美国共和党的新路在何方？

Republicans offer four main explanations of their defeat in the 2012 presidential election.

美国共和党人为他们在2012年总统大选中的失败提供了四种主要解释。

Theory 1: really, it was not very much of a defeat at all. If it had not been for hurricane Sandy, who knows what might have happened?

解释一：实际上，它不完全是失败。要不是飓风桑迪，谁知道是什么情况呢？

(The problem with that theory: despite a weak economy, Barack Obama was not only re-elected but led his party to gains in Congress. Mr Obama carried every swing state he targeted. Outside the Republican stronghold of the south, Mr Obama’s margin of victory was 55-45.)

这种解释的问题是：尽管经济低迷，但巴拉克·奥巴马(Barack Obama)不仅成功连任，而且还带领民主党在国会取得胜利。奥巴马拿下了所有目标摇摆州。在南方共和党地盘以外的地区，奥巴马的优势比率是55%比45%。

Theory 2: Mr Obama owed his victory to his superior get-out-the-vote technology. All the GOP must do is buy better software.

解释二：奥巴马胜选应归功于其采用的卓越动员投票技术。共和党需要做的只是购买更好的软件。

(The problem: Congressional Democrats won a larger total number of votes nationwide than their Republican opponents, without benefit of that technology.)

问题：民主党国会议员在全国范围内赢得了比共和党议员更多的选票，而并未仰仗那种技术。

Theory 3: Mitt Romney was a weak candidate – it was his fault.

解释三：米特·罗姆尼(Mitt Romney)这个候选人实力太弱——输掉大选是他的错。

(The problem: the other 2012 Republican candidates were even weaker. And take a longer view: in the six presidential elections since 1988, Republicans have won a majority of the vote exactly once, in 2004. In the six elections before 1988, Republican presidential candidates averaged 52.5 per cent of the vote. The party’s weakness is chronic but masked by its big wins in non-presidential years, such as 1994 and 2010, when younger, poorer and browner voters tend to stay home.)

问题：2012年的其他共和党人选实力更弱。从更长期来看，自1988年以来的6次总统大选中，共和党仅在2004年以绝对多数赢得大眩在1988年以前的6次选举中，共和党总统候选人平均得票率为52.5%。共和党的弱势是长期的，但被非大选年的大胜掩盖了，比如在1994年和2010年，当时较年轻、贫穷以及深色人种的选民往往呆在家里而不去投票。

Theory 4: there is nothing wrong with this party that a pivot on immigration policy cannot fix.

解释四：这个坚持其移民政策立场的政党没什么错。

(The problem: surveys indicate that Latino voters prefer Democrats on every issue, not just immigration. The large illegal immigrant population inside the US is an important issue of public policy. But there should be no illusions: once legalised, that population will vote with its pocketbook, just like everybody else. Compared with the national norm, Hispanic Americans are poorer, less educated, less likely to have health insurance and more dependent on means-tested social programmes. Why would they vote Republican?)

问题：调查显示，拉美裔选民在所有问题上都支持民主党，不仅仅是移民政策。美国庞大的非法移民群体是一个重要的公共政策课题。但不应错误地认为：一旦获得合法身份，这些人口将和其他人一样为了自己的钱袋子投票。就全美平均而言，西班牙裔美国人更穷、受教育程度更低，不太可能拥有医疗保险，更依赖按经济状况提供的社会补助项目。他们为何要投共和党的票？

The prevailing theories of defeat are wrong. The Republican party needs a new theory – and a new road back to competitiveness.

关于共和党失败的主流解释是错误的。共和党需要一个新的解释，以及一条让共和党恢复竞争力的新路。

That road can be described in just six words: culturally modern, economically inclusive, environmentally responsible.

可以只用14个字描述这条新路：文化现代化、经济包容以及对环境负责。

Culturally modern. Senate candidates demanding that a raped women carry their assailants’ children to term. Radio presenters denigrating a woman as a “slut and “prostitute for arguing that health insurance should cover contraception. A Romney foreign-policy spokesman forced to resign because other Romney supporters objected to his support for same-sex marriage. The endless attempts to represent the president and his supporters as alien, as lesser, as a threat to authentic American values. Taken together, these incidents branded the GOP as a party of yesterday’s America – and as alien to today’s America.

文化现代化。参议员候选人主张遭遇强奸的妇女应生下强奸犯的孩子。电台主持人将主张医疗保险涵盖避孕费用的女性诋毁为“荡妇和“妓女。罗姆尼的一位外交政策发言人被迫辞职，原因是罗姆尼的其他支持者反对他支持同性恋婚姻。没完没了地宣称总统及其支持者是异端、低等人、对真正的美国价值观造成威胁。所有这些，给共和党打上了美国守旧党派的烙印，与当今美国格格不入。

The GOP should choose a path that seeks to win the support of every enterprising American, of every ethnic background, male or female, straight or gay. First step: stop insulting potential voters.

共和党应该选择的道路是，设法赢得所有具有进取精神的美国人的支持，赢得不同种族、性别、性取向的人的支持。第一步是停止攻击潜在的选民。

Economically inclusive. Upper-income America began its economic recovery in 2009. Corporate profits have reached all-time highs and stock markets explore new peaks. Meanwhile, less affluent Americans still face high unemployment, reduced net worth and diminished opportunities. Yet the Republican message in 2012 was aimed almost exclusively at the most prosperous – and came seasoned with a disturbing disrespect for the less prosperous.

经济包容。作为高收入国家的美国在2009年开始经济复苏。企业利润达到历史高点，股市创出历史新高。与此同时，不太富裕的美国人仍面临高失业率、净资产下降和机会减少的问题。然而共和党在2012年的竞选几乎完全针对最富裕的人群，而且带有一种令较不富裕人群不安的不尊重。

Mr Romney disastrously dismissed as irresponsible victims the 47 per cent of Americans who pay no federal personal income tax – even though 60 per cent of those work and pay payroll taxes. In fact, 80 per cent of Americans pay more in payroll taxes than income taxes. The payroll tax holiday (a tax cut of 2 percentage points on incomes up to $110,000) expires at the end of 2012. Somehow, discussions of the fiscal cliff never get round to addressing that fact – even though it is likely to administer a much sharper economic shock than the expiry of the Bush tax cuts.

罗姆尼还灾难性地表示，47%不缴纳个人所得税的美国人是不负责任的受害者——即便其中60%的人有工作并支付工资税。实际上，80%的美国人支付的工资税高于所得税。工资税减免政策（对不高于11万美元的收入下调税率两个百分点）在2012年底到期。不知为什么，关于财政悬崖的讨论从未考虑这个事实，即便它对经济造成的冲击比小布什(George W. Bush)减税政策到期大得多。

But the dominant economic fact for middle-class families in the 2000s was not rising taxes. It was stagnating wages and slowing upward mobility. Wages, healthcare, tuition – these, not tax rates, worried middle-class voters even before the crisis of 2008 and they will continue to worry voters as the economy emerges from the crisis. And if a centre-right party is not a party of the middle class, it is doomed.

但在本世纪头十年，中产阶级家庭面临的主要经济现实不是税率日益上升，而是工资停止增长和向上流动性变缓。甚至早在2008年危机爆发之前，中产阶级选民就开始担忧薪资、医疗支出和学费（而不是税率），而且随着美国经济逐渐从危机中复苏，选民们将继续担忧这些问题。如果一个中右翼政党不是中产阶级的政党，那它注定会失败。

Environmentally responsible. Mr Obama has invested tens of billions of dollars in green energy technologies. He espouses regulation and command-and-control as the way to?reduce?oil?use?and?curtail?emissions of greenhouse gases. This statist approach has failed every time it has been tried and it will fail again.

对环境负责。奥巴马投资数百亿美元用于绿色能源技术。他主张通过监管、命令和控制来降低石油消费和温室气体排放。政府过去每次运用这种中央集权方式都失败了，未来还会失败。

The environment is the great growth area for parties of the right, a place where policy innovation based upon market principles and property rights can achieve better results at lower cost. First, however, parties of the centre-right must accept that environmental concerns matter – that environmentalism is integral to economic development, not antithetical to it. People want money to buy an enhanced quality of life, not a degraded quality of life.

环境问题是右翼政党的强项。在这个领域，如果在市场原则和财产权利的基础上进行政策创新，就可以以更低的成本获得更好的结果。然而，中右翼政党首先必须认识到，环境问题很重要，而且环境保护与经济发展密不可分，而不是彼此对立。人们希望用钱换来更高品质的生活，而不是生活品质的下降。

This is the way forward. The job starts now.

这就是共和党的出路所在，现在就开始行动吧。

The writer, a former speech writer for George W. Bush, is a contributing editor at Newsweek/Daily Beast and the author of ‘Romney Lost’

本文作者曾是小布什的发言撰稿人，目前担任《资讯周刊》(Newsweek)/《每日野兽》(Daily Beast)特约编辑，并著有《罗姆尼输了》(Romney Lost)一书。