What can Republicans possibly run on in 2016?

Sure they did. . .that and all the favors he did for the 1%.

And. . .we continue to pay for the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. . .in fact, it is a BIG, ongoing part of the deficit.
We also continue to pay BIG for his wars. . .and we will until the last disabled vet from Iraq, or the family of the fallen Iraqui soldiers, are alive (and we should. . .but we shouldn't have had to if Bush's war had not taken place).

 

Right wingers would have us believe that Bush's transgressions mean nothing today, and choose to blame Obama for the world's woes.

 

Oh no, the Patriot Act doesn't matter anymore, and of course no one cares about all the people killed in Iraq. Totally apologetic to that, yrp.

Course I'm not actually right-wing but in your world I am, apparently.

 

All the people killed in Iraq. . .before or after the US invasion? Andhow about the death of our soldiers for this war based on LIES?

 

Bush's Patriot Act? Yeah, that was a really bad idea that Obama should have deep sixed, for sure.

 

This is an interesting topic. I think the GOP could make a very strong case for reigning in government in terms of waste and inefficiencies, and in terms of reach and power. I know independents see that as a weakness of the Democrats' and Obama's legacy, and I suspect many Democrats are concerned about it when they stop to think about it. BUT...

Before Republicans have a chance at making a case for themselves, they've got to find their big-boy pants again. They are possibly the most dysfunctional political party in U.S. history right now. Hell, even the politicians of the Confederate South managed to unite people around the idea of defending slavery... even to go to war with their own countrymen! The political buffoonery of today's Republicans is too distracting for reasonable centrists to take them seriously. They need to tell Michelle Bachmann to put a sock in it. They should uninvite Sarah Palin from any public event that has an elephant symbol associated with it. Start ignoring the Tea Party Congressmen for the one-term wonders that they are.

Conservative extremists poo-poo Chris Christie, but he has been strategically distinguishing himself from the nutjobs in his party for awhile. I think that's why he didn't run in 2012, because he didn't want to pander to crazy people to win the Republican nomination; but by 2016 I suspect the party will have shed much of its fringe members (probably because they'll have died from old age). Marco Rubio is keeping a relatively low profile, I think, because he doesn't want his association with wing-nut obstructionism to come back to bite him in a few years, though he's also trying to subtly make those guys happy. Meanwhile Ted Cruz views everything through Texas-sandblasted sunglasses and thinks embracing this stuff is the way forward. I don't think Texas should be its own nation, but they should have their own conservative political party, and the rest of the country's Republicans should have a gentlemen's agreement to kindly ignore it. Moral of the story is that guys like Christie and Rubio are the future hope for the GOP establishment. Lately, it looks like Paul Ryan is taking the long-view, too. Tea Party groups are attacking him now, which is probably a good sign for his longevity.

Anyhow, the bottom line is this: if, as some suggest, Republicans run on "cleaning up Obama's mess" and "fixing" Obamacare, then they will lose. The nation does not hate President Obama or the ACA like the nutjobs within today's Republican party do. But if they can stop harping on the past and look to the future, pointing out specific examples of where the federal government is woefully bloated and inefficient, focusing on how our government can do more of what we need it to do with less waste, then they can pull off a very tight race if not an all-out victory.

 

The Tea Party has destroyed the grand Republican party. Ted Cruz alone has done more damage to the party we used to know. And with the Ultra conservative Rand Paul right behind him, I predict the Republicans are going to lose many seats in the House and Senate. The Democrats will gain both houses and the presidency on the next election. People are fed up with these ultra conservatives that will throw the country into a depression just to prove their ideology.

 

There were other regulations that were taken out by Bush Sr. so both parties are to blame. I'm shuddering to see what TPP is going to cause...but of course, no one's covering it because that (*)(*)(*)(*) is going to blow the average person back into the stoneage within 3 years of it's passing.

 

Republicans have many things they COULD run on. But they won't. They think they have to go even FURTHER right in order to get the votes of people who are sick and tired of them.

"We don't have to change our idiotic platform, just make our message more deceiving!"

Keep digging, guys. Unless you ditch those crazy (*)(*)(*)(*)s and actually run on real conservative values, you are only going to upset your base and embarrass yourselves.

 

I think that Christie has the best shot so far. He's the sanest and probably the smartest of the bunch, but that doesn't say much.

 

I have no idea what the "Liberal Media" is. It is such a vague term and doesn't really have a clear definition. But the Cons eat it up, usually in the forms of books by conservative authors, anchors of conservative stations on the radio/TV. Last I checked those are media forms. Maybe the Liberal Media is just things they don't want to hear.

 

President Johnson added a tax surcharge To pay for the Vietnam War
And that tax cut in 1960 was from 90% top to 70%

 

And you really think the American people are so stupid they will not realize that the republicans are not partly to blame

 

"What can Republicans possibly run on in 2016?"

Taxcutter says:
Less federal spending.
Less federal taxation.
Less federal government in general.

 

"What brought down this economy during Bush is
1. NAFTA
2.Free Trade.
We lost millions of jobs because of those two things and Bush had nothing to do with either.
3.Putting pressure on banks to give out more home loans to people who could not afford them.
4. Changing the law that had been in place since the Great Depression that allowed banks to get into risky derivatives, Those two things brough the banks down. Put that all together and that sir is what brought this economy down. Not saying Bush tax cuts and the two wars didn't help, but if the other things hadn't of happened, this economy wouldn't have collapsed. I mean back in the 1960, taxes wre cut 21%, much more than Bush cut them and that was during the Vietnam war. On top of that Johnson started up the multi trillion dollar war on poverty and the economy didn't collapse like it did now."

Taxcutter says:
1. NAFTA was signed and ratified during the Administration of the Imeached One.
2. Free (more or less) trade has been US policy since Smoot-Hawley was discredited in the 1930s.
3. CRA was enacted in 1979 but was genrally ignored until The Impeached One's administration.
4. Glass- Steagal was repealed in 1996.

None of this had the least thing to do with GW Bush.

 

His AGENDA (the same one of those around him) contributed significantly to the economic problems we see today.

Hopefully, the things that were terrible about the Bush years (agenda) can/will be mitigated sooner than later.

 

Sorry no what brought us to this point is 80 years of all but uninterrupted leftist rule. Bush in many respects governed to the left of Clinton.

 

That sounds way off. And you have a long way to go in proving the above (that's for sure).

 

They'll just need a candidate that will be viable; right now they don't have anyone who has a snow balls chance of defeating almost any democrat candidate that is put up. Each month its the so-called "flavor of the month" which was what occurred last election cycle and look what it got the republicans.

 

That only sounds off to you because you wish to believe the big lie that Democratic party is your savior rather than the replacement for the slave owners of 160 years ago in this country. The only thing that is consistent over the last 8 years is the growth of government. As government has waxed the middle class has waned. And the party chiefly concerned with growng government has been the Democrats. Government growth and the destruction of the Middle class are as inextricably linked as birthdays and age.

 

Your extreme views are just NOISE to me. Sorry.

 

They will probably run on obamas failure , much like democrats did after the bush failure .

 

So, on the one hand, you are saying the Republicans need to continue their failed policy of nominating "very moderate" candidates, and on the other hand they need to "quit pandering to their extremist base". How is nominating a very moderate candidate in any way pandering to the "extremist" (read conservative) base? What the RNC has been doing is throwing the conservatives under the bus in favor of liberal RINOs like Romney. And look how well that worked. The Republicans need to offer a real choice to the voter, not just Liberal vs. Liberal Lite. If someone wants a liberal, they are going to go for the full flavor liberal, not lib lite. Which is exactly what happened in the last election. If the Republicans are going to recover, they need to get people conservative enough that the base will bother to come out and vote. Nominating a "moderate" has proven to not work.

 

I expect those vapid husks will run on their usual empty.

 

And I expect that this time around theDemocrats willrun a vapid husk...

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I don't really expect reality to have an impact on a devout belief such as your's.