It’s time to grab a bucket of popcorn and find a comfy place on the couch. The latest round of political theatre is about to begin!

No farce today, though. No, today’s theatre is an earnest drama of a political party struggling to adapt to changing times. In this case, the Republican party, and the theme of today’s show is empathy.

Our story begins with the election of 2006. There, and in the elections of 2008 and 2012, Democratic victories have forced greater and greater introspection by the Republican party over why they lost. Were their positions too extreme or too moderate? Do the positions need to be changed or just advertised differently?

One topic that has received a lot of attention in the wake of last November’s election is the “empathy gap.” Voters whose most important quality in a candidate was “cares about people like me” turned out for Obama over Romney by 81.2 percent to 17.6 percent. Romney beat Obama on all the other qualities, but by far smaller margins.

This empathy gap was reinforced by many of the notorious Republican gaffes of 2012 – like Romney’s “47%” or Akin’s “legitimate rape”: bad things, so the gaffe narrative went, don’t really happen to good, hard-working people like us (so if they happened to you, then you must have done something to deserve it).

Efforts to shrink the empathy gap have come in various forms. Immigration reform, to appeal to Latino voters, has seen serious consideration, and in the lead-up to the Supreme Court cases regarding marriage equality, a number of influential Republicans have signed an amicus brief in favor of equality. To cap it off, the Republican National Committee’s new “Growth and Opportunity Project” report, which recommends changes to build a new – more successful – course for the party in the future, emphasizes outreach to people with different viewpoints. 

But will the RNC’s attempt to shrink the empathy gap actually work?

Pollster par excellence Nate Silver had his doubts over whether the empathy gap was actually responsible for Obama’s win. Whether or not one sees a candidate as empathetic can be a consequence from, not a reason for, who we want to vote for; for example, 83 percent of Democrats saw Obama as empathetic, but 82 percent of Republicans saw Romney as empathetic.  We often make our decisions based on party affiliation or a particular stance on a particular issue, and then rationalize why we did so afterwards.

The debate over empathy recently returned to the forefront due to Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio. Around the time the RNC’s report was released, Portman announced his newfound support for marriage equality, due in large part to the fact that his son is gay.

Many bloggers and commentators on the left were astounded that Portman needed a gay family member in order to understand the importance of marriage equality. They accused him of lacking empathy.

This caused some moderate and conservative writers to point out that we all have our biases and sometimes it takes events that hit close to home to make us change our mind.

To which, liberals retorted that it was Portman’s job as a senator to consider all those difficult issues for his constituents.

Conservatives responded that it is now the liberals who are lacking empathy about Portman’s position.

And so on.

I have trouble figuring out which side I agree with more, or whether I think Portman is just being opportunistic in coming out on this issue prior to the Supreme Court hearing on marriage equality.

What’s notable here is that Portman did more than put on political theatre, call a press conference and profess his understanding of the plight of LGBT Americans.

He actually changed his position.

And that, far more than the mere appearance of empathy (which seems not to have changed anyway), is likely to impact perceptions of him. Remember, party and issues often influence our decisions first.

So I believe that the RNC’s fight to close the empathy gap will improve their electoral chances, but not for the reason many commentators think. The very act of trying to appear empathetic requires listening to new voices and hearing new stories from different people; and that can inspire changes on actual issues, in the same way that Portman, speaking with his son, was inspired to change his stance on marriage equality.

I think the best advice here comes from one of the Republican’s own, former Bush speechwriter David Frum: “Show up and listen.”

Joseph is a graduate student in mathematics. He can be reached at [email protected].