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Just say ‘no’ philosophy is failing the GOP

As Florida Republicans suffer an identity crisis, we’re left to wonder why the party of paella, conch fritters and barbecue—the party of can-do—has become the party of stale white bread and “just say no.”

Not just “no” to immigrants—a desperate move to pander to the close-the-border GOP crowd.

Or no to fair wages in a struggling economy while handing over $1 trillion of taxpayer-financed bailouts to fat cats in Detroit and Wall Street.

Jeb Bush said no last week to calls of “Run, Jeb, run!” The U.S. Senate might not have been the right fit. But it’s a desperate situation. Jeb’s been e-mailing GOP brethren for ideas to energize a party in the minority in Washington, relegated to a power base only in the South.

Mel Martinez said “no mas” last month to six more years in the Senate, so he’s going to be a one-termer. During his short stint as national party chair, the pro-immigration-reform senator fought the small-but-loud xenophobic hysterical wing. Still, thousands of Hispanic voters bolted.

African-Americans? They left the party of Lincoln long ago, and any inroads that President George W. Bush might have made were washed away with his shameful leadership post-Katrina.

Chip Saltsman, a candidate in the race for the Republican National Committee chairmanship, hasn’t helped heal old wounds. He sent RNC members a CD that included this ditty: “Barack the Magic Negro.”

I know, liberals can’t take a joke. But this guy isn’t a comedian, he’s a candidate for a national party post. Not funny.

Want outside the political box?

Obama asked a conservative but “green” evangelical preacher to pray at his presidential swearing-in, angering gay rights groups that helped elect him. Obama says he can stick up for gay rights without sticking it to others.

Florida GOP jet-setting chief Jim Greer was fawning over the president-elect in a statement last week criticizing the Saltsman fiasco. Obama isn’t acting on a party script—he’s acting on a promise to reach across party lines. (We’ll see for how long.)

The GOP’s Southern base of white Christian conservatives is demanding a shift to the right. They think John McCain was not committed enough. Fiscal conservatives yearn for Ronald Reagan’s golden era, when promises of small government and fewer taxes produced GOP winners.

They’re wrong. McCain would have won Florida if the “maverick” hadn’t turned into a flip-flopper, moving way to the right to please a dwindling conservative base.

As for those old Reagan promises, they’ve fallen flat in a deep recession with job losses not seen since the end of World War II. We have a GOP president who leaves us a trillion-dollar deficit in the worst economy since the Great Depression, with mixed results on two war fronts, and the party is worried about message?

Republicans should be worried—about substance. Florida has changed since Jeb’s heyday. It added almost half a million black or Hispanic voters, and the dire economic picture raises populist ire over GOP tax cuts and free-trade policies of the past decade.

Obama acts like the centrist maverick that McCain once was. He has the chutzpah to toss an olive branch at the GOP’s evangelicals and tick off gay-rights backers in the name of national unity.

The Florida GOP should be worried. It has to turn its divisive “just say no” failed strategy into the real work of doing what’s right for the people, the majority in Florida planted firmly in the center.

Myriam Marquez is a columnist for the Miami Herald. Readers may write to her via e-mail at mmarquez@miamiherald.com.