to attract younger voters to their party. âThis wonât be the `Grand Oleâ Partyâ anymore,â says Priebus. âWe might actually change that. Weâve been considering a total rebranding, to coincide with our upcoming policy shifts. Weâve got a list of possible new names for our party. My personal favorite is `the Reagan Party.â Itâs perfect, I think. We arenât calling ourselves `oldâ anymore, and we really try to be `the party of Reagan.â It makes sense.â Priebus says that name specifically â The Reagan Party â is the most popular on their short list. âWeâve been looking at other names, but thatâs the one everyone seems to like the most. Some of our other ideas are pretty good though, too. The Freedom Party, the Independence Party, those are some crowd-pleasers. But the Reagan Party really embraces who we are and who we want to be going forward. And I really think those demographics we do poorly with, like young voters, women, and minorities, can really get behind the name, too. The democrats would look like iconoclasts if they tried campaigning against us, because Reagan wasnât only a great man, he was an institution.â