Op-Ed: The allure of the Republican Party is baffling. Voters will regret falling for it. But what’s the alternative?
“The GOP is winning the future of the party,” said Mike Murphy, president emeritus of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a liberal think tank.
This past weekend, the nation’s first-ever national day of activism to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of William McKinley — a Republican — made national headlines, with students, activists, politicians and members of business and labor pledging to stop voting for those who want to “fundamentally transform the country.”
The campaign by Students for Nationalism, an all-student alliance, began in the wake of the Republican National Convention in July, where Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan proposed a “grand bargain” with Democrats on fiscal issues and immigration.
Students for Nationalism and their allies say they are not advocating for a Republican program, but rather that Republicans should “step back from the brink” of the “dangerous economic inequality” they helped create as far as college debt and the impact of the minimum wage.
Last Friday, a group organized by Students for Nationalism gathered outside of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia to protest for the first time in their history, with demonstrators filling the streets, waving signs and chanting at the convention.
They chanted: “We are the 99 percent.”
“They tried to go all-in on fear, and that didn’t work out so well,” said Josh Zuckerman, communications director of the Student Activist Alliance, which organized the demonstration.
President Barack Obama, who will be re-elected in November, did not mention Republican policies in his acceptance speech for reelection. He addressed Republicans directly: “You have a party, so sometimes you need to