GOP Rebranding? Roger Ailes Isn't Buying It

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A question for Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, who this week unveiled a nearly 100-page "autopsy" report on the GOP's recent electoral failings that urged the party to soften its image and become more inclusive: Do you think Roger Ailes is more concerned with his new biography hitting the top 10 on the best-seller list, or with the Republican Party successfully appealing to more minority voters?

The answer to that question might go a long way in determining whether the GOP has any luck rebranding itself in the coming years. Early indications are Ailes and Fox News have no interest in moderating their form of attack programming, the bare-knuckle brand celebrated in Zev Chafets' new bio of the Fox News president, Roger Ailes: Off Camera.

Dubbed the "Growth & Opportunity Project," the RNC's laundry list of campaign failures urges the party to become more inclusive, tolerant and able to engage and persuade non-believers. Or to at least be able to not turn them off entirely with angry, absolutist rhetoric. "On messaging, we must change our tone," the report concluded.

Right now though, the Republican Party, riding a White House losing streak (2-4 since 1992), has a massive messaging problem, thanks to Roger Ailes.

As Variety confirmed last year, "the voice of Republican opposition throughout the Obama administration has been Fox News Channel, and the de facto leader of the GOP its chairman-CEO Roger Ailes."

It's fitting that the RNC report, which represents a concerted effort by the GOP to turn the page on its losing ways, arrived the same week Ailes was busy taking his book-release star turn and presenting himself as a clarion voice of the conservative movement. Via the book we learned Ailes -- when not making weird media references to Hitler and Stalin and comparing Islamic charities to terrorist organizations -- dismissed America's first black president as a "lazy" liar who's "never worked a day in his life." (Ailes was clumsily misrepresenting comments Obama had made about himself in a 2011 interview with Barbara Walters.) Then in an interview with the Daily Beast, Ailes lashed out at another prominent African American, Van Jones, calling him a "communist infiltrator" who ... has one job, to stir up racism whether he can find it or not."

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