New and Improved Republican Memes!

What the Republican Party urgently needs now is (drum role, please) . . . new and improved message memes!

Translation: Sell the same shit in different verbal packaging.

In other words, just say things like this (and the Republicans will have a rousing electoral comeback): “We’re not anti-union, we’re pro-employee!”

According to an article in Salon.com today, that’s Senator Mitch McConnell’s message to a tribe of party activists gathering today:

[T]he crowd at the RNC ate up the GOP dream weaving. The party does have problems, McConnell told them, but they’re all about image: “Ask most people what Republicans think about immigrants, and they’ll say we fear them. Ask most people what we think about the environment, and they’ll say we don’t care about it. Ask most people what we think about the family, and they’ll tell you we don’t — until about a month before Election Day.” But the solution to all that isn’t to change policies, he said; it’s just to communicate them better. His first example? “Workers need to know that we’re not anti-union — we’re pro-employee.”

That McConnell delivered such a relatively rosy message on the day a Gallup Poll found Republicans have only five reliably red states left isn’t necessarily surprising. The GOP hasn’t shown much sign of realizing how much trouble it’s in; McConnell and his House counterpart, John Boehner of Ohio — who led the charge against the stimulus bill — were easily reelected to their leadership posts despite two consecutive election cycles in which Republicans lost a total of 13 Senate seats and 51 House seats.

Can we just call this the Republican Party’s denial stage?