Putting on a bright red dress and belting out "The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow!" is not a strategy. Neither is relentless sniveling and kvetching. The Little Orphan Annies and Gollums of the GOP will need to produce a love child that blends parental traits if it is to cope with the future. Our strategy, as you may have guessed, as Republicans, is to lower expectations. How we doin'?" "It's not as bad as you think; it's worse!" "The Party is in trouble; it's in serious trouble." "We're the Party of the brake pedal, they don't trust us with the steering wheel." - Alex Castellanos, Republican Political Consultant For anyone not in pathological denial of the dismal plight of the GOP (the same hardcore ilk that occasions the Party's current horrific stench) it is interesting to observe the internal writhing. This is a revelatory panel discussion concerning the existential crisis that is now being confronted, well worth watching. The intimations of a radical shift toward relevance go far beyond Turdblossom's War with the TPs.
You could go metaphysical......their karmic bill has come due. Creating the "Southern Strategy" 40 years ago, i.e. pandering to Southern racist George Wallace voters, to salvage the Party from disaster as the Democrats embraced civil rights and thus secured both the middle class and black vote.. As well as their move to embrace the Religious Right in the late 70s, early 80s. Remember upto Reagan, many Republicans were pro-choce and HW Bush's own father was a supporter of Planned Parenthood. Now? The Republican Party now has to PAY for those strategies by the incredibly ironic fact that it has come back to bite them in the ass Those racists they pandered to now won't allow it to reach out to Latinos. The Religious Right demands they oppsoe gay rights and nominate idiots who talk about "legitimate rape" on abortion. As America as a society REJECTS those ideas and nobody beleives the GOP when it hypocritically states "We want a small, less intrusive Government.....but one that still controls a woman's uterus." Or "We are an open, inclusive Party that Latinos would find supportive of their fiscal and social conservatism.....oh, but we want to talk about 'self-deportation' and laugh about building a 40 foot wall with alligators in moats on the Border". It all dates back to when they saw the disaffected Wallace Dixiecrats and said "Yeah...let's stop talking about integration like Ike did...and sound like THAT...and the South will flip to us." (as well as taking in guys like Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, and Trent Lott into their Party) And looking at morons like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and saying "Yeah....let's take become the Party of Theocracy too"
I don't think the Republican party will ever completely diminish; clearer thinkin heads will, at some point, clean out the old guard, change their platform to a much more moderate one and things will get back to normal for them. The big questions are when will this occur and how they'll go about to effect the change. Film at Eleven!
No, I agree...there WILL be a Republican Party in 50 years....it just won't look or SOUND like the current one. It can't. It's path to success is easy to see...full-out libertarianism with no overt or covert racism, eschewing both the bigots and the Theocrats. No more talk of "urban crime" or Jesse Helms' ads showing a white man losing a job to a "less qualified black". No more Federal Marriage Amendment, Human Life Amendment, "restoring God back into our public square" crap, etc. But that'll mean serious "birth-pangs". Losing some elections...seeing a disaffected base maybe stay home a few times or even create some "Real Conservative Party" that still thinks you can win elections on Birtherism, calling gays "perverts", and passing mandatory vaginal probe laws. But that would pass away, leaving the same situation. We need two parties....for balance and seeing that both are kept somewhat honest and mainstream. Reagan capitalized on 70s liberalism gone bad....Clinton capitalized on Reaganism gone bad.....Dubya had to run on "compasionate conservatism" to try to break that and distance himself from the Reaganites.....Obama won on Bush's failure to stay moderate (as well as him crashing the economy)......yin and yang. But currently the GOP is so far off in La-la-land on the far end of the spectrum....they can't be that balance because they're the fringe and everything else is mainstream and thus ceded to the Democrats. Naturally the ideologues on the Right think it's the other way around. Fine...let them think that and see how the future plays out.
"When he signed the act he was euphoric, but late that very night I found him in a melancholy mood as he lay in bed reading the bulldog edition of the Washington Post with headlines celebrating the day. I asked him what was troubling him. 'I think we just delivered the South to the Republican party for a long time to come,' he said." LYDON JOHNSON"S PRESS SECRETARY, BILL MOYERS If Johnson had not gift-wrapped the allegiance of conservative white Southerners, the national Democratic Party would have had to find a pretext to dump them. The Southern White Democrats who had previously exerted inordinate control in Congress were using it to stifle progress. If they had not fled the Party due to civil rights legislation and its enforcement, a pretext for foisting them onto the GOP would have had to be contrived. .
They could just go back to being Eisenhower Republicans. Moderate, supporting civil rights, not believing in a massive Military-Industrial Complex, conservationist on the environment, pro-union, still willing to see a social safety net, and actually balance budgets with taxes.
You can phrase it either way....either anti-integrationist Dixiecrats went to the GOP or the GOP welcomed them or both. Wallace voters remember FIRST tried a 3rd Party....Wallace's "American Independent" Party. That bombed, but Nixon's razor-thin victory over Humphrey in 1968 (despite a Dem Party in chaos over civil rights and Vietnam) showed ol' Dick that he could lock up the election by appealing to those Wallace voters....subtlely of course. The strategy was further refined by Reagan's guys, Lee Atwater, etc. with The Gipper making his FIRST post-Convention speech in 1980 in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers were murdered.....his subject? "States' rights"...same line Wallace used. No mention of the killed workers. The message?....."This is a new George Wallace style Republican Party...come on over." And the South has been solidly Republican up to very recently, when the cracks started to form in places like Virgnia and North Carolina.
It could never last. You've got a South that is now transforming from "The Help" into places like Atlanta, Richmond, Raleigh becoming little micro-Silicon Valleys with upper-class white professionals who aren't racist....aren't Moral Majority....and don't like candidates who pander to either. It's getting harder and harder for a "Jesse Helms" to win....easier for a Kay Hagen. Guys like Lamar Alexander in TN and Graham in SC...are supporting immigration reform over the wishs of their hillbilly voters. Think about it, Virginia with a GOP Governor and GOP State House....went TWICE for President Obama. North Carolina did in 2008...only went with Romney in 2012 due to the sluggish NC economy and the lackluster Bev Perdue as Governor. Mary Landrieu has held her Senate seat in Louisiana even with Bobby Jindhal as Governor. Old Dixie is cracking at the edges. The "Southern Strategy" is failing....so where can the GOP go? The Upper Midwest maybe....the "militia" Upper Rockies. But Midwest Repubs tend to be more moderate or atleast more sane (Dole, Grassley, Thune) and Rocky Mt. Repubs tend to be more nutter (Tom Tancredo)....and there's not enough Electoral College votes in them to get you to 270+. They can go economic populist like Rick Santorum tried....to win white blue collar votes in the Northeast.....but that means eschewing the traditional laissez-faire, pro-corporation economics the GOP is built on. They can go more libertarian...but that means pissing off Social Cons (like Santorum) who want abortion even contraception banned and gays back in the closet. Everybody is sick of overseas interventionist wars....so the Hawks and Neo-cons have nothing to sell.
Divergent Republicans, in their death spiral, seem unable to compromise with one another, let alone Democrats, and both the establisment and TPs see any move to "moderation" as diluting/polluting the p!ss 'n vinegar they're peddling. Republican political consultant Alex Castellanos seems to recommend a bifurcated approach encapsulated in Kevin Miller's book title Freedom Nationally Values Locally (or Socialism.) In substance, I believe that would mean dumping the theocratic, anti-scientific zealotry from the federal agenda whilst encouraging the evangelical diehards to push their schtick at the local level. The more libertarian-minded would not be repulsed or encumbered by the taliban types who befoul the party label whilst that ilk could still fester in stagnant backwaters. Think of it as a trial separation in which both parties could be free to follow their bliss!
The GOP is slowly becoming more Libertarian, and that's a good thing. The question is when will it improve the party's image? By 2016? By 2020?
The Falconist Party plans to pull from both sides people who are left-wing on fiscal and economic issues yet right wing on social and cultural issues. People like Heath Schuller, Bob Casey, Mike Huckabee to name a few who hold views similar to the Falconist Party. In addition, we plan to pull in independents and unaffiliated voters who are economically left yet socially and culturally right to build this brand new party
Your party sounds interesting, but unfortunately, my economic and social views would be flipped around with yours.
The Libertarians have their own party. It is time the people who are the opposite of Libertarians have theirs
How so? Consider the massive federal subsidies to agricultural businesses that they've been pushing of late whilst abandoning feeding the hungry: The U.S. regularly hands over $20 billion in subsidies to a tiny percentage of the American population. The majority of subsidies nurture agribusiness, or farms that make over $200,000 annually. In fact, 10% of farms picked up 75% of the subsidies. The farm bill oozes crony capitalism. Neither insinuating the State further into early pregnancy, a featured item on their agenda to limit freedom, nor allocating billions of taxpayer dollars to accommodate their military/industrial overlords in the matter of border control gadgets - drones, etc. (whilst expanding the payroll for 20,000 more federal employees - enough to place one every 250 ft. from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific) are indications of a libertarian drift. Far from it. The Republican fixation on throwing money at what is far less of a problem now than it once was is rampant statism. Politician womb intrusion and pandering to the elite via such government-managed reallocation of wealth is anything but "libertarian."
I am not a member of the GOP but Thomas Edsall works for more lefty type publications doesn't he? That said yes the GOP needs to dump the abortion issue and work to balance the budget along with saving SS , Medicare/caid , I also believe they need to fix not kill Obamacare, prescription drug care and breaking down of to big to fail companies
The GOP can't hold its traditonal "four-legged stool" coalition together and remain a national party. (The three "legs" admitted to by the Right being....Fiscal Cons/Libertarians.....Theocrats....Hawks/Neo-cons. The fourth "leg" they don't admit to...are Racists.). Every Theocrat candidate like Todd "Legitimate rape" Akin or Richard "Rape pregnancy is God's plan" Mourdock costs them women, moderates and independents. The Racists cost them Latino voters. The Neo-cons cost them people who DON'T want endless, perpetual war in the Middle East (even many on the Right). So what's left? The Fiscal Cons/Libertarians. But cutting spending and being libertarian means ...no more anti-abortion, anti-gay stuff; no more racism, and no more massive defense spending or wars put on a "credit card" like Iraq and Afghanistan.
Given Libertarians believe in "small, non-intrusive Government" and "do as you like as long as it hurts nobody else" individual rights.....what is the opposite of that? - - - Updated - - - Falconist?....."socialist theocrats"!?!?
Fifty years is a long time. Anything can happen. Look how far they have fallen in the last 50 years. Today's GOP is nothing like the "I like Ike" GOP that I grew up knowing. They would disown Ike as a traitor today. However, it generally takes longer to rebuild than it does to destroy.
