Appeal to Independents

Amidst hyper-partisanship with its demonization of "the other" and the American experiment becoming an outhouse divided against itself, there is this: The center can hold. Explaining how you would govern rather than flinging offal at the opponent attracts the support of the majority of voters who don't view self-governance as a comparative vilification contest.

Attributions of consummate evil may abound in comic books. Unless your hero is a two-dimensional, photo-shopped fantasy, make those seeking your vote explain what they would do if elected.

Isn't that what its all about?

GOP stumbles with independents contributed to midterm woes

... Klang ultimately backed Craig, contributing to a 5 percentage point win for a Democratic incumbent whom Republicans spent more than $12 million to unseat. From Maine to California, Republicans faced similar unexpected setbacks with the small but crucial slice of voters who don't identify with either major party, according to AP VoteCast, a sweeping national survey of the electorate.

Republican House candidates nationwide won the support of 38% of independent voters in last month's midterm elections, VoteCast showed. That's far short of the 51% that Democrats scored with the same group in 2018 when they swept into power by picking up 41 seats. The GOP's lackluster showing among independents helps explain why Republicans flipped just nine seats, securing a threadbare majority that has already raised questions about the party's ability to govern.

Some Republican strategists say the finding is a sign that messages that resonate during party primaries, including searing critiques of Biden, were less effective in the general election campaign because independent voters were searching for more than just the opposition.

“You’ve got to tell them what you’re going to do,” said David Winston, a Republican pollster and senior adviser to House Republicans who had been critical of GOP candidates' messaging strategy this year. “Somehow the Republican campaigns managed not to do that. And that’s a real serious problem.”...​

The Republican shift from libertarianism to authoritarianism is turning independents away:

About 7 in 10 independent voters who don't side with either party think abortion should be legal in most or all cases, according to VoteCast, which also found many voters across party lines were hesitant to support candidates who were considered extreme.

Pamela Olson, an independent from rural Farmington, Minnesota, said she doesn’t typically vote on a single issue. Nor did she vote for Craig in 2020. That changed with the court’s decision, in light of Craig's support for abortion rights and Kistner's opposition in most cases.

“It’s about freedoms in this country. And I think it is completely up to a woman and her doctor,” said Olson, a 56-year-old engineer. “There needs to be a choice for those individuals, not for somebody else to tell you what to do.”​

 

Self governance? That exists in no country on the planet.

 

**** it. I used to say that both sides have their loonies but neither are represented by them. I've found some appeal from both sides in the past. But it is an Olympian feat to find anything modern US conservatives stand for beyond election conspiracy theories and being shitheads to trans people, neither of which appeal to me.

 

Give this guy a few minutes of your time. He squashes his opposition with logic while being totally friendly.

 

PAtrick Moynihan pointed out a long time ago that the middle class lost its ability to govern, and in doing so has pretty much eradicated itself. They danced in the streets as inflation and Reagan crushed the working class, off-shored as many high productivity jobs as they could, and pandered to the financial sector, and now they whine because they were next on the list of the elite class, currently meeting in Davos.

Who did they think would be next, gypsies? Rotarians? lol they cur their own throats. 'Left' and 'Right' are now distinctions without a difference, same as with Marxism and Nazism.

 

I'm inclined to believe that Olson is full of it. Obviously she bought the bs from the left about abortion being taken away. With a mindset like that I would surmise she can only think of one issue whenever she votes. That's not an Independent voter. It's a voter that's too easily fooled by hype.

 

Your partisan bias is apparent. With the Trump Supreme Court's abrogation of personal liberty that had prevailed for half-a-century, Republicans have established themselves as the anti-personal freedom party.

The threat of retrogressive states as well as the Republican-run congress to further erode personal freedom has already driven away independent voters, and I see no incentive for them to reverse direction.

Why Independent Voters Broke for Democrats in the Midterms

In the midterm elections, women showed up to vote on abortion

Dems Won Independent Votes on Abortion

Republicans ignore voters’ will, start targeting abortion rights

Voters Are Choosing Abortion Rights in All 5 States That Put Them on the Ballot

​

 

My observation only concerned Olsen. Using her as a model of independent voters was a poor choice. It might be more believable if they just focused on her being a woman voting on a single issue - abortion. The hype over abortion was well packaged by democrats and bought by voters that apparently couldn't see through the bs.

 

Any pretense that many independent voters are not repulsed by the GOP's increasing authoritarianism is not supported by any surveys of which I am aware.

Republicans hyping their bs about abrogating personal freedom is not a political winner, despite its pandering to single-issue voters.

Gallup poll finds that pro-lifers prioritize abortion in voting decisions
​

2022 was the fifth midterm in a row in which voters under 30 favored congressional Democrats. The last time the parties were competitive for that demographic in House races was 2002.

 

From your citation:

The 47% is less than half of Americans and yet even they don't look at single issues when voting. Only 24% do. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. It certainly doesn't appear that most Independents, like Olson claims to be, vote based on a single issue. Thus I question whether she is an Independent.

 

I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. It is clear that most Americans support reproductive rights such as are respected throughout advanced democracies over the authoritarian prohibition imposed upon the populace in an El Salvador, a Nicaragua, or an Iran.

... 57% of respondents believe abortion should be legal overall in all or most cases—with 23% saying it should be legal in all cases and 33% saying only in most cases...
That percentage was even higher when asked whether abortion should be legal during the first trimester specifically, with 61% saying it should be legal in all or most cases.
​

The threat of authoritarian state regimes invading private mail and communications to confiscate mifepristone (Over half of abortions are now by self-administered) insures that freedom from such statist oppression will remain a priority for many.

​

 

That's it in the nutshell, and it looks like the GOP us doubling down on authoritarianism. I thought they would have learned from the mid-terms, but no.

 

oh , buckle your seat belt. Next two years will be interesting. “Jewish Space Laser” nutcase is chairwoman of Homeland Security committee and many other committee. By the time the year is over you would think Hunter Biden is the president.

 

The GOP's historical paeans to minimal, less-intrusive governance of yesteryear are mocked by the Party's maximal statists of today.

Consider Florida where medicine, education, private enterprise, and local communities are increasingly subjected to a dictatorial ideologue, expertise in various disciplines being crushed by authoritarian impositions.

Florida bans AP African American Studies

DeSantis bans Florida school districts from requiring masks

‘CORPORATE KINGDOM’: DeSantis-backed plan to take control
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... DeSantis and his allies have been particularly active, as though they’re accelerating their effort to pull Florida not just to the right but toward a particular brand of authoritarian conservatism.

We begin with voter fraud, which is vanishingly rare in Florida as it is everywhere (though The Villages, a sprawling retirement community near Orlando, seems to be the epicenter of the criminality that exists). This week, DeSantis proposed the creation of an Office of Election Crimes and Security, answerable to him, which would roam the state looking for phantom voter fraud... No other state has such a unit — the small number of voter fraud cases are easily handled by existing law enforcement agencies...

Meanwhile, DeSantis’s bill to whitewash the U.S. legacy of white supremacy is moving through the legislature. It passed a state Senate committee on party lines and is no doubt headed for his signature.

One fascinating aspect of the right’s war on the teaching of history in the name of stamping out critical race theory is how much concern many conservatives have expressed over the feelings of White students. The mere possibility that a White student somewhere might learn about racism and feel bad has them frantically drafting legislation to forestall such a horror. But only in a few places have the bills explicitly mentioned bad feelings as something that the law must address.

Raul Pino, the director of the Florida Department of Health in Orange County... sent an email to employees lamenting the lagging rates of covid-19 vaccination in their own agency and urging everyone to get vaccinated. This would seem as unremarkable as the head of the department of transportation telling her team to drive carefully or the department of sanitation chief reminding folks not to litter.

But according to a statement released by the state, “the employee in question has been placed on administrative leave, and the Florida Department of Health is conducting an inquiry to determine if any laws were broken in this case.” Because he encouraged public health workers to be vaccinated.

The law in question was one DeSantis signed that supercharged the right’s aversion to vaccine mandates, making it illegal for any organization in the state — local governments, private businesses — to require vaccines for employees or customers. An old-fashioned conservative might say that private companies should be able to make their own rules on such things without the heavy hand of the state deciding for them. But DeSantis has a very heavy hand.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/01/19/desantis-paradise-of-authoritarianism/]​

For many Republicans, big, intrusive government is back.

 

So, just a question.... If, as you suggest, independents are "repulsed by the GOPs increasing authoritarianism"... can you explain why then you didn't also invoke the seemingly endless litany of democratic positions that actually are authoritarian in nature? For example, why do you suppose you didn't complain about how democrats actively suppressed free speech? Right to assemble? Practice of religious freedom? The right to face accusers? The right to speedy trial? The right to be safe in the community and safe from criminals and crime? Security of the national borders? The active discrimination based policies that attack the majority of the nation in violation of the equal protection act?

I ask, because, just now, it seems that suddenly independents don't seem that independent from your marketing project here. If as you suggest that independents instead voted for democrats who actively worked for and continue to work against the, how does that make them independents in any real way?

 

Quite the hyperventilation, don't you think? Asking for ensuring that government, read public supplied education in this case, cannot indoctrinate you kids against your rights as a parent, and suddenly, this, for you, is the bridge too far? That parents rights to raise their kids be respected, to you, is "big government intrusion"? Laughable..

It's kind of ironic then that you seem to be willing to attack with what you are most guilty of yourself....

 

If you need to divert attention from the GOP's abandoning libertarianism and embracing authoritarianism by making such claims, you are free to initiate a thread delineating and defending your aspersions, of course.

 

It seems the independents in question didn't fall for those talking points.

Back to topic?

 

Did you forget what the subject of the thread is? Independents. You lost your point.

 

I made the explicit point that your perception to allow the states which are constitutionally granted the right to represent the people is a concern of yours, it surely doesn't seem to make a point which demonstrates this GOP authoritarianism that you whined about. I actually pointed you at actual authoritarianism, and this is your response? I mean, given that I don't for a second believe that you are "independent" in any manner, this reaction of yours does truly indicate where I believe your true affiliations lie. So, I asked you, as the self marketed "independent" that you claim to be why your concern doesn't straddle both sides of a fence that independents imagine they traverse...

To put a super fine point on this for you. The representative form of government allows the citizens agency to produce a conclave of members on their behalf to write the constitutionally supportable legislation that they will. If, as a function of that, the ability of women to commit infanticide smacks you as being capricious, or otherwise authoritarian, I'd ask from whose perspective you think that is rational. Certainly, given the whim of the mother to kill her unborn seems to me to be instantiating the most egregious of all possible authoritarianism. Given the role of government to protect the rights of those most vulnerable of us all, this seems to entirely undercut your narrative.

 

Wow... Tell the priests who were arrested about a "talking point".... Your willful ignorance here is astounding.

 

Citation?

 

Can you give one example of suppressing free speech and violation of First amendment ?


Can you give one example of suppressing free speech and violation of First amendment ?

 

Priests? I could tell them how independents voted and why (because of GOP authoritarianism), but.......what's the point? Can't they read?

You screaming "BUT.......DEMOCRATS" at every turn is not an argument, its a deflection. The vote results and their testimony from independent voters is proof of what they think.

 

Yes