April 18, 2013
To: Interested Parties
From: Reince Priebus
Subject: Update on Our Efforts to Pitch a Bigger Tent
Friends,
I continue to hear complaints that the only growth our members are seeing is in the prostate, but our policies aren’t the problem. We just need to reach out to new voters with new technology and new messaging. Here’s how.
New Voters
A recent study of 2,300 college undergraduates concluded that 45 percent of them “demonstrated no significant gains in critical thinking, analytical reasoning, and written communications during the first two years of college.”
These are our people! We just need to find them.
Another promising subgroup: soccer moms who believe that anyone who enjoys soccer past the age of twelve is a communist.
New Messaging
We also need new outreach strategies for immigrants, gays, minorities, and women.
1) Immigrants: It is time for Republicans to publicly embrace a path to citizenship. There are a number of ways to do this. First, we will rename Interstate 35 the Path to Citizenship®. Then we will encourage all immigrants to board buses along the Path to Citizenship® and to voyage south to Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, in Mexico. From there, the dreamers need only demonstrate their hale American aspirations by completing the electrified Climb to Citizenship®, followed by the refreshing Wade to Citizenship®.
2) The Gays: When we refer to members of this group, we need to use compassionate phrases like “These people could be our sons and daughters,” rather than “Shame about Rob Portman’s son.” We should also make an effort to recruit more candidates who bear a resemblance to Anderson Cooper.
3) Minorities: By 2050, minorities will compose the majority of the American population. In the last election President Obama carried minorities—even the hardworking Orientals Asian Americans, who should be natural Republicans—with upward of 80 percent of the vote.
The problem for us is that immigrants believe in a strong federal government because so many of them came from countries, like South Korea, where strong central governments have helped increase prosperity for all. This is why the GOP should expand visas for immigrants from dysfunctional and/or failed states. More Somalis would be great. So would more folks from Uzbekistan, and Equatorial Guinea, and Tanzania. And what about Iraqis and Afghans? Talk about a common purpose! They hate our government—and so do we!
4) Women: As we learned from Rush Limbaugh, calling gals who use birth control “sluts” is not a surefire vote getter. Our pollsters also inform us that it does not help to bring every conversation about women around to the subject of rape. So let’s just avoid the issue, and if anyone brings it up we should shut that whole thing down.
New Technology
In my last report, I said we should build a GOP field office near San Francisco “to foster and build stronger connections with the high-tech community” (see also “The Gays,” above). In the last election, the Democrats used social media to reach out to younger voters. By contrast, Republicans asked older Americans to forward emails to their grandchildren warning of secret White House plans to tax fishing gear to pay for Obamacare.
While these emails did a commendable job of firing up our base, they had the unfortunate effect of turning off young voters. To maintain the base-mobilizing advantages of these messaging techniques while neutralizing their negative spillovers, we recommend working with vendors on new software that will automatically make age-appropriate edits to forwarded emails—changing, for instance, the words “fishing gear” into “Apple products” or “artisanal cupcakes.”
My fellow Republicans, if we are able to take the steps I have outlined above, we are guaranteed victory in 2014 and beyond.
At least, that’s what Dick Morris told me.
