And so begins the long road to 2016…

On Sunday the GOP faithful flocked to the campus of Iowa State University in Ames. The Family Leadership  Summit (organized by the same people who not too long ago encouraged candidates to sign a pledge with a line suggesting that black children were better off during slavery) paid homage to the GOP's conservative base with a series of "speech-a-fying" and testimony from the likes of Texas Senator Ted Cruz, sweater vest pioneer and former Senator/presidential candidate Rick Santorum - even Donald Trump, who reminds me of that famous country song "How Can I Miss You When You Won’t Go Away." If anyone thinks "The Donald” is seriously thinking about running for President again this time, they need only read his quote calling the US a “laughingstock” and sooner or later they will realize he's just trying to squeeze one more season of "Celebrity Apprentice" out of NBC or possibly pushing for a contract endorsement from The Hair Club for Men.

Cruz railed against the very Washington he is currently a part of.  Santorum suggested that he trusted the people of Iowa to do the right thing in 2016, saying they would have the chance to do "do what no other state has the opportunity to do, which is to know the candidates."  My assumption is the Senator was referring to the 2016 Iowa caucuses in which he is planning on taking part.  He conveniently must have forgotten about compressed primary and caucus schedules in a number of other states including New Hampshire. I'm sure he'll remember us once he comes a callin'!

Santorum made the case that the party should be more aware not just of the people who create jobs (see Mitt Romney 2012), but also of the people who hold the jobs. My assumption would be that he was referring to the middle class, if he hadn’t so often asserted that the middle class does not in fact exist.

Cruz railed against immigration as did Trump, who suggested that we can't have illegals “flowing in like candy”…candy?  Am I the only one that finds this an awkward metaphor?

The first look at these early Iowa visitors as well the likes of Rand "Drones Overhead" Paul, Steve “Cantaloupes” King and others who have found their way to the Granite State for some early exploration gives me a bit of a chill.  

Everyone knows that Hillary Clinton is the likely Democratic nominee for 2016. And the GOP better find a dog that can hunt in states with a whole lot more delegates than Iowa.  Robert Frost once said: "To know the road ahead, ask those coming back."  In other words those who don't learn from the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them.  Looks to me like no one in the GOP is listening-at least so far.

One of the guys who recently returned from that long tough road was the last cycle’s GOP nominee, Mitt Romney.  The vanquished party standard-bearer who was defeated by President Obama in 2012 appeared last week at a fundraiser for the New Hampshire GOP at a supporter's Wolfeboro home, just a nine iron from his own family’s summer retreat on New Hampshire’s Big Lake.

Romney was greeted by a significant crowd of supporters, friends and Republican stalwarts. The event was closed to the media, but Romney's staff cleverly released the governor’s prepared remarks to members of the press in order that they might convey his thinking beyond the crowd that gathered that summer evening.

Romney suggested that the GOP get its collective act together as we move toward what may just be the coronation of “Hillary the Great” (my words, not his.)  The advice was based on the fact that crowded primaries full of lunatics throwing bombs at their own is not good box office and - as witnessed by his own defeat - not good for winning back the White House.  Mitt suggested that the party "get behind 1 or 2 candidates" who can win the nomination and stand up to the Democratic nominee in a general election contest.  He suggested that inter-party warfare was divisive, expensive and turns off voters.  He also suggested in his own way that the GOP needs to figure out what it wants to be when and if it grows up (again, my words not his.)

Romney's been down the long road that leads to the GOP nomination.  Battered and bruised, inventing and re-inventing himself along the way.  The Mitt Romney who made it to Election Day must not have recognized his own face in the mirror when he shaved each morning. Over the long course of the campaign Romney had shifted positions and been pushed so far to the right I feared he might turn up on the left. He found himself caught on video tape talking about 47% of Americans who would never vote for him because they depended too much on government and that he couldn't worry about them.  Mitt Romney is by any standard, a loving husband, father, grandfather, and American success story but at the end of the race he looked like a completely different guy.

Barack Obama and his team of political advisors had turned Mitt Romney into a selfish out of touch billionaire who hated women, kids and welfare recipients and cared little about humanity in general.  Romney was made to look like the Darth Vader of American Politics, in spite of the fact that he is in reality much more Luke Skywalker.

America bought the tale and Romney came limping back down that long road Frost wrote about, now ready to share the story he somehow lived to tell.  Romney's a smart guy and I certainly believe America would have been served better and slept sounder each and every night if he had become president.

But based on the kabuki dance this past weekend in Iowa, it looks like none of the likely GOP contenders in 2016 are listening to Romney’s advice, or anyone else’s for that matter.

Winning elections is about broadening the GOP's appeal-not trying to convince the right wing of the party that moderates who disagree with them are “squishes” and should have their party credentials revoked. To suggest that Romney lost because he was too moderate is (as Joe Biden would say) the highest form of “malarkey!”

The GOP needs to hold the base and adopt an economic agenda that will recharge the American economy and put people back to work in the private sector.  The GOP of smaller, local government, less interference from Washington, less debt and more opportunity for the next generation sells.  What does not sell is applying a different standard to the idea that a political party - especially one that celebrates both freedom of religion and personal responsibility - can universally legislate morality.  It's a loser… it pushes Americans away from the GOP, it allows our party to be defined by the liars on the other side as hateful, exclusive, intolerant and out of touch.  On the issues of immigration, abortion, gay rights, education and the rights of women and ethnic minorities, the GOP is shaping up for 2016 like the same crowd that bashed Romney's brains in in 2012.  That is unfortunate and it is sadly a guaranteed formula to make Hillary Clinton the next president of the United States.

The GOP should listen to Mitt Romney, he's been in the arena and back.  And while Romney didn't run a perfect campaign, the bruising, bitter primary fight between groups of angry white conservative men did little to ingratiate Republicans to the base, never mind to independents and a new generation of younger voters.

So the next time one of your GOP friends go on a rant about Barack Obama, Obama-Care, or the mess America finds itself in the world today due to his liberal agenda…tell them to take a deep breath and ask themselves to repeat the words "President Hillary Clinton" 3 times slowly.  Maybe, just maybe they’ll wake up from the stupor of incessant Republican warfare and realize that the party needs to actually connect to the real American electorate in order to win. And it’s a whole lot easier to govern when you win.