Dear Grand Old Partiers:
I know you are hurting. And I know you are thinking seriously about the future and how you can more effectively reach out to women, working people, and minorities, especially Latinos -- or as the commies used to say "What is to be done?"
But before you get too deeply involved in writing columns for the Wall Street Journal, sniping at each other from the pages of the National Review and Weekly Standard, and lining up for auditions at FOX cable news, I want to offer you some advice: Don't mourn. Apologize.
Yes, I realize, that apologizing is not a Republican thing. I accept that you don't want to sound like a softhearted Democrat. And I know that "compassionate conservatism" went out when George W. Bush got in. Nevertheless, given your actions this past year -- hell, for the past 30 years and more -- and the fact that your presidential nominee lost (and you never saw it coming), don't you think you should give it a try?
Go ahead, how bad will it feel and how much harm can it do? In fact, to make it a bit easier for you to do, I have drawn up a list of ten apologies for you.
1. Apologize to women for your comrades' crude references to rape and your own many efforts to enact laws that would not only license you to get in between them and their doctors and probe their bodies, but actually take away their right to control those bodies of theirs.
2. Apologize to working people for helping the rich to wage class war from above against them -- and give a special apologetic shout out to public employees in Wisconsin for not just lowering their living standards, but passing laws that strip them of their hard-won right to collective bargaining.
3. Apologize to scientists for ignorantly dismissing their findings about global warming. And in your prayers (if you don't pray, start doing so!), tell Mother Earth how sorry you are for failing to attend to the signals she has been sending us.
4. Apologize to the jobless whose lives you have made miserable by obstructing Democratic initiatives to rebuild the economy and provide work -- and don't forget to send a special a note to the young people whose futures you have also made so bleak by incessantly placing debt reduction and lower taxes for the wealthy above job creation.
5. Apologize to poor people for having done everything you could to suppress their right to vote -- from enacting laws requiring a "Voter Identification Cards" to not supplying polling stations with enough machines to make the act of voting the joy for citizens it ought to be.
6. Apologize to immigrants and people of color for passing state laws that allow you to harass them for the color of their skin and make a mockery of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" and the Statue of Liberty.
7. Apologize to President Obama for your incessant efforts to portray him as an "other," a foreigner, a socialist, and a threat to the nation.
8. Apologize to the Greatest Generation for your duplicity in staging events to celebrate their courage and bravery during the Second World War even while you were issuing platforms, manifestos, and budget plans that would destroy their greatest achievements and legacies such as Social Security and Medicare. And do yourselves a favor and read FDR's Four Freedoms Speech of January 1941.
9. Apologize to the Founding Fathers for embracing the Tea Partiers and denying the nation's purpose and promise, indeed, the real meaning of "American exceptionalism." You can try your best to deny it, but we Americans fought our revolution not to get out of paying taxes but to make American life freer, more equal, and more democratic. Here you might quote the Declaration and the Preamble to the Constitution -- if nothing else, you might learn something. Oh yes, and while you are at it, apologize to the Stars and Stripes for wrapping yourselves in it and making such a mess.
10. Apologize to smart people everywhere for endorsing and promoting Mitt's book, No Apology.