Now that they've had time to pick themselves up and dust themselves off after Tuesday night's general election defeat, it is time for the Republican Party to fully assess what went wrong. In all reality, this was an election that Mitt Romney should have been able to win. History would tell us that past incumbents running for re-election in a bad economy have not fared well. Jimmy Carter was handily defeated by Ronald Reagan in 1980 due in large part to a high unemployment rate and out of control inflation. George H.W. Bush fell short in 1992 when the Clinton campaign convinced voters that "it's the economy stupid." Barack Obama was able to succeed where his predecessors had failed, but how? No president since Franklin Roosevelt had been re-elected with an unemployment rate above 7.1%, that is until Tuesday night. In my view, what should really concern the Republican Party is the fact that a pro-business nominee who touted his business credentials and ran on a platform to fix the economy couldn't win. Does this reveal a problem with the party's nominee, or the party itself? Some would say that Mitt Romney wasn't the ideal candidate because he wasn't conservative enough to appeal to the base of the Republican Party. Some have labeled him a Massachusetts moderate. While both of these may indeed be true, I think the reason for his defeat goes much deeper than that. I believe that a majority of voters in America feel as though Romney's party is not all inclusive. There is no disguising the fact that the demographic makeup of America is changing. The United States has more Hispanic, Asian, and Latino voters now than ever before. More women and young people are voting than at any time in recent history. Gay and lesbian voters have burst onto the electoral scene in larger numbers as well. While the Democratic Party has made a concerted effort to reach out to these key voting constituencies, the same cannot be said for the GOP. Fair or not, the Republican Party has been branded as the party of "old white men." While expanding the electorate is no doubt what the Republican Party needs to do, it might be difficult to accomplish. Doing so would almost certainly require the party to alter it's stance on a number of key issues like immigration, welfare, and gay rights in order to gain more votes from these key voting blocs. Some would say that Romney's defeat can also be attributed to a perception problem when it comes to the Republican Party. One common perception that many voters have of the party is that it cares only about the rich and wealthy, while casting aside the middle class in America. Romney's 47% remark that became a key soundbite in this year's campaign, didn't do anything to help change that perception. Until the Republican Party begins to reach out a welcoming hand to a growing, more diverse electorate, they will have a difficult time competing with the Democrats on a national stage. Perhaps the party can take heed of the old saying, "if you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten."
