MARK CUNNINGHAM: To win in 2016: The voters Republicans forgot. “They’re the voters who didn’t come out for John McCain in 2008, and mostly not for Mitt Romney in 2012: They’re middle- and working-class — mostly men and mostly white, though some minority voters and women will respond to the same appeal. When these voters have come out for the GOP, it’s seen congressional landslides like 1994, 2010 and ’14 — but no national Republican since Ronald Reagan has fully drawn them in. . . . Why could Reagan talk to these voters? He’d talked with them. He spent 1954 to ’62 as a spokesman for General Electric — hosting ‘GE Theater’ on TV, but also giving speeches at GE plants. And eating that day in the cafeteria, talking to the workers. Actually, listening to them — getting an earful on how they saw their work, the country, the world. That experience informed Reagan’s entire political future — how he spoke, what he said, his occasional breaks with GOP orthodoxy. No candidate today has time left for such deep exposure — but any of them can get a start. And the smart ones will learn to signal that they’re on these voters’ side.”
Read the whole thing — especially if you’re a GOP politico, as it’s full of good advice.