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New GOP club seeks clear, unifying message

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Tom Jackson

tjackson@tampatrib.com

Published: May 8, 2009

LAND O' LAKES - Not to pick (another) fight with the well-meaning white guys whose attempted re-launching of the Republican political brand the other night fizzled like a Taepodong-2, but OK.

Energized conservatives of a certain coveted age launched a little comeback effort of their own Tuesday night, and even if two-thirds of them can't remember the 40th president, they were still stewing about the headline that crystallized from the Arlington, Va., pizza joint Saturday where assorted GOP leaders began unpacking their ideas behind the (fanfare) National Council for a New America.

Among those sipping Diet Coke and sampling the Beef O'Brady's special recipe chili at the charter meeting of the Republican Young Professionals of Pasco club, it was bad enough that one of the hotshot panelists suggested they were embarking upon a Hillaryesque "listening tour."

But the group was nudged toward apoplexy by Jeb Bush, whose declaration - "Reagan dead; move on" - dominated Sunday morning panel shows and set the tone for a week's worth of talk radio.

Communication failure?

Time will tell whether these young professionals (and aspiring professionals; some are still in college) had one of their own, 29-year-old Will Weatherford, to talk them in off the ledge. Attempting to put Bush's remarks into context, the state representative from Wesley Chapel acknowledged the appeal of familiar Reaganisms - lower taxes, less government, more personal freedom - but conservatives, he said, must concede that, "We have had an inability to articulate our message."

Said Weatherford: "It's not 1980 anymore."

No, nearly 30 years on we have seen upheavals on the domestic and international stages unfathomable when Reagan was staring down such quaint difficulties as Gorbachev and the threat of thermonuclear war, the air-traffic controllers union, Tip O'Neill, stagflation and an onerous tax code - all of which, to hear folklorists tell it, Reagan solved with a smile, a quip and a twinkle in his eyes.

Lacking a similar larger-than-life personality to take up the GOP flag, Weatherford seemed to say, conservatives need to polish up their message. "Lower taxes, less government, personal freedoms, I'm for all of that," Weatherford said. "The question is how can we say these things and get people to understand them?"

Here's an idea, and it's pretty much the organizing principle behind Pasco's latest Republican club: How about saying them?

Room for dissent?

"We don't need to change what we stand for," says Elle Rudisill, 21, a USF business major, law school aspirant and the club's vice president. "But if young people knew what it was, it would help."

"Fiscal conservatism and social conservatism," says club secretary Rachel O'Connor, 24, of Land O' Lakes. "In this last election, we didn't talk about what we stood for. ... I know conservatives who voted for Barack Obama, but if we had put social issues more in the spotlight, we would have gotten more of our voters back."

Here, naturally, is where it gets prickly. As one self-avowed conservative, Army reserve captain, lapsed Republican Executive Committee member and Wesley Chapel lawyer Peter Richard said, "They've got to drop the abortion issue."

To Rudisill and O'Connor, those are fighting words. Are there many rooms in the defenders of liberty's big tent? Figuring that out makes the idea of a listening tour a little less icky.

Meanwhile, having found the Land O' Lakes Beef's to their liking, the Republican Young Professionals plan to listen to each other again on the first Tuesday in June. We are eager to hear what distills.

Tom Jackson can be reached at (813)259-7068. Keyword: The Jax Files, for Tom Jackson's bonus musings.

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