For Republican Party, time to turn off lights

There was no politeness or standing on courtesy for the Associated Press. Six o’clock came and Hawaii voters watched CNN and AP call this election without one vote being officially tallied.

It was over and Democrats swept the major races.

Suddenly it was Senator-elect Mazie Hirono, Representative-elect Colleen Hanabusa and Tulsi Gabbard.

With no addition or subtraction — Linda Lingle, Charles Djou and Kawika Crowley had lost.

State Republican Chairman David Chang said on television, "It is a little absurd for the national press to call our races without any printouts available."

Finally when the first votes were reported, the national media to dead on.

To the losers, reality can be a bit absurd.

What is not absurd is the place where Hawaii’s Republican Party resides.

It was just six years ago that Gov. Linda Lingle beat the Democratic standard bearer, former state Sen. Randy Iwase by 94,000 votes.

Who wouldn’t think there was a future to the local GOP with that kind of a smashing victory?

Last night proved that Lingle was not the political future.

Even the early returns last night showed Hirono ahead of Lingle almost two-to-one.

On a national level, the GOP has yet to address its very real demographic dilemma; Republicans can not be a national political party if it is a party dominated by white people. Every day America looks a bit more like Hawaii, a state of minorities.

Of course, the U.S. is not there yet, but the trends are inescapable and so far the national GOP does not have the party platform planks on immigration, civil rights, or even simple voting rights that will address and be of interest to families that are not white.

In Hawaii, that is not the GOP’s problem. It is actually much deeper.

The state’s Republican Party stands for not being the Democratic Party; it might as well be "None of the Above," instead of a viable political force.

The early returns show that state Sen. Sam Slom is likely to remain the only Republican in the state Senate, and there could be five or six GOP members in the state House.

During the campaign, former Gov. Lingle’s argument was pretty much a cookie-cutter embrace of bipartisanship clichés and not leadership. Although she tried mightily to sell it, her argument that she could backstop national Democratic heavyweight, U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Inouye was mostly nonsensical.

If there was enough effort in the Lingle campaign, there was no way to spread the effort around to the other GOP campaigns.

In the past, there was hope that Lingle’s governorship would lead to more legislative victories and perhaps more interest on the neighbor islands.

That didn’t happen in the last three elections. Instead, the Hawaii GOP wasted time and energy quibbling among its few loyal members and even within the party it was unable to be a party of inclusion.

It is an almost impossible argument now for Lingle to say, "Huddle up, we can fix this."

There is nothing to fix when you are operating with a null set.

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Richard Borreca wrote this bonus column because of Tuesday’s general election. His column on politics normally runs on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@ staradvertiser.com.