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[Republicans]: The Grand New Party
Atomika
Live fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered User regular
Live fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered User regular
So, you've probably heard that Mitt Romney was suddenly and unexpectedly defeated by a narrow margin in his presidential bid, 332-206. Conservative pundits this morning are shocked and dismayed (as are you all, I'm sure) as to how this could happen, since tenured pundits and elder statesmen like Joe Scarborough and Dick Morris predicted "landslide" victories by Romney, Morris going as far as to estimating Romney's electoral count would be as high as 325 votes.
Now, I think we can all agree that the aftermath of losing an election is the best time to turn inward and examine where you, your message, and your party could have possibly somehow botched the huge and commanding popular and electoral lead that you never had according to anyone but yourselves. Make no mistake, in an election where the President's approval on major issues like the economy and social codes aren't roundly positive, and in an election where much of America is willing to oust Barack Obama due to unfounded fears about him being a socialist or a Muslim or an illegal immigrant or a scary Black man, . . . this is an outright rejection of all things GOP.
But can this needed introspection even happen? In 2004 when John Kerry lost the election for the Democrats, James Carville endeared himself to me forever by getting on TV and immediately taking full responsibility, for all Democrats, for their failure to rally the country to their message and platform as well as running a candidate that was poorly suited for the national stage. Almost a decade onward, that acceptance of failure seems to have been taken to heart, as this year's Democratic National Convention was a virtual parade of young and diverse talent, campaigning on their idealism and desire to compromise in order to get things done in the gridlocked Washington. They didn't trot out old divisive partisans to rally the base like they have in the past, like Howard Dean or Michael Moore. They showed that they want the world to think of the Democratic Party as fresh, impassioned, pragmatic, and open to all people regardless of race, religion, gender, or ability. This is now the party of Tammy Duckworth, Julian Castro, Cory Booker, and Elizabeth Warren. This is the party of Barack Hussein Obama.
The Republicans, if they are to remain viable, need to use last night as their James Carville moment. America, for two Presidential elections in a row, has rejected the current face of the GOP, and the party now finds itself at an interesting crossroads; with exhausting Mitt Romney and John McCain, the GOP has depleted their supply of elder statesmen that had any chance of election. Last night also saw the rejection of the Old (mostly) White Christian Male, as Todd Akin, Scott Brown, Dick Mourdock, and Allen West found themselves looking for employment this morning. Exit polling shows that women, young voters, Latinos, and generally all minorities prefer the politics of the Democratic Party; according to a recent Forbes poll, 54% of female voters consider personal liberty rights (such as abortion) and equal pay legislation their top priority, and in an election where Obama already led on issues like the economy, entitlements, and education, what does the GOP have to offer at all?
This is their moment, though, whether they want it to be or not. The weeks and months to come will show us if the Republican Party can free itself of its reality distortion field, free itself of pundits and hangers-on who speak only total and utter unfounded bullshit, and rally to the few remaining bastions of rationality left within the party. Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader who first proudly set his party's mandate for mindless obstructionism, is not one of those:
(from last night)
It's fairly simple: if the GOP does not redefine itself, it is doomed to limp into irrelevancy. Being the party of draconian social views, bigotry, intolerance, and the champions of ignorance will keep them from ever having any other part of their platform seen in a positive light. The country last night stated decisively that civil rights, women's rights, reforming drug laws, and economic parity is the direction it wants to go in. Republicans will need to shake free of the defeating rhetoric of the evangelicals and Tea Party ignoramuses, and remake themselves in that mold (and in some ways, revert into that mold), championing the pragmatists and intellectuals in their own party as the new scions of their message and movement. Failing that, they can go take their seat next to the Torries, Whigs, and Bull-Moose at the table of failed American political movements.
Now, I think we can all agree that the aftermath of losing an election is the best time to turn inward and examine where you, your message, and your party could have possibly somehow botched the huge and commanding popular and electoral lead that you never had according to anyone but yourselves. Make no mistake, in an election where the President's approval on major issues like the economy and social codes aren't roundly positive, and in an election where much of America is willing to oust Barack Obama due to unfounded fears about him being a socialist or a Muslim or an illegal immigrant or a scary Black man, . . . this is an outright rejection of all things GOP.
But can this needed introspection even happen? In 2004 when John Kerry lost the election for the Democrats, James Carville endeared himself to me forever by getting on TV and immediately taking full responsibility, for all Democrats, for their failure to rally the country to their message and platform as well as running a candidate that was poorly suited for the national stage. Almost a decade onward, that acceptance of failure seems to have been taken to heart, as this year's Democratic National Convention was a virtual parade of young and diverse talent, campaigning on their idealism and desire to compromise in order to get things done in the gridlocked Washington. They didn't trot out old divisive partisans to rally the base like they have in the past, like Howard Dean or Michael Moore. They showed that they want the world to think of the Democratic Party as fresh, impassioned, pragmatic, and open to all people regardless of race, religion, gender, or ability. This is now the party of Tammy Duckworth, Julian Castro, Cory Booker, and Elizabeth Warren. This is the party of Barack Hussein Obama.
The Republicans, if they are to remain viable, need to use last night as their James Carville moment. America, for two Presidential elections in a row, has rejected the current face of the GOP, and the party now finds itself at an interesting crossroads; with exhausting Mitt Romney and John McCain, the GOP has depleted their supply of elder statesmen that had any chance of election. Last night also saw the rejection of the Old (mostly) White Christian Male, as Todd Akin, Scott Brown, Dick Mourdock, and Allen West found themselves looking for employment this morning. Exit polling shows that women, young voters, Latinos, and generally all minorities prefer the politics of the Democratic Party; according to a recent Forbes poll, 54% of female voters consider personal liberty rights (such as abortion) and equal pay legislation their top priority, and in an election where Obama already led on issues like the economy, entitlements, and education, what does the GOP have to offer at all?
This is their moment, though, whether they want it to be or not. The weeks and months to come will show us if the Republican Party can free itself of its reality distortion field, free itself of pundits and hangers-on who speak only total and utter unfounded bullshit, and rally to the few remaining bastions of rationality left within the party. Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader who first proudly set his party's mandate for mindless obstructionism, is not one of those:
(from last night)
"The American people did two things: They gave President Obama a second chance to fix the problems that even he admits he failed to solve during his first four years in office, and they preserved Republican control of the House of Representatives. The voters have not endorsed the failures or excesses of the president's first term, they have simply given him more time to finish the job they asked him to do together with a Congress that restored balance to Washington after two years of one-party control. Now it's time for the president to propose solutions that actually have a chance of passing the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and a closely divided Senate, step up to the plate on the challenges of the moment, and deliver in a way that he did not in his first four years in office."
It's fairly simple: if the GOP does not redefine itself, it is doomed to limp into irrelevancy. Being the party of draconian social views, bigotry, intolerance, and the champions of ignorance will keep them from ever having any other part of their platform seen in a positive light. The country last night stated decisively that civil rights, women's rights, reforming drug laws, and economic parity is the direction it wants to go in. Republicans will need to shake free of the defeating rhetoric of the evangelicals and Tea Party ignoramuses, and remake themselves in that mold (and in some ways, revert into that mold), championing the pragmatists and intellectuals in their own party as the new scions of their message and movement. Failing that, they can go take their seat next to the Torries, Whigs, and Bull-Moose at the table of failed American political movements.
Atomika on
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So, do we see Republicans swing center next election? Or do they run further to the right, lose horribly in 2016, and then move back to the center?
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Good thing we've got Obama and the senate for those 4 years if that happens.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
They made the same argument four years ago. McCain was "too moderate."
Too much of the GOP base consists of true believers to moderate that much. When any compromise is seen as betrayal, its hard to chose moderate candidates for major races. The exception is in deep blue states, and that's mostly because of a lack of Tea Partiers to primary those candidates.
Look at The National Journal's Top 10 Republican Presidential Candidates for 2016. The most moderate guys are probably
and a Bush.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
If the last three GOP nominees are anything to judge by, the party will nominate the most centrist person on the fringe (or who has no problem pandering to the fringe). They seem to want a candidate who will be all things to all parts of the base, while Democrats like Obama and Bill Clinton don't seem to have any concern about being the Omni-Candidate. It's one of the (several) reasons Ron Paul could never gain traction: he supported drug reform and some social liberty policies that directly flew in the face of the evangelical bloc (not to mention, he was *gasp!* educated).
I would not be surprised to see the GOP continue to make the same mistakes, since they made them again last night. As President Obama pointed out in the debates, the GOP now is further Right than they were under Bush, so it's plain to say the Party is looking for more and more "purity." The Party will also look to how they were more successful this election, in terms of electoral and popular votes, than they were in 2008 as a success for their platform, and many of them will likely ignore the landmark gains in the areas of gay rights and drug reform from last night, as well as the rejection of Daddy State politicians like Todd Akin and Allen West.
Even last night, GOP surrogates were molding the party line into shape: "Conservatism didn't fail, our message and presentation failed Conservatism."
That chicken, she be fucked.
Conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
Him, or Christie. Luckily, it appears Christie just hurricaned himself out of that position.
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
I now believe one of the best things the GOP could do for their party is nuking Fox from orbit. Seriously, all they do is excuse the Republicans for every wrong and blame Obama for everything. The conservatives there have been told they shouldn't change, so they aren't going to change, and then they will just fall again for the same reasons.
Also, lots of racist comments. Yes, that is the way to go as the country gets more and more ethnically diverse.
Then, and only then, after it's failure will the Republican party change.
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
Right?
Well, first they'd have to be actually fiscally responsible.
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
What would get my vote immediately, would be this approach. "We are not conservative and old fashioned in our overall views. We believe in being conservative in how much the government should be involved in people's daily lives and the size of the government. As such, we believe in a free economy, less government spending, but also in less government involvement in your personal affairs. Therefore, we are no longer opposed to gay marriage, abortion, and pot because we prefer a hands off government in every way." I would vote for that conservative ideal any day of the week.
It will never, ever happen, but show me a conservative that believes in a limited government role in both economic and social issues and they'll get my vote.
Austerity is a failed policy. See: Europe. See: The UK.
This presents an interesting game theory challenge to the Democratic Party. They have a strong incentive to encourage the GOP carry on with the crazification, as the resultant implosion and reformation of a "GNP" would probably leave the Democrats an open road to win at least one, maybe 2 more presidencies before Right sorts itself out. That's an attractive prospect for the party leadership. The downside is, of course, some turn of events that temporarily discredits the Democrats at just the wrong time and leaves the likes of Bachmann as the "moderate" face of a new Republican administration. Hell of a risk.
Indeed.
One of the biggest memories I'll take away from this election was the difference in reaction between Fox News and MSNBC after the first and third debates; the libs over at MSNBC were livid after the first debate at how poorly the President carried himself and refuse to engage in the issues, while the conservatives at Fox News after the third debate could only talk about how "arrogant" and "mean" Barack Obama was. This was solidifying in my mind that as of now, conservatives are not wired for self-improvement, only self-defeat. Introspection and awareness is not only absent, but frowned upon. Do not question the truth of the bubble or you will find yourself outside of it; the bubble never bursts, it only grows smaller as more and more people leave it.
I hate that is actually the "common wisdom", because they fucking suck at it. You have to go back to the first Bush to find one who was kinda responsible. Where our recent Democrats have actually done things regarding this.
Ugh.
But does the GOP even have a message right now that people want to hear?
Purely anecdotal, I know very few Romney voters that I would consider informed or objectively non-partisan. This election was a referendum on Barack Obama, not a desire for conservative policies to be put into place.
Narrative vs Fact.
The trouble is that building post-truth narratives rather than relying on fact has been so enormously profitable for the Republicans that it's going to take a truly catastrophic election result to get them to change that, and even then it'll be a long death. Either that or some radical and unforseen change in the election terrain.
Unfortunately, that's never going to happen.
I keep trying to get Spool to give me one policy initiative from the GOP that is actually, out and out, good policy.
At this point they have tax cuts, wars and getting rid of regulations. It's hard for a responsible person to support any one of those three.
And Bush 1 lost largely to his party throwing a hissy-fit over his raising taxes.
People who believe in the myth of conservatives being more fiscally responsible are falling victim to the old adage about conventional wisdom.
Obama has quietly done a great job of framing the Democratic Party as the party of progressive policies, and this keeps Demtards like the Blue Dogs either out of power or toeing the line.
You can only have moderates like Powell, Bloomberg, and Christie speaking well of Democrat policies for so long without eventually bringing the center-right over to bear.
I've watched this same process play out particulary in the last two elections. Fox News bullies the hell of the Republican candidates before the primaries, laughing away the actual rational conservative Libertarians, and threatening to destroy any Republican candidate who gets too moderate.
What we end up with is candidates that we can't even make sense of. The Party won't field a true far-right-wing nutjob, and no one wants them to, because they'd have no chance in the general election. McCain and Romney are politicians with quite liberal histories as far as Republicans go. But then Fox News browbeats those moderates, those practically liberal Republicans, into pretending to be something that practically defies description. They were candidates who veered uncontrolled into all sorts of bizarre, off-putting issues, while at the same time not really seeming to commit to any platform or position on anything at all, and simply running on hatred of Democrats. Not even Democrats, but strawman imaginary Democrats. As Jon Stewart pointed out, the symbolism of Clint Eastwood talking to an empty chair was beautiful. Republicans fuel themselves on hatred of the kind of Democrats that haven't been prominent or relevant for many years now, if they ever existed at all.
It is no new thing that candidates on both sides have to play the balance of catering to the base and even the extreme while at the same time moderating one's self to get those independent/middle-road/undecided voters. Nor is it a new thing that negative politics and "heting the other guy" are winning strategies. The problem is that Fox News has exploited this game to a new extreme, enrapturing and enraging their viewers (over imaginary nothings) while harming the Republican Party long-term in the process.
The untold sad story here is how many Republicans are actually Libertarians but don't want to "throw their vote away." If every person who voted Romney instead of Johnson only because they didn't want to "throw their vote away" would have instead voted Johnson, two things would have happened: 1) Obama would have won anyway just like any sane person knew he would all along, and 2) the Republican party would almost immediately reefine itself, much for the better, and gain a lot of power. Enough that Fox News would likely have to change their tactics, too, or risk being unmasked even to their own viewers for the scheisters they are.
I'm not necessarily wanting or expecting an actual takeover of the Republican party by the Libertarian party. With the right catalysts it might happen. What I'm saying is that Republicans need to learn that they can and will likely get the votes of all the Deomcrat-hating whackos regardless. They only need to stoke those fires a little bit and the voters will show up. And every day more of them die off anyway. The people they really need to win are the conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans, all of whom vote for Obama, and most of whom would vote for a more rational, enlightened, pro-science, fiscally conservative, socially hands-off Republican who is willing to compromise with the Democratic powers in Washington. But most of those things aren't very exciting TV. By letting Fox news bully them into 100% uncompromising and/or inciteful stances on certain issues, to ensure that the race is a long-term spectacle ending in a barn-burner election, they push voters like me and many others into voting for anyone but them.
Also, Romney just never conveyed confidence. He always looked nervous and uncertain. I'd rather have Bush's frat-boy frivolity than Romney's rich-boy aloof self-consciousness. Or, of course, a poltician who actually seems serious and confident, such as Obama, or several others I could imagine from various political parties.
The fact that Fox is already claiming that Romney was "too moderate" is so far from the truth it isn't worth repeating. At the same time, it goes along with what I'm saying. They make their money off of stoking any fire of anger they can, and calling it "being a good American."
I don't think this will be the case. The Romney campaign was predicated on the media behaving as they'd done in the past - the "opinions differ on shape of planet" paradigm that allows for a post-truth campaign to be successful. However, I think the media became self-conscious as Ryan came on the scene with smug assurance that he'd be able to spin himself as a serious policy guy without anyone calling him out. The result was that at least the idea of fact-checking became a real force in the campaign.
That's what we were thinking is going to happen this time. They would see that they messed up, and, upon reflection, change. But change is apparently the most offensive thing to propose to a conservative, so they'll just remain the same or double down on the crazy.
If the GOP turns to the social right in 2016, they will lose again. If they double down on it, they'll spur moderates to become conservative Democrats. They have no choice but to go back to moderate economic conservatism, and hopefully that means returning to compromise-accepting Chicago school economics rather than idealogue Austrian economics.
On at least a few platforms the Republicans are going to need to drastically change or they're never getting the big chair again (unless they find a ronald reagan type super charismatic guy)
It's hard to be confident when you know that any position you take will be contradicted by your own past statements.
Those people exist, they're called Libertarians. Unfortunately their definition of "limited" is so extreme that it makes their candidates unelectable. It's hard to secure votes when you're calling for the end of massively popular programs on ideological grounds. Plus they have a bit of difficulty solving collective action problems.
I keep envisioning a two-party system that is more big-government vs. libertarian. The big-government party could probably get away with being pro-life democrats, and could get a lot of current dems and republicans to follow. I'm not as certain about that, though, as I am that a moderate Libertarian platform would appeal to a huge number of people, particulary current Republicans but also a ton of current Democrats as well.
I'm thinking that the only thing in the near-term that can make this happen is a significant turnout, like at least 5% or more, for the Libertarian Party.
They need to frame fiscal responsibility as something other than cut taxes cut social services and deregulate everything. Like you know what universal health care is a fiscally responsible measure at this point. Infrastructure investment basically pays for itself over the long term. Regulation can make industries work smarter and better if done properly.