Hell, it's a simple as this: Republicans just need to recognize that immigration control is protectionist economics, and that the conservative, freedom-loving, 'Murrkin point-of-view is to welcome them, employ them, and compete with them, not build walls to keep them out. Latinos are religious, family-oriented, pro-life, and focused on hard work over handouts. They are nascent Republicans, people. But they are on the verge of adopting Democrats as a cultural norm.
Rubio 2016!
EDIT: I'd also be in favor of a Speaker/Yar Republican ticket in 2016, too. Have your people call my people.
Honestly, that is probably the closest I've seen to a conservative commentary that has any merit. I am skeptical that immigration reform issues aren't a big motivating factor, but this is at least recognition of the fact that not everybody accepts "bootstraps". After a chorus of voices singing that everyone would love conservatism if only they understood it, it's nice to hear someone acknowledge that actually, no, no they wouldn't.
And then, of course, we get predictable results from, say, Victor Davis Hanson. His operating theory being (spoiler alert!):
...we are witnessing the final establishment of the long-feared dependency majority, where half the country is not paying federal income taxes and are on the receiving end of government largess and, expect “they” to pay their fair share to pay for it.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
I guess what I'm trying to ask here is
1. Did Karl Rove just flush 300 Million Dollars?
2. Did Karl Rove Just con a bunch of incredibly Rich people in to giving him 300 million Dollars to spend on Coke and Hookers (and maybe tv ads if he feels like it)?
---
Experience tells me 1, but oooh 2 is fun to think about.
Personally, hoping for 2 here.
My imagination is running with a scenario where he made some pretty severe pacts with the dark overlords who gave him the moneys. Think robed knife-wielding men huddling around blood sacrifices. All with the solemn vow to win. Now he has some debts he's not looking forward to. Which might explain his meltdown last night.
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ElJeffeNot actually a mod.Roaming the streets, waving his gun around.Moderator, ClubPAmod
I have also been struck by claims from various people whose names I can't remember at the moment that this was really a close race. I mean, less than 2% popular vote margin! So close!
It was not really that close, because the popular vote means dick. We pick presidents by electoral vote and so they run campaigns based on turning out the electoral vote. 332-206 is not really that close. Obama ran a successful campaign premised on turning out the vote where he needed to turn out the vote in order to make the relevant numbers as high as he could.
Judging the race based on the popular vote is like saying a football game that ended 28-10 was really close because the number of total yards for each time was super close. No, it was not super close, because that is not how we score football games. If the race was based on popular vote, you would see very different campaigns that may or may not have yielded a 2% margin.
And to tie this more closely into the future of the GOP, I think this is going to feed into their complacency about where they are by convincing them they were so close and if things had just gone a little differently they totally would've won, and Obama was just lucky and also charismatic and also everyone votes for the black guy so they won't be racist and whatever. It makes it very easy for them to justify staying the same and hoping extra hard next time. And next time, we'll probably see another 2% vote margin and another 130 EV spread. The GOP is basically showing up to a basketball game playing baseball rules and wondering why they lost when they were so good at hitting the ball with a stick.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
My thoughts about the whole thing are either the Repubs are gonna double down on the crazy and lose in 2016, too, or they're gonna distance themselves from the Teapers which will make the Teapers redouble their efforts and split the party and cause them to lose in 2016. Outside of Obama just buttfucking the country sideways, I don't see the Dems losing.
I never got that 47% line, I mean if you cut federal taxes deep enough and retain exemptions you are sooner or later going to create a huge chunk of people that don't pay taxes.
The GOP created the 47%. In more ways than one.
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
My thoughts about the whole thing are either the Repubs are gonna double down on the crazy and lose in 2016, too, or they're gonna distance themselves from the Teapers which will make the Teapers redouble their efforts and split the party and cause them to lose in 2016. Outside of Obama just buttfucking the country sideways, I don't see the Dems losing.
About the only way the GOP has any hope, provided Dems keep their newfound spines, is to heavily liberalize and move heavily left of their current position. Which would still keep them far right, but not so far right they fly off the face of the earth and stranded in an alternate Dimension.
My thoughts about the whole thing are either the Repubs are gonna double down on the crazy and lose in 2016, too, or they're gonna distance themselves from the Teapers which will make the Teapers redouble their efforts and split the party and cause them to lose in 2016. Outside of Obama just buttfucking the country sideways, I don't see the Dems losing.
About the only way the GOP has any hope, provided Dems keep their newfound spines, is to heavily liberalize and move heavily left of their current position. Which would still keep them far right, but not so far right they fly off the face of the earth and stranded in an alternate Dimension.
I wondering how likely that is to happen considering the last batch that the Koch brothers tried to buy the presidency with.
They can't do fiscal because they can't touch SS/Medicare and they can't raise taxes.
Their choice is what to fiddle while Rome burns.
But oh lord how they tried with Romney. Remember, he was going to create 12 million new jobs by cutting taxes and raising defense spending while getting rid of Medicare?
voters didn't actually punish Romney for this, nor do they reward numeracy, so...
I don't think you can say with certainty that Romney's stark aversion to details and arithmetic didn't influence some of the fencesitters.
I'm a GOP voter myself, so it's not like I wasn't looking for reasons to give Romney a legitimate shot.
Ronya, I really don't know where you're coming from. Romney lost because of his quantum state and the positions he took and doubled down on.
Voters very much did punish him for his shit.
The fence-sitters who voted Obama because Romney is an etch-a-sketch are a rounding error next to pure demographic shift and successful Democrat registered voter turnout. A lot of people bought Ryan's magic math; it's why the pop vote is so close - it's just that red shift is all in red states and the blue shift is in swing states. Obnoxious Republican governance in Ohio and all.
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ElJeffeNot actually a mod.Roaming the streets, waving his gun around.Moderator, ClubPAmod
Well, the 47% is a meaningless number that's just a side effect of the way we divvy up the various taxes. "People who don't pay income taxes" are as relevant a group as "people who don't pay the AMT" or "people who don't pay capital gains" or "people who claim the mortgage deduction". It's interesting from the perspective of how you're targeting tax incentives, but the most relevant number is "how much money do you pay in taxes, total". Maybe break it down into fed and state and local if you want.
If we suddenly took all the income taxes paid by people making less than $250k and relabeled those a "you people aren't rich" tax, suddenly 97% of people wouldn't be paying income taxes. According to the Pubs, that would somehow be a meaningful number.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
I continue to urge keeping apart the notions "what should the GOP do to be a conservative party that I, not actually a conservative, would respect as an opponent" vs "what is the GOP actually plausibly going to do".
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
The 2% popular vote difference could be the narrative they try to run with, but there's definitely data to look at.
1988 - George H. W. Bush vs. Mike Dukakis
Electoral vote 426 111
States carried 40 10 + DC
Popular vote 48,886,097 41,809,074
Percentage 53.4% 45.7%
1992 - Bill Clinton vs. George H. W. Bush vs. Ross Perot
Electoral vote 370 168 0
States carried 32 + DC 18 0
Popular vote 44,909,806 39,104,550 19,743,821
Percentage 43.0% 37.5% 18.9%
1996 - Bill Clinton vs. Bob Dole vs. Ross Perot
Electoral vote 379 159 0
States carried 31 + DC 19 0
Popular vote 47,401,185 39,197,469 8,085,294
Percentage 49.2% 40.7% 8.4%
2000 - George W. Bush vs. Al Gore
Electoral vote 271 266
States carried 30 20 + DC
Popular vote 50,456,002 50,999,897
Percentage 47.9% 48.4%
2004 - George W. Bush vs. John Kerry
Electoral vote 286 251
States carried 31 19 + DC
Popular vote 62,040,610 59,028,444
Percentage 50.7% 48.3%
2008 - Barack Obama vs. John McCain
Electoral vote 365 173
States carried 28 + DC + NE-02 22
Popular vote 69,456,897 59,934,814
Percentage 52.9% 45.7%
Now I'm not including the elections that Reagan won because he did so by colossal landslides. But here's the point of me posting this - The Republicans haven't won by large margins since the 80's. Meanwhile when the Democrats take the office, they take it in a big way - either by electoral vote or popular vote or both. The point of me posting this is that the Republicans have, for the last couple of decades, been increasingly less popular. So if they want to talk about 2% popular vote margin marking some sort of sign of a turning tide, they're looking at it the wrong way completely.
I have also been struck by claims from various people whose names I can't remember at the moment that this was really a close race. I mean, less than 2% popular vote margin! So close!
It was not really that close, because the popular vote means dick. We pick presidents by electoral vote and so they run campaigns based on turning out the electoral vote. 332-206 is not really that close. Obama ran a successful campaign premised on turning out the vote where he needed to turn out the vote in order to make the relevant numbers as high as he could.
Judging the race based on the popular vote is like saying a football game that ended 28-10 was really close because the number of total yards for each time was super close. No, it was not super close, because that is not how we score football games. If the race was based on popular vote, you would see very different campaigns that may or may not have yielded a 2% margin.
And to tie this more closely into the future of the GOP, I think this is going to feed into their complacency about where they are by convincing them they were so close and if things had just gone a little differently they totally would've won, and Obama was just lucky and also charismatic and also everyone votes for the black guy so they won't be racist and whatever. It makes it very easy for them to justify staying the same and hoping extra hard next time. And next time, we'll probably see another 2% vote margin and another 130 EV spread. The GOP is basically showing up to a basketball game playing baseball rules and wondering why they lost when they were so good at hitting the ball with a stick.
THANK YOU ElJeffe! I find it amazing how few people actually get that the popular vote...really doesn't matter.
If it did, you would see much more campaigning and GOTV efforts in California, Illinois, and New York. And the margins would be different. The important states would be different. The entire strategy would be completely different.
As long as we treat the election as basically fifty separate elections (weighted by size of the state)...any arguments about the popular vote are crap, and loser talk. In 2000 I never argued about the popular vote, just about how the Supreme Court robbed Gore in Florida. Anyone talking about the popular vote in that context was a silly goose.
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Andy JoeWe claim the land for the highlord!The AdirondacksRegistered Userregular
It was not really that close, because the popular vote means dick. We pick presidents by electoral vote and so they run campaigns based on turning out the electoral vote. 332-206 is not really that close. Obama ran a successful campaign premised on turning out the vote where he needed to turn out the vote in order to make the relevant numbers as high as he could.
Judging the race based on the popular vote is like saying a football game that ended 28-10 was really close because the number of total yards for each time was super close. No, it was not super close, because that is not how we score football games. If the race was based on popular vote, you would see very different campaigns that may or may not have yielded a 2% margin.
Good point. I recall there being a lot of speculation, at least on this board's election thread, that an Obama popular loss with an electoral victory would galvanize the Republicans to seriously try to eliminate the electoral college, but that never really took into account which party would gain an advantage if they were both trying to maximize the national popular vote.
Judging the race based on the popular vote is like saying a football game that ended 28-10 was really close because the number of total yards for each time was super close. No, it was not super close, because that is not how we score football games. If the race was based on popular vote, you would see very different campaigns that may or may not have yielded a 2% margin.
That's a bad example. The closeness of a football game isn't based on the closeness of the scores, but on how much would have had to be different for the loser to beat the winner. If a few extra yards here and there would have resulted in four extra touchdowns by the loser, then yes, the game was really close.
The overall popular vote doesn't matter, true, but you can't just look at the electoral college either. You need to look at how easily the electoral college vote could have shifted.
Judging the race based on the popular vote is like saying a football game that ended 28-10 was really close because the number of total yards for each time was super close. No, it was not super close, because that is not how we score football games. If the race was based on popular vote, you would see very different campaigns that may or may not have yielded a 2% margin.
That's a bad example. The closeness of a football game isn't based on the closeness of the scores, but on how much would have had to be different for the loser to beat the winner. If a few extra yards here and there would have resulted in four extra touchdowns by the loser, then yes, the game was really close.
The overall popular vote doesn't matter, true, but you can't just look at the electoral college either. You need to look at how easily the electoral college vote could have shifted.
This is right. It's also the case that the EC vote couldn't have been much different, precisely because the areas which shed the most Democrat support were already red states. So the 2% margin disguises relatively large shifts in the swing states.
Republicans need to stay away from social issues, honestly, as they're really bad at it. There's an element of racists and bigots that will always vote Red, so pandering to them is unnecessary. The current problem is that in addition to minorities, you've lost the traditional republican base of the white family man, as you can't vote R with kids in good conscience if you make less than $100k a year and can do math. I've mostly voted D my entire life, but would like to actually have a choice, as I remember the older Repubs in NH were very moderate with stances on social issues that boiled down to "Does it cost me money? No? Do whatever the fuck you want then".
You build a new platform on that, and you'd not only have the R vote, but you'd take a lot of moderates and Democrats.
That said, that's not going to happen, as the South+Texas are currently running the show, and they basically have nothing in common with the coastal west and northeast.
Question: Is your buddy Big Bird happy that he gets to keep his job?
Pandering to the myth that there is an Other who is the cause of all budgetary problems is the only way to resolve the fundamental conceptual conflict between tax revolters and retirees on benefits
It's tough to fit "quarrelsome contrarians" on a yard sign.
I just made an empassioned plea in the Equality thread for people to understand that skeptical analysis aimed at discovery isn't the same thing as being a quarrelsome trol... I mean contrarian.
Honestly, that is probably the closest I've seen to a conservative commentary that has any merit. I am skeptical that immigration reform issues aren't a big motivating factor, but this is at least recognition of the fact that not everybody accepts "bootstraps". After a chorus of voices singing that everyone would love conservatism if only they understood it, it's nice to hear someone acknowledge that actually, no, no they wouldn't.
Silly Jeff, only a racist such as yourself would assume that Hispanics will always sit on the lowest tiers of our socioeconomic ladder and thus vote accordingly. Like every other identifiable group of people who have come to America (that weren't abducted and forced over here under the worst of historic circumstances), they are rapidly moving through the stages of being highly represented in our military and police forces, then making their way into politics, colleges, and entrepreneurship, and in a few short generations they'll be CEOs and presidents. And they're Catholics. An issue like immigration does stand on its own merits, and it is enough to make a serious difference right now, before they become culturally entrenched in Democratic politics in the US. Long-term, like I said, they are nascent Republicans as long as they don't align themselves too much now.
EDIT: And you're out of your mind if you don't think it was a close race. Some states, Florida in particular, were still decided by insanely low margins. Not quite Bush/Gore close, but a lot closer to that than, say, Reagan/Mondale.
Yar on
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
Nascent republicans that majority support gay marriage? Which Hispanic voters do, by a slim but noticeable margin.
I think there is quite a bit more social difference between the Hispanic electorate and the social platform of the republican party than you are giving credit for.
I think there is quite a bit more social difference between the Hispanic electorate and the social platform of the republican party than you are giving credit for.
Meh. Primarily I think they'll eventually be what all groups other than blacks are: a mix of everything, not voting as a predictable block. I also think they have certain cultural heritage that could skew them Republican nevertheless. And a unique enough identity to skew them undefinably on other issues, as well.
Either way, I want the Republicans to remember that we're against economic protectionism, and that hating dark-skinned people isn't supposed to be cool anymore.
catholic does not entail conservative, particularly in latin america.
e: I do agree that eventually the bloc will fade.
ronya on
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
The majority of the catholic voting block is now actually made up of social justice Catholics, aka liberals. There was a big article on this a few months back when the Catholic vote was being discussed, and how it wasn't an automatic win for Romney.
catholic does not entail conservative, particularly in latin america.
Clearly Hispanics are voting Democrat here and have all sorts of crazy left-wing governments abroad. It isn't just about their religion. As long as Republicans maintain a legitimate aura of being the party of white people, Hispanics will probably vote Democrat. As long as Hispanics are mostly among our poorest, they will likely vote Democrat. Republican success with poor people in recent decades largely ties back to them stepping up their game on being the party of hate, so again, Hispanics likely to vote Dem. But Hispanic is not the new black. Hispanic-Americans I think will have a lot of cultural heritage that could push them Republican. Even as things stand now, they are more Republican than the black vote. This can be increased significantly.
But like I said, mainly I just want the Republicans to step up and be the moderately pro-immigration party. They kinda have been before.
The thing about having your coalition held together by the way the opposition party alienates them is that you have a dependent relationship with racism. Not to be all starry-eyed, but racism isn't winning the long game as American history plays out.
The southern strategy gets a lot of play in the rise of the conservative movement and the unraveling of the New Deal coalition, but the rapid fall off in anti-Catholic prejudice among Republicans after WWII was also a major factor.
This is all a long way of saying that this emergent Democratic majority is only as durable as Republican social intolerance toward one of its elements.
catholic does not entail conservative, particularly in latin america.
Clearly Hispanics are voting Democrat here and have all sorts of crazy left-wing governments abroad. It isn't just about their religion. As long as Republicans maintain a legitimate aura of being the party of white people, Hispanics will probably vote Democrat. As long as Hispanics are mostly among our poorest, they will likely vote Democrat. Republican success with poor people in recent decades largely ties back to them stepping up their game on being the party of hate, so again, Hispanics likely to vote Dem. But Hispanic is not the new black. Hispanic-Americans I think will have a lot of cultural heritage that could push them Republican. Even as things stand now, they are more Republican than the black vote. This can be increased significantly.
But like I said, mainly I just want the Republicans to step up and be the moderately pro-immigration party. They kinda have been before.
It's hard to be less Republican than the black vote. I mean yesterday, Latinos were Democratic than Jews.
enlightenedbum on
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
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ElJeffeNot actually a mod.Roaming the streets, waving his gun around.Moderator, ClubPAmod
Silly Jeff, only a racist such as yourself would assume that Hispanics will always sit on the lowest tiers of our socioeconomic ladder and thus vote accordingly. Like every other identifiable group of people who have come to America (that weren't abducted and forced over here under the worst of historic circumstances), they are rapidly moving through the stages of being highly represented in our military and police forces, then making their way into politics, colleges, and entrepreneurship, and in a few short generations they'll be CEOs and presidents. And they're Catholics. An issue like immigration does stand on its own merits, and it is enough to make a serious difference right now, before they become culturally entrenched in Democratic politics in the US. Long-term, like I said, they are nascent Republicans as long as they don't align themselves too much now.
Hispanics are something of a special case, because their population is increasing largely due to an influx of people who are poor and disadvantaged more or less by definition. It may not always be that way, but it will be that way as long as immigration (legal or otherwise) from Mexico remains substantial. Once immigration dries up, we can talk about what happens next. Not sure what point you're trying to make with Catholicism, since Catholics are pretty much evenly split between parties.
EDIT: And you're out of your mind if you don't think it was a close race. Some states, Florida in particular, were still decided by insanely low margins. Not quite Bush/Gore close, but a lot closer to that than, say, Reagan/Mondale.
On the one hand, you could make the case that the ten swing states were all decided pretty closely. On the other hand, you could also say that Obama won nine of them. I don't think that was just happenstance, but rather a very effective use of resources. Going back to the football analogy, each team got into the endzone a bunch of times, but one team kept settling for field goals while the other team kept scoring touchdowns.
By some metrics, this was a close race. By other, more meaningful metrics, not so much. If we accept Obama in 08 as the new standard for Mondaling someone - that is, getting more or less the theoretical maximum that someone can win given the modern political landscape - then Obama in 12 delivered at least a good Dukakising.
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ElJeffeNot actually a mod.Roaming the streets, waving his gun around.Moderator, ClubPAmod
The majority of the catholic voting block is now actually made up of social justice Catholics, aka liberals. There was a big article on this a few months back when the Catholic vote was being discussed, and how it wasn't an automatic win for Romney.
Hasn't the Catholic vote actually gone Dem for, like, the past four elections? Who the hell was saying it was an automatic win for Romney?
edit: It appears the Catholics have matched the majority vote every year since 1996. So apparently they're indicative of... not much.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
The majority of the catholic voting block is now actually made up of social justice Catholics, aka liberals. There was a big article on this a few months back when the Catholic vote was being discussed, and how it wasn't an automatic win for Romney.
Hasn't the Catholic vote actually gone Dem for, like, the past four elections? Who the hell was saying it was an automatic win for Romney?
The Clan of the Red Beanie.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
Catholics were historically Dems, always. They got Republican for a while on abortion. I don't know to what degree or where they stand now. I was just kind of running with the "they're Catholic" thing. It's not really about that.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Has it been pointed out that the Romney votes weren't a purely traditional block of Republican votes, yet? That the Romney vote included new groups of voters, that the Republicans had to rely on "outside" help as it were?
Catholics are pretty evenly split these days (they broke 50-47 for Obama this election), but the ever-increasing latino population and the margins thereof might swing the aggregate back toward a steady, significant Dem advantage.
Has it been pointed out that the Romney votes weren't a purely traditional block of Republican votes, yet? That the Romney vote included new groups of voters, that the Republicans had to rely on "outside" help as it were?
Like what groups? People who live in areas with Republican poll workers?
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ElJeffeNot actually a mod.Roaming the streets, waving his gun around.Moderator, ClubPAmod
The thing about having your coalition held together by the way the opposition party alienates them is that you have a dependent relationship with racism. Not to be all starry-eyed, but racism isn't winning the long game as American history plays out.
The southern strategy gets a lot of play in the rise of the conservative movement and the unraveling of the New Deal coalition, but the rapid fall off in anti-Catholic prejudice among Republicans after WWII was also a major factor.
This is all a long way of saying that this emergent Democratic majority is only as durable as Republican social intolerance toward one of its elements.
If we get to the point where political affiliations are no longer based on Republican social intolerance, I will be a lot less concerned with maintaining a Democratic majority. There are few major stances in the current GOP platform - economics and foreign policy included - that don't somehow boil down to social intolerance when you start to pick them apart.
Kill the intolerance, and everything else starts to breakdown. It's hard to tell, at that point, where everything will land when the dust settles.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
The thing about having your coalition held together by the way the opposition party alienates them is that you have a dependent relationship with racism. Not to be all starry-eyed, but racism isn't winning the long game as American history plays out.
The southern strategy gets a lot of play in the rise of the conservative movement and the unraveling of the New Deal coalition, but the rapid fall off in anti-Catholic prejudice among Republicans after WWII was also a major factor.
This is all a long way of saying that this emergent Democratic majority is only as durable as Republican social intolerance toward one of its elements.
If we get to the point where political affiliations are no longer based on Republican social intolerance, I will be a lot less concerned with maintaining a Democratic majority. There are few major stances in the current GOP platform - economics and foreign policy included - that don't somehow boil down to social intolerance when you start to pick them apart.
Kill the intolerance, and everything else starts to breakdown. It's hard to tell, at that point, where everything will land when the dust settles.
If you kill the intolerance, what positions are left to rally the base?
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Has it been pointed out that the Romney votes weren't a purely traditional block of Republican votes, yet? That the Romney vote included new groups of voters, that the Republicans had to rely on "outside" help as it were?
Like what groups? People who live in areas with Republican poll workers?
Yeah, or appealing to people who will always hate whoever is in charge and convincing them to vote. Then next election cycle, they'd do everything they can to keep the same people from voting.
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ElJeffeNot actually a mod.Roaming the streets, waving his gun around.Moderator, ClubPAmod
The thing about having your coalition held together by the way the opposition party alienates them is that you have a dependent relationship with racism. Not to be all starry-eyed, but racism isn't winning the long game as American history plays out.
The southern strategy gets a lot of play in the rise of the conservative movement and the unraveling of the New Deal coalition, but the rapid fall off in anti-Catholic prejudice among Republicans after WWII was also a major factor.
This is all a long way of saying that this emergent Democratic majority is only as durable as Republican social intolerance toward one of its elements.
If we get to the point where political affiliations are no longer based on Republican social intolerance, I will be a lot less concerned with maintaining a Democratic majority. There are few major stances in the current GOP platform - economics and foreign policy included - that don't somehow boil down to social intolerance when you start to pick them apart.
Kill the intolerance, and everything else starts to breakdown. It's hard to tell, at that point, where everything will land when the dust settles.
If you kill the intolerance, what positions are left to rally the base?
Reverse cowgirl is pretty effective.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
I strongly disagree that all positions on the GOP platform are about intolerance. There is and has always been an intellectual side to the Republican movement, especially among moderates over the past several decades. You can make economic and foreign policy out to be all about hating poor people and hating Muslims, but I'm pretty sure that isn't where those issues really originate. Immigration, yeah, that's mostly stoking hatefires. And a lot of the demonization of Obama in general has been very thickly veiled racism. Or, in the case of a woman I spoke to recently, who told me, "all I know is we have to get that n_____ out of office," you know, it just is what it is. But I'm pretty sure that you of most people ElJeffe are aware that there is legitimate rationale behind a lot of what Republicanism and conservtism are supposed to be about.
Now, if what you mean is that they've increasingly focused on and leveraged ignorant hatred above all other appeals, well, yeah, definitely. That seems to be their only strategy and approach these days. It is not their only available platform.
EDIT: And while I now realize you were speaking more to people's affiliations and not the party's platform, I still disagree. I think a large number of people still vote Republican because of economic stances and not wanting to throw their vote away, not because they they hate or don't tolerate anyone in particular.
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Silly Yar. Hispanics don't vote Dem because the GOP calls them all a bunch of border-hopping criminals who should submit to providing papers on demand. They vote Dem because they're not big enough dicks.
Honestly, that is probably the closest I've seen to a conservative commentary that has any merit. I am skeptical that immigration reform issues aren't a big motivating factor, but this is at least recognition of the fact that not everybody accepts "bootstraps". After a chorus of voices singing that everyone would love conservatism if only they understood it, it's nice to hear someone acknowledge that actually, no, no they wouldn't.
And then, of course, we get predictable results from, say, Victor Davis Hanson. His operating theory being (spoiler alert!):
My imagination is running with a scenario where he made some pretty severe pacts with the dark overlords who gave him the moneys. Think robed knife-wielding men huddling around blood sacrifices. All with the solemn vow to win. Now he has some debts he's not looking forward to. Which might explain his meltdown last night.
It was not really that close, because the popular vote means dick. We pick presidents by electoral vote and so they run campaigns based on turning out the electoral vote. 332-206 is not really that close. Obama ran a successful campaign premised on turning out the vote where he needed to turn out the vote in order to make the relevant numbers as high as he could.
Judging the race based on the popular vote is like saying a football game that ended 28-10 was really close because the number of total yards for each time was super close. No, it was not super close, because that is not how we score football games. If the race was based on popular vote, you would see very different campaigns that may or may not have yielded a 2% margin.
And to tie this more closely into the future of the GOP, I think this is going to feed into their complacency about where they are by convincing them they were so close and if things had just gone a little differently they totally would've won, and Obama was just lucky and also charismatic and also everyone votes for the black guy so they won't be racist and whatever. It makes it very easy for them to justify staying the same and hoping extra hard next time. And next time, we'll probably see another 2% vote margin and another 130 EV spread. The GOP is basically showing up to a basketball game playing baseball rules and wondering why they lost when they were so good at hitting the ball with a stick.
The GOP created the 47%. In more ways than one.
About the only way the GOP has any hope, provided Dems keep their newfound spines, is to heavily liberalize and move heavily left of their current position. Which would still keep them far right, but not so far right they fly off the face of the earth and stranded in an alternate Dimension.
I wondering how likely that is to happen considering the last batch that the Koch brothers tried to buy the presidency with.
The fence-sitters who voted Obama because Romney is an etch-a-sketch are a rounding error next to pure demographic shift and successful Democrat registered voter turnout. A lot of people bought Ryan's magic math; it's why the pop vote is so close - it's just that red shift is all in red states and the blue shift is in swing states. Obnoxious Republican governance in Ohio and all.
If we suddenly took all the income taxes paid by people making less than $250k and relabeled those a "you people aren't rich" tax, suddenly 97% of people wouldn't be paying income taxes. According to the Pubs, that would somehow be a meaningful number.
Now I'm not including the elections that Reagan won because he did so by colossal landslides. But here's the point of me posting this - The Republicans haven't won by large margins since the 80's. Meanwhile when the Democrats take the office, they take it in a big way - either by electoral vote or popular vote or both. The point of me posting this is that the Republicans have, for the last couple of decades, been increasingly less popular. So if they want to talk about 2% popular vote margin marking some sort of sign of a turning tide, they're looking at it the wrong way completely.
THANK YOU ElJeffe! I find it amazing how few people actually get that the popular vote...really doesn't matter.
If it did, you would see much more campaigning and GOTV efforts in California, Illinois, and New York. And the margins would be different. The important states would be different. The entire strategy would be completely different.
As long as we treat the election as basically fifty separate elections (weighted by size of the state)...any arguments about the popular vote are crap, and loser talk. In 2000 I never argued about the popular vote, just about how the Supreme Court robbed Gore in Florida. Anyone talking about the popular vote in that context was a silly goose.
Good point. I recall there being a lot of speculation, at least on this board's election thread, that an Obama popular loss with an electoral victory would galvanize the Republicans to seriously try to eliminate the electoral college, but that never really took into account which party would gain an advantage if they were both trying to maximize the national popular vote.
That's a bad example. The closeness of a football game isn't based on the closeness of the scores, but on how much would have had to be different for the loser to beat the winner. If a few extra yards here and there would have resulted in four extra touchdowns by the loser, then yes, the game was really close.
The overall popular vote doesn't matter, true, but you can't just look at the electoral college either. You need to look at how easily the electoral college vote could have shifted.
This is right. It's also the case that the EC vote couldn't have been much different, precisely because the areas which shed the most Democrat support were already red states. So the 2% margin disguises relatively large shifts in the swing states.
Question: Is your buddy Big Bird happy that he gets to keep his job?
Well, you have to ask yourself: who would replace him? And the answer is Jim DeMint, so no, they should not.
Silly Jeff, only a racist such as yourself would assume that Hispanics will always sit on the lowest tiers of our socioeconomic ladder and thus vote accordingly. Like every other identifiable group of people who have come to America (that weren't abducted and forced over here under the worst of historic circumstances), they are rapidly moving through the stages of being highly represented in our military and police forces, then making their way into politics, colleges, and entrepreneurship, and in a few short generations they'll be CEOs and presidents. And they're Catholics. An issue like immigration does stand on its own merits, and it is enough to make a serious difference right now, before they become culturally entrenched in Democratic politics in the US. Long-term, like I said, they are nascent Republicans as long as they don't align themselves too much now.
EDIT: And you're out of your mind if you don't think it was a close race. Some states, Florida in particular, were still decided by insanely low margins. Not quite Bush/Gore close, but a lot closer to that than, say, Reagan/Mondale.
I think there is quite a bit more social difference between the Hispanic electorate and the social platform of the republican party than you are giving credit for.
Either way, I want the Republicans to remember that we're against economic protectionism, and that hating dark-skinned people isn't supposed to be cool anymore.
e: I do agree that eventually the bloc will fade.
Clearly Hispanics are voting Democrat here and have all sorts of crazy left-wing governments abroad. It isn't just about their religion. As long as Republicans maintain a legitimate aura of being the party of white people, Hispanics will probably vote Democrat. As long as Hispanics are mostly among our poorest, they will likely vote Democrat. Republican success with poor people in recent decades largely ties back to them stepping up their game on being the party of hate, so again, Hispanics likely to vote Dem. But Hispanic is not the new black. Hispanic-Americans I think will have a lot of cultural heritage that could push them Republican. Even as things stand now, they are more Republican than the black vote. This can be increased significantly.
But like I said, mainly I just want the Republicans to step up and be the moderately pro-immigration party. They kinda have been before.
The southern strategy gets a lot of play in the rise of the conservative movement and the unraveling of the New Deal coalition, but the rapid fall off in anti-Catholic prejudice among Republicans after WWII was also a major factor.
This is all a long way of saying that this emergent Democratic majority is only as durable as Republican social intolerance toward one of its elements.
It's hard to be less Republican than the black vote. I mean yesterday, Latinos were Democratic than Jews.
Hispanics are something of a special case, because their population is increasing largely due to an influx of people who are poor and disadvantaged more or less by definition. It may not always be that way, but it will be that way as long as immigration (legal or otherwise) from Mexico remains substantial. Once immigration dries up, we can talk about what happens next. Not sure what point you're trying to make with Catholicism, since Catholics are pretty much evenly split between parties.
On the one hand, you could make the case that the ten swing states were all decided pretty closely. On the other hand, you could also say that Obama won nine of them. I don't think that was just happenstance, but rather a very effective use of resources. Going back to the football analogy, each team got into the endzone a bunch of times, but one team kept settling for field goals while the other team kept scoring touchdowns.
By some metrics, this was a close race. By other, more meaningful metrics, not so much. If we accept Obama in 08 as the new standard for Mondaling someone - that is, getting more or less the theoretical maximum that someone can win given the modern political landscape - then Obama in 12 delivered at least a good Dukakising.
Hasn't the Catholic vote actually gone Dem for, like, the past four elections? Who the hell was saying it was an automatic win for Romney?
edit: It appears the Catholics have matched the majority vote every year since 1996. So apparently they're indicative of... not much.
The Clan of the Red Beanie.
Like what groups? People who live in areas with Republican poll workers?
If we get to the point where political affiliations are no longer based on Republican social intolerance, I will be a lot less concerned with maintaining a Democratic majority. There are few major stances in the current GOP platform - economics and foreign policy included - that don't somehow boil down to social intolerance when you start to pick them apart.
Kill the intolerance, and everything else starts to breakdown. It's hard to tell, at that point, where everything will land when the dust settles.
If you kill the intolerance, what positions are left to rally the base?
Yeah, or appealing to people who will always hate whoever is in charge and convincing them to vote. Then next election cycle, they'd do everything they can to keep the same people from voting.
Reverse cowgirl is pretty effective.
Now, if what you mean is that they've increasingly focused on and leveraged ignorant hatred above all other appeals, well, yeah, definitely. That seems to be their only strategy and approach these days. It is not their only available platform.
EDIT: And while I now realize you were speaking more to people's affiliations and not the party's platform, I still disagree. I think a large number of people still vote Republican because of economic stances and not wanting to throw their vote away, not because they they hate or don't tolerate anyone in particular.