Huffington Magazine Issue 32 | Page 54

BREATHING FIRE All of this assumes that the GOP doesn’t exacerbate its problem with key voter groups in the years ahead. For example, the immigration fight to come has some Republicans openly worrying that the strident anti-everything voices in the House will do even further damage to the party’s relationship with Hispanics. “I’m concerned,” the Republican operative told me. “It’s not like the House Republicans are just going to pass immigration and nobody’s going to say anything stupid.” For much of the fiscal cliff fight, House Republicans were casting themselves as the champions of the rich who refused to allow taxes to go up on people making $1 million a year or more. “We are going to be seen, more and more, as a bunch of extremists,” Rep. Steven LaTourette of Ohio fumed to the National Journal on the night that House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) “Plan B” bill — which would have extended the Bush tax cuts for everyone making less than $1 million a year — failed to pass. The leading 2016 prospects on the Republican side have made clear that they intend to start steering the party away from the HUFFINGTON 01.20.13 rocks. Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan both gave speeches at the annual Jack Kemp dinner in December that were directed at the middle class and the poor. Rubio, in particular, used his biography to connect with the powerless and those struggling to make it. It was an eloquent speech, but Rubio and the others are fighting against a dynamic years in the making. Even after its recent shellacking, it’s not clear what the Republican Party wants its ideas to accomplish beyond the creation of profits. As for the president, there are fresh signs that he intends to try to use the grassroots network his campaign built as a tool during his second term, something he largely failed to do in his first. Four days before Christmas, Obama responded in a video to an online petition — made possible in September 2011 when the White House created such a system — requesting that he act on gun control in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., shootings. “Hey everybody,” Obama began. “Hundreds of thousands of you, from all 50 states, have signed petitions asking us to take serious steps to address the epidemic of gun violence in this country.” “So I just wanted to take a moment today to respond and to let you know,” Obama said. “We hear you.”