The Republican Party "Rebrands"

Mike Huckabee, left, sits with RNC Chairman Reince Priebus before Huckabee spoke at the Republican National Committee winter meeting in Washington on Thursday. Huckabee seems to be working out his final comments about women seeking contraceptives through the ACA -- "Why can't they just control their libido!" Meanwhile, Priebus is wondering if the waiter is mic'd up and wearing a hidden camera.

The Republican Party is hard at it, folks. Oh, not hard at helping Americans get a leg up on unemployment, failing schools, and poverty. No, no. Hard at "rebranding," a term adopted from the advertising industry. People in this industry know that if your lousy product isn't selling, it's cheaper to just repackage the junk and call it something else. Think beer. Anheuser-Busch makes 73 beers, and if they're not selling enough "Bud," they'll call it "Budweiser Select." Ditto "Michelob" vis-a-vis "Michelob Ultra." Unfortunately, Bud/Budweiser Select and Michelob/Michelob Ultra are still mediocre beers.

The Republicans suddenly became "compassionate conservatives" in 2000 and managed to get George W. Bush elected to the Presidency for two, disastrous terms. Well, you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool enough Americans to keep getting Republicans elected. And Republicans know this, so they're changing. Unfortunately, not systemically. They're back to rebranding.

Now Republicans are the "Big Tent" party. That's right folks, the Republican party wants blacks and Latinos and, yes, even women, to know that they are welcome under the big GOP tent. To prove their point, they rolled out first-term Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, an African-American business man, who said during his speech at the RNC meeting that, "we're going to embrace people in a new and fantastic way." Hopefully, one that doesn't call for contraceptives.