Embattled GOP Chair Michael Steele chastised Montana Republicans for their lack of young people this week, when he appeared as the keynote speaker for the Montana GOP Platform Convention in Billings, the state's largest city of about 80,000. Apparently, as a (the only?) GOP staffer related on the MT GOP Facebook page, the party had first tried to get Michele Bachmann, but couldn't make it happen.
In addition to the usual political speech drivel, Steele told Montana Republicans that they needed to involve more young people.
"the next time you have this dinner, you need more of them in here. You need to go out, encourage, recruit and involve them. We are absolutely the party of tomorrow".
The party of tomorrow?
Here in Montana, the Republican party prides itself in shunning modern science not only terms of creationism or "intelligent design" as they are trying to rebrand it now, but also a "disbelief" in climate change, and opposition to embryonic stem cell research. Not only do they cling to the ideologies of the past, but as the world changes they have no new ideas to meet new challenges.
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Dennis Rehberg, the party's only top official and Montana's only representative in the U.S. House, introduced no ideas in his speech to convention-goers, nor, one could argue, in his entire term in Congress. No solution of his own for health care, and no proposals of his own to stimulate the economy--except the ideas of the 1970s and 1980s. News Flash Montana Republicans: It's not the same world anymore.
Steele further chastised Republicans for their losing record in Montana races:
"You got two Democrat (U.S.) senators. Now, how the heck does that happen?" he said. "You gotta change that. You got a Democrat governor in Montana."
I'll tell you how it happens-and why few young people are remotely interested in Republicans. The Republican party is outdated and out of touch with the current world. Political ideologies do not exist in a vacuum. They need to meet the problems of the world as it exists. Democrats in Montana understand this, which may be why-despite our so-called red state status-they have been increasingly successful in Montana.
Say what you like about the Montana Democrats we elected, at least they understand that a new world requires new thinking. As the world continues to evolve at an accelerating pace, conservatives, who instinctively hunker down and cling to the past, will find themselves increasingly outside of the mainstream. This diary was originally posted at http://www.leftinthewest.com/...