The Cultural Contradictions of Conservatism and the Death of the GOP

I think Romney might. Dems won't be able to say he kowtowed to Trump at any time.

Don't laugh yet. They laughed at Ronald Reagan on his first two attempts.

 

Actually, it was less than that.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/debunking-the-myth-obamas_b_1929869

 

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/01/republicans-hawley-election-challenge-453362

Congressional Repubs are increasingly divided in their allegiance to or rejection of Trumpery.

 

The Democratic Party and the Republican Party are radically different right now. It doesn't mean that they have always been, but they are at this point in time.

Trump lost because he is incompetent and a criminal. And the difference between the parties is that an incompetent criminal would not rise to the Presidency in the Democratic Party. Not that they don't exist... just that they wouldn't get that far. Even Republicans trust that a Democrat will not abuse power the way Trump did. Republicans trust Democrats more than I do.. Otherwise, they would not have tolerated and tried to justify Trump's actions if they didn't believe that Democrats would not elect somebody who would commit such criminal acts.

 

Social programs that don't work and social programs that do work. That's the nature of the beast. I think it's better to implement social programs that fail than never to never attempt it.

Democratic social programs to benefit the people often fail. Republican actions to benefit the majority never fail because they are non-existent.

By also having successes. Republicans have no successes. So all they can do is try to attack the Democrat's efforts without ever... EVER... offering an alternative. Unless you can show us some sort of real Republican alternative to Obamacare, or to Medicare, or to Social Security, or to... any of the many programs they hate so much... By which I mean, of course, anything other than their "just let them die... they deserve it!" implied mantra.

 

Really? Why is that? I don't think so. I think most Republicans vote for anybody who has an R next to their name. Not because of any particular view about their party other than longtime held mantras that have been proven false again and again. I know so many people who justified voting for Trump because "Republicans are for small government" or "Republicans are for limited spending" or "are strong on handling the economy" or "national security" ... All the bumper stickers that, might have been accurate at some point in our history, but today have no basis on reality.

It's nice to have so-called "independents". But Democrats depend only on themselves to win elections. If they turn out their voters, they win. If they don't, they lose. Easy as that.

Republicans always turn out. I don't think their problem is that their voters have "given up". Their problem is that they have motivated newer voters to come out and vote for Democrats. Especially young ones. Those concerned about real problems like school shootings, Climate Change, social inequality.... For how long... who knows. But Republicans' only strategy is to somehow demotivate them as soon as possible so they don't show up at the polls. Which has been the Republican strategy for a long time now.

Rasmussen? Not what I would call a serious source. But, even if they were right, it's meaningless. There are so many misleading things (pure Rasmussen style) about that statistic that... I don't even know where to start.

Let's see... Why would you think that believing that Trump is the future of the Republican party be something positive for the GOP? There are two possibilities. If they're right, then they risk losing 28% of the party who might not want Trump to be the model. And if they're wrong, then they could lose a chunk of that 72%

Another thing: why is 72% of a Party that is shrinking be a good thing? The more the GOP shrinks to become the extreme-right, white-supremacist-inclusive Party that Trump represents, the more voters (especially younger ones) will become disenchanted. That percentage is likely to increase. But only because the Party, as a whole, is shedding their more centrist voters.

Also, why would even having "a model" be a good thing? Democrats don't have a pre-set model. Even the most popular figure in the party today (Obama) is not considered a "model" by most of us who admire him. Democrats constantly want somebody different to entice new voters. If Trump becomes the "model"... what new voters is he going to appeal to?

I could go on showing the many many negative implications of the poll you mention. But the above should give you an idea.

 

There is no doubt they're in big sh... trouble. The Trump basis, in my opinion, relies very heavily on right-wing extremists (many of them white supremacists) who might not even have voted in the past. So without Trump (or a Trump-like figure) at the head of the ticket, they'll just.... not show up. And if they do run a Trump-like figure, they will not only continue to shed their more centrist voters, but they will continue motivating Democrats to show up and vote.

I think they'll get out of this one.... but it's not clear how... They will need to fabricate some huge scandal about whoever Democrat's run in 2024 (be it Biden, or anybody else). Because, on their own merits, they would never succeed.

 

Running the score up in liberal stronghold areas does not lead to EC votes. If they're disenfranchised, it's because they're too liberal. It's not anti-democratic it's geographical. If a portion of Cali voters were in Ohio and/or Florida it would've benefited you more.

Funny thing about a national vote: It would generate more conservative votes in liberal strongholds since it's a national and not a state vote. No more disaffected voters since they were too small before to make a difference. So be careful what you ask for my friend.

 

LMAO, this is the fantasy of the ACA, the reality is that the insurance market dried up, premiums rose and the ones who lost the most? Middle Class Americans. If Biden "Build back better" that America, you'll be in the same place in '22-'24 as you were '12-'16.

 

Now why should I bother spending any energy responding in detail to this partisan tripe, after my last experience? You plainly don't have the intellectual honesty to respond in good faith.

 

Yep - they do love them some scandal!

 

I don't love scandals. It's just that the Democratic Party is held unaccountable for said scandals. When Ambassador Stevens lost his life on what was essentially an undeclared presence in Libya, had that been Mike Pompeo there would've been calls to resign. Instead all we got was: "What difference does it make". So forgive people if they think Democrats are held to lower standards.

 

How have you missed all the Benghazi scandal discussions for the last 8 years?

 

I don't care whether you respond to clearly-numbered terse points in 1. a similar, intellectually honest way, 2. via walls of abstract partisan tripe, 3. or not at all. Result is the same.

 

It should be very clear, that Republicans have no consensus on how to deal with health care, seeing as they could not put forth an alternative plan after voting to repeal Obamacare 40 times or whatever when Obama was President. It wasn't Trump who was even in the way on that one, he would have signed anything the Congressional Republicans could have given him.

Other fault-lines lines wait upon events. Rising skepticism among conservatives about our foreign policy will be brought into sharp relief, if we find ourselves in a war with another state, in the not-too-distant future. It cannot be assumed that the United States would prevail in such a war, at least not at an acceptable cost; and it cannot be underestimated how such an event could roil the GOP. The Democrats would be vulnerable too, but not as much as the GOP, since bungling foreign interventionism is not part of the Democrats' brand.

Future financial crises (there is even live concern for another major one at this time, according to The Atlantic) could spur a genuine populist revolt on bailouts and taxes. This is also a concern that could be catalyzed by a new major war. Again it should be obvious that this poses a much greater danger to the GOP, as presently constituted.

Issues like immigration and gun violence, so long as they are left unattended by some overhaul of our system, are only going to worsen; while the majority of the GOP seems committed to letting them get worse, just for the sake of the electoral benefits (and also to slake their Identity-politics).

GOP policy paralysis in general will lead to one of two outcomes: 1) their defeat in future elections, as the public eventually decides to prefer governance over gridlock 2) a non-nihilist remnant of the GOP decides that the consequences of inaction have become unbearable, and side with the Dems in favor of the crying need for policy changes. They may join the Democrats outright, for fear of repercussions by the Base.

The climate chaos unleashed by global warming will continue apace, and the Republican "nothing to see here" view will be more and more difficult to sustain, going into the future. I predict that some of the saner voices on the Right will have to self-select themselves out of the GOP, on account of it. Remember, given how closely divided the Electorate is, it will not take more than a permanent marginal defection (@5%) from today's GOP, to put the Presidency out of their reach. Needless to say, if it is the Establishment which somehow manages to prevail in putting forward their nominees for president, some substantial plurality of the GOP could simply decide to break with the party - spelling the end of the GOP as a national party, for certain.

That's true. I am mainly prognosticating, and it's difficult to predict the future with any degree of precision. But I think I'm on good grounds to make general predictions, given the current state of the world: it is clear that we have large, seriously unresolved national problems, and that combined with the high likelihood of these unattended problems conducing to an acute crisis (or crises), leads to the likelihood of revolutionary politics coming to America. Political parties often are made extinct by this kind of politics.

Well, just to start, for some time fault-lines among Conservatives have appeared in intra-party charges of ideological betrayal - captured in the epithet 'RINO,' which is bandied about quite a bit. This, as I'm sure you know, pre-dates Trump.

Moreover I think your emphasis on concrete policy disagreements is misplaced. As that wise political philosopher Steve Bannon has observed, "Politics is downstream from Culture" - or equivalently, politics is downstream from Identity. In turbulent political times, it is much easier to indulge negative polarization - anathematizing what you oppose, rather than championing some positive programme (always a more difficult endeavor, practically and even cognitively speaking). The problem is that when a party is consumed by negative polarization, consumed by identity-politics (as I claim has happened to the Republicans), loyalty to the on-side becomes everything, and charges of disloyalty are a sure route to getting more power inside the Faction, than getting any kind of actual work done. This loyalty will not be configured in any other terms than Identity/culture. I mean, this was already made manifestly obvious by the Republican national "platform" in 2020. We are in the milieu here of revolutionary politics, and despite the enthusiasm of the Marxists, there can be no permanent revolutions. Things will come to a head; what cannot go on, won't. That is my subjective certainty, anyway, for what it is worth.

True.

Well, just as you said, timelines can't be dictated for these sorts of things. I would humbly suggest that the rise of Trump to the Presidency itself marks the beginning of the backlash...

It would be. But it does not take any special discernment to see the precarious situation we are in. It does not take any leap of the imagination to see, that given all the dry tinder lying about for national upheaval, how the sudden irruption of a crisis (or just as likely, a concatenating series of crises) could completely re-order the political Right.

I do think that a Crisis is closer to us, rather than farther away. In the end, it does come down to a subjective assessment. Though I am confident in that assessment, I can't claim here (and I don't mean to have, if that was the appearance) assert objective truth for it. Obviously we cannot assert objective truth for a set of prognostications. But by the same token I deny that I have to meet that threshold, in order to make an argument about it. Especially when the provenance of revolutionary politics is much more about feeling, than fact (to be clear, my arguments are about feelings, they are appeals to the facts of human psychology, rather than being themselves simple uninformed feeling). You are setting a standard for truth that is much higher than necessary, I think, for arguments of this sort. I think it plays into the hands of the legions of Orwellian Liars on the Right.

Our current situation does not parallel that of the French Revolution in all particulars. I am talking about the phase of the Revolution before the rise of Napoleon (who was a tyrant, but not properly speaking right-wing), the phase known as The Terror. The First National Assembly had achieved an almost bloodless overthrow of the monarchy and instantiation of the Republic. But France's dynastic neighbors were existentially threatened by a republican France, and invaded France to restore the monarchy. It became a civil war, as many French people were still loyal to the Crown. The new National Assembly was radicalized under these circumstances, and called for more and more Left-wing policies (including the total de-establishment of the Catholic Church). The entire Left was radicalized to a certain degree, but there was an extreme Left under Robespierre that was able to seize control of the government which proceeded to arrest & execute any political opponents to their right. What happened with the French Left under Robespierre can be seen to be reprised in many other cases of a radicalizing party (of either the Left or the Right) in times of revolutionary upheaval in a country. It's important to note that the Jacobins under Robespierre were clearly a minority of the population, but with their radical rhetoric and total internal unity, they were able to impose their will on the majority. We see the same general dynamic unfold with the Bolsheviks in Russia and the Nazi party in Germany. The Trumpified GOP in our own time is an American version of this. It is much less lethal, so far, but that is owing to the accidents of our particular historical situation, not that the Trump cult is defying basic human nature.

 

Look, no matter what your complaint is about Obamacare, it was better than BAU. Speaking from my own experience, I was without health insurance for the better part of a year, even though I was in fine health and could afford the premiums. If I had gotten hurt or sick in the intervening time, I would have been ruined. Obamacare getting rid of pre-existing conditions was hugely important for me.

 

Just more dishonesty. It should come as no surprise that an indepth argument is required to respond to facile rhetoric. I'm not going to let you get away with any excuses for your shallow and cynical worldview, and I won't be a foil either for your cheap dishonest rhetoric.

 

I would be surprised if Romney tried. Romney did cravenly defer to Trump (after his blistering statement calling him out as a phony in '16), and only stood against him as a last resort. Romney is a watchword among Trumpkins for an establishment Republican.

But I can see others running against Trumpism. At least, Chris Christie, who is politically deft enough to repudiate Trump the man, while trying to give a positive policy-vision for his supporters.

 

We certainly hope so.

But of course premiums rose. As did Big Macs. Neither of them because of the ACA, though.

 

No. What makes you believe I'm joking?

 

Anything that ludicrous has to be a joke.

 

15 real reasons for the gradual, 50 year party switch. I know, and everyone reading knows, that you have no response, or at least one that can't be succinctly communicated. Here they are again all together for the thread's edification.

1. Post WW2 boom across the country, especially in the post reconstruction South, that enriched a new class of big government averse/ tax averse affluent who rightly or wrongly, perceived Democrats as the big government-high tax party. Reagan capitalized well on this emerging tax aversion among newly affluent middle class Americans.
2. Abortion, and it's not some kind of "fundamentalism" to disagree with abortion. That was a huge sea change in public policy with which many non fundamentalists disagree today. I support regulated abortion, but see the other side, and it's not just backwards conservative fundamentalists on that other side.
3. Perception of Democrats as the party of communist/hippie/Marxist feminist sympathizers during VN, the Youth Movement, the PC 80-90s and radical feminism.
4. Perception of Democrats as the party of lawlessness post 30 or so years of riots from Kent State to Detroit to LA and domestic LW terrorism.
5. Perception of Democrats as the party attempting to constrain 2A rights.
6. Perception of Democrats as open borders and supportive of illegal alienage.
7. Fundamental disagreement with a central federal welfare state as opposed to state based or local charitable safety nets.
8. Perception of Democrats as the party of MSM.
9. Constant, inaccurate and insulting stereotyping of the rest of the country, especially white Southern males, by urban Democrats and the gov-edu-union-contractor-grantee-trial lawyer-MSM Complex for decades, "racist," "flyover country," "evangelicals," "RW authoritarians," "Trump cultists," etc. Examples of it in the thread. Pandering at election time... and then perpetual insults and stereotypes the rest of the time doesn't fool anyone. No wonder the South and other suburban/rural areas started voting Republican over the years.
10. Perceptions of hostility to the U.S. military and national defense. The South and other rural areas are the cradle of the military, many with generations of sacrifice for the country. Derogating the military chases extra-urban voters away from Democrats.
11. Perceptions of the Democrats as the party of public unions and corrupt, big city political machines, outrageous pensions and other benefits that private sector workers don't get, unworkable conflicts of interest with taxpayers, and fallacious anti-taxpayer propaganda (as seen daily on this forum and elsewhere).
12. Perceptions of Democrats as the party of anti-Christianity, atheistic activism and "the state as religion."
13. Perceptions of Democrats as the party of judicial activism, legislating from the bench as opposed to interpreting the preexisting law rationally.
14. Perceptions of the Democrats as the party of affirmative action and other illicit, discriminatory policies in favor of its core voting blocs.
15. Perceptions of the Democrats as the party hating and wanting to undo/subvert the Constitution in cheezy ways such as court-packing, green new deals and excessive regulation, state-packing, nonenforcement of immigration laws then amnesty, cultivating more and more permanent dependents via lockdowns, illegals, handouts.

Incidentally, how many of the above were covered in your Grievance Studies classes?

 

Who cares about 'discussions', heads should've rolled and they didn't. Hell a lot of the same incompetent actors have returned to the WH.

 

What I said was that they are the same in that they both have factions within them.

Nope. He lost on personality alone.

I can't believe you said that!!!

Sitting here open-mouthed ...

 

And who are you holding responsible for the fact that heads didn't roll?