Can the GOP Adapt to Progress?

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"This IS your grandpappy's Edsel, Skippy. Don't stain the antimacassar with your Brilliantine!"​

President Barack Obama won 5 million more votes than Willard 'Individual Mandate' Romney amongst voters under the age of 30 - 60% to Willard's 37% - in the 2012 election. Romney bested the President 56% to 44% amongst 65-and-overs.

Chris Christie nailing a Caballerial on a skateboard in 2016 will not be enough for the GOP to pull a Pied Piper on America's savvy, better-educated, and more tolerant youth.

Not only Republican Senator Lindsey Graham is attuned to the intimations of mortality - and making the old darlings carry photo IDs so that they can be found, brought to the polls, and returned to their homes after voting the Republican ticket won't be a sufficient adaptation as sad mortality o'ersways the Party's fate.

Of course, the folks who run the gig are beset by an existential angst that gives them a case of the projectile jim jams. They have been studying the problem.

Richard Land, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, told POLITICO that young members of his community are no longer interested in vocalizing opposition to same-sex marriage. “Basically, they just don’t think it’s something we want to talk about,” said Land, who strongly opposes same-sex marriage. “[They say,] ‘It feels intolerant.'"​

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Of course, there is the option of the GOP choosing not to progress.

Sometimes, extinction is just the proper course.

 

This is not unlike how I feel.

I don't particularly care for the Democrats. They are, for the most part and at least at the federal level, spineless and stupid. But, I'm simply not going to vote for the Republicans, not with all the crappage they come with, like the evangelicals, and all the underlying hatred and bigotry. I don't mean to say that every Republican is that way, but the platform and the way Republican elected officials speak and behave certainly conveys that message.

I won't vote for them. Give me a candidate that is conservative on economics and the military and without all the moral and religious bull(*)(*)(*)(*), and I just might vote Republican. But, that's not going to happen, at least not within that party. I'll have to go third party to find that.

 

The duopoly have become highly-paid subsidiaries of the military/industrial complex and the corporate elites in general, with the Repubs adding religious zealotry.

I'm surprised that a truly populist, egalitarian, tolerant alternative - of, by, and for the People - has not arisen.



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This corporate government takeover is nothing new. The Guilded Age had the same earnings profile, small group controlling the money, the rest of us helping them stay rich. Teddy did much to change this. Interestingly enough, Teddy was a Republican , but a progressive, nothing like the GOP today. These things tend to swing back and forth with the same type of people holding back progress, bigots, haters,and those afraid of change. Once the GOP rids itself of the racist Tea Party, the corrupt corporate shills and the radical evangelicals they can again become the loyal and honest opposition, the party of limited government, individual responsibility and rights and fiscal responsibility. Right now they are being led by sophists and buffoons.

 

Which is the more likely option.

 

To ask the (loaded) question, "Can the GOP adapt to progress?," is essentially to inquire: Will the Republican Party move leftward? A move to the left is, after all, precisely what progressives (a.k.a. liberals) equate with "progress"...

 

Coincidentally, progress is an adaptation for survival.that gravitates "leftward". The conservatives who opposed the emancipation of slaves, the suffrage of women, and civil rights in various contexts, child labour laws, workplace safety requirements, etc. were forced to acquiesce to the same ineluctable advances in inclusivity as are now manifest in gender-neutrality in marriage law and comprehensive immigration reform. Better-educated, more diverse and tolerant younger Americans assure that equality will remain the objective and that such progress will continue.

Presently, Republican politicians appear incorrigibly hidebound, but an historic perusal not only highlights the aforementioned Theodore Roosevelt's enlightened crusade against the blight of the barons of big business, but Nixon's proposals of health insurance reform far more efficacious than today's nationalized RomneyCare, and Reagan's comprehensive approach to the reality of undocumented workers. Lincoln's personal journey from the pragmatic goal of preserving democracy to the ideal of ending involuntary servitude stands as a personal testament for contemporary Republicans to emulate whilst remaining true to the best of the Party's tradition.

They will adapt.

The corporate elite have again hoarded an inordinate portion of the commonweal by purchasing inordinate government influence to reallocate wealth into their coffers. Their politicians sanction that contrivance by licensing them to do so lavishly and anonymously. Such stealth is antithetical to democracy. Six members of the Walton family did not accrue more wealth than 30% of the American populace via luck, greed, and shrewd business maneuvers alone.

TPs are fated to a slow, anguished demise, hanging on in isolated enclaves, but the GOP will clean up its act and come to grips with the future - as it has done repeatedly - regardless of the gnashing of teeth that inevitably heralds their progress.

 

It's run by oppurtunists of course they will adapt.

 

Nothing more than a strawman argument. You are assuming the country is making progress when in reality things are getting progressively worse. I am sure you will return with how things aren't getting worse but then that is part of the propaganda of the liberal progressives.

 

There is no need to sacrifice principle for expedience.

America is like a complicated mechanism that depends on trust and voluntary compliance.

When one's enemies hold the instruments of institutional power on a permanent basis there is no longer any reason to restrain ourselves from pouring coarse sand into the complicated mechanism so that it seizes up and breaks.

 

Translation: Progressivism--a.k.a. liberalsim--is (supposedly) the province of the etter educated"...

This is just another way of equating the views of the left with one's being "enlightened," and all opposing views as being inherently dimwitted...

I truly wish that I could be so charitable to then-President Lincoln as you are. For I believe strongly in the values of personal liberty and freedom; and those values are impossible to square with the institution of slavery.

But then-President Lincoln did not occupy the moral high ground on this issue. He famously declared that if the could hold the union together by freeing all of the slaves, he would free all of the slaves; if he could hold the union together by freeing none of the slaves, he would free none of the slaves; and if he could hold the union together by freeing some of the slaves and not freeing others, he would do that.

In the end, he went with the third option, freeing those slaves who resided in states that were "in rebellion" against the US (i.e. the states of the Confederacy), while leaving the institution of slavery untouched in all other states.

His position, essentially, was unchanged from what it had been in the 1850s, during the Lincoln-Douglas debates.

I feel no sense of envy toward the Walton family.

Instead, I am quite happy to have a place to shop for groceries that sells many items at a far lower price than at any other supermarket in town.

I am guessing that your breezy rederence to "TPs" is intended to mean members of the Tea Party (which, in fact, is far from a monolith; it has several factions, ranging from the conservative to the libertarian).

In any case, it appears to be an article of faith, among those on the left, that any prescient person should be able to predict historical outcomes. (It is from this conceit that we get the silly phrase, "on the wrong side of history.")

This appears to be a view steeped in Hegelian philosophy: i.e. that history moves gradually leftward--even if by a method of two steps forward and one step backward (i.e. thesis/antithesis/synthesis).

Feel free to continue believing that, if you wish...

 

Oh for (*)(*)(*)(*)s sake. Obama won 8 million fewer votes than his first election. He also won with a smaller percentage with 50.6% in 2012 vs 53% in 2008. The ONLY reason Obama won was because Romney was the candidate. No one like Romney which is why he received even fewer votes than McCain did and McCain was slaughtered by Obama after the crash.

 

Sure, but it depends on if the progress helps the country or hurts it. Of course, some can't see outside the box, so it's hard to progress if you're looking at a wall.

 

I doubt the GOP will change at this time. If it loses elections for a while longer, MAYBE the leadership will stop throwing the libertarian element under the bus. If they do that, the Democrats are in big trouble.

 

Whilst it is undeniable that an educated electorate is a benison for America's well-being, and that education is, in general, reflected in political orientation, there need be no such presumption. A perusal of Fox Business' comparative list indicates there is no absolute correspondence, merely a striking one:

America’s Best-Educated States

10. Minnesota
9. New York
8. New Hampshire
7. Virginia
6. New Jersey
5. Vermont
4. Connecticut
3. Colorado
2. Maryland
1. Massachusetts

America’s Worst-Educated States

10. Oklahoma
9. Tennessee
8. Indiana
7. Nevada
6. Alabama
5. Louisiana
4. Kentucky
3. Arkansas
2. Mississippi
1. West Virginia​

Not unexpectedly, such a correspondence extends to income, family stability, health care, longevity, etc., not merely voting patterns. As Jefferson opined, "An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people."

Yes, any examination of Lincoln's attitude toward slavery demonstrates that it evolved during the war, a monumentally transformative experience for the great man. His moral conviction was anything but static, to be sure.

In the end, his pragmatic objective to preserve a nation whose integrity is contingent upon democratic elections and his moral goal of freedom for all Americans were not mutually-exclusive.

Nor should you. The principled issue concerns, not your personal jealousies, but the desirability of an inordinate amassing of wealth in a minute segment of the populace whilst a vast middle class languishes - a phenomenon that has occurred previously and elsewhere to the detriment of those societies.

Such a pronouncement needs to be retrospective to achieve the clarity of hindsight. No conservative envisioned the desirability of ending slavery or women achieving suffrage at the time they were opposing them, of course, but neither could the advocates of such progress with certitude. One can only promote the right as one is given to see the right, and trust that, in making such an educated guess, all will be well.

 

Adaptation to change and progress in general are both necessary parts of life. The problem is that too many people today are unable to logically determine legitimate progress from self-destruction. I'll simplify it real quick here; if you are trying to move things in a leftward direction, that is not progress. You do not know what progress is. And you need to stop trying trying to drive the car into a ditch and give the steering wheel to someone who knows what they are doing. Namely an adult. That would be a conservative. A liberal mind is not yet developed enough to distinguish helpful from harmful. It perceives eating paste as a proper source of nourishment. This is why you never leave a liberal alone with a jar of paste. Or in an elected office either, for that matter. Their infantile minds make them prone to bad decisions. Like eating paste. Or tax dollars. Or Constitutional rights.

 

By no darwinian standard does guilt or vengeance aid a species in survival. These are the two primary underpinnings of all things left wing.

Wrong again. The conservatives were the ones using a conservative interpretation of the Constitution in the first place in regards to human rights. Viewing everyone as people. Conversely, liberals used a liberal interpretation deciding instead that they could define people however they chose. Gee, that sounds familiar, doesn't it? Where else might that be going on in society today?

You might want to do some research on the Frankfurt School to better understand how you've been socially programmed. Everything you've said here is textbook cultural marxist indoctrination. You've been manipulated by communists that died before you were ever born. And you don't even realize it.

 

True that.

No, that is merely your perverted personal prejudice, an egregiously erroneous notion.

So, in your noodle, the conservatives who wished to preserve and perpetuate the institution of slavery were actually promoting human rights. Antic, to say the least.

Such as that pinko Southern delegates to the Constitutional Convention who pushed for a slave being defined as three-fifths of a white man for purposes of representational apportionment?

You appear to be standing on your head when you view history and, consequently, tottering quite badly.


You spout the rightist boilerplate with little critical consideration.





You might want to do some research on the Frankfurt School to better understand how you've been socially programmed. Everything you've said here is textbook cultural marxist indoctrination. You've been manipulated by communists that died before you were ever born. And you don't even realize it.[/QUOTE]

 

Are you at all familiar with the difference between causation and mere correlation? Or even coincidence?

And how can you be confident as to which is at work here?

I don't believe it "evolved" at all.

When it became apparent that merely preserving the union was not a sufficient moral cause to engender ferver for the war in the North--and to stave off the so-called "Copperhead" movement, which sought to bring an end to the war, and allow the Southern states to go their own way--Lincoln feigned concern for the slaves, as a moral issue. (I say "feigned" because if he had really been concerned, he would have ended slavery in all slave states--not just in those "in rebellion" against the union.)

I do not believe that it is the rightful prerogative of the federal government to try to redistribute the wealth (or to try to redistribute anything else, for that matter).

Those who believe that this is a proper function of the federal government are (quite correctly) known as statists...

So, because the ending of slavery and the emancipation of women were good things, we should assume that all change is for the better?

What sort of reasoning is that?

 

A lot of college degrees have wey litle parctical purpose.

 

A single big box store moves into a small town and every business downtown goes belly up. Nothing illegal about how it happened, maybe not even unethical, it is the system we have. But is it what we want? Small farms are slowly disappearing, crops are huge single strain crops for as far as the eye can see. Same Monsanto seed in all of it. Not illegal, nobody seemingly did the wrong thing, it's just the way the system works. But is it what we want? We can talk about the evils of these trends, but it is not Wal Mart, Monsanto or ADM that caused it, it is the system. Not even close to capitalism. We need to change the system so that we understand paying a grown adult 9.50 and hour so we can afford a $3 pair of shoes is not a good thing, that those families that lost everything when Wal Mart moved in are more important as cheap motor oil, that diversified crops and well paid farmhands are more important than shareholders of Monsanto. Our society is more important than unrealistic margins and personal gain of just a few. This is the lessen the GOP needs to learn before they can regain respect.

 

The simple answer is that the GOP will adapt, and it will abandon the right wing crazy talk, it will move toward the center and be right about where Obama is now.
But that won't happen until it's taken a thrashing like 1964, until then it will get crazier, because the party consists of people who have been successful with a right wing crazy message. The people with the centrist message are mostly gone, Susan Collins sits alone now, as the "moderate" wing of the party.
The GOP will need to get hammered hard, before a moderate like Nixon represents the party in the general election again.

So take heart Republicans, you will return to power, but alas "conservatives" you'll return as moderates.

 

It will just be more socially liberal and less interventionist.