Republicans Have A BIG Problem
Right now Republicans are blaming Chris Christie, Hurricane Sandy, Mitt Romney, unreasonable gay people, slutty women, “biased” Hispanics, effeminate, urban, highly educated white guys, Evangelicals who didn’t show up, people who voted 3rd party and, of course, African Americans who should vote Republican, because, you know… Lincoln!
But the “Because I Said So!” party has a big problem, and I don’t see how they solve it. Yes, there have been mumblings about how the GOP has to tap into the groups I’ve listed about, but the question is how? How does the party of “Because I Said So!” change/soften/moderate their platform on:
RINOs
Climate Change
Gay Marriage
Gay Adoption
Gay Rights
Abortion
Rape
Birth Control
Equal Pay for Equal Work
Immigration
Intellectuals
Science
Math
Racist Dog Whistles
Any Religion Other Than Theirs
Social Security
Medicare/Medicaid
Taxes
Seriously, how do they do this without betraying everything they believe? Answer: They can’t. So, where does this leave them? Facing their own extinction unless they can get these groups to agree with them… and “Because I Said So!” obviously didn’t work.
My prediction… they won’t change a thing. Instead they’ll try and pit these groups against each other. They’ll go after the Hispanic vote by trying not to use the term “illegal” (which would be viewed by Republicans as a big concession) and tell this group why they should hate gays and blacks. They’ll also try and soften their rhetoric about women – not sure how, but I bet it’ll be transparent pandering. As far as the African American vote? They won’t go after it because they are too attached to their dog whistle politics – besides they’ll need to use the African American community to try and scare everyone else.
So… how does the Republican Party solve their BIG problem?
Tags: 2012 Election, Republicans
I guess if I have to pick my category of “blame” its either Chris Christie (because of my weight), or effeminate highly educated white guy (which is sexist; I could be an effeminate highly educate white woman).
And there’s your problem, Reis. Republicans don’t believe there’s such a thing as a feminine, highly educated white women outside of FOX hosts/anchors. 😉
Great points. The GOP problem with “math” alone puts them at odds with everyone who isn’t in the top 2% of wealth or who has figured out that tax cuts for the top 2% don’t do squat to help the economy.
The potential GOP base is vanishingly small.
Thanks, Jason. I’m really not seeing how the GOP changes their positions on these issues – other than the grand gesture of no longer referring to undocumented workers as illegals. They might not even be able to do that if it doesn’t poll well with one of Frank Luntz’ focus group.
Only the libertarians can save the GOP now. Pro-immigration, pro-gay marriage, pro-pot, pro-choice. Today’s under-40 vote will one day reflect the entire electorate. Evolve or die.
But Steve Newton doesn’t want to save them. He wants to fill the void they’ll leave. 😉
I’m not ready to entertain any ideas the GOP is facing extinction. We indulged in that in 2006 and 2008 and they kicked our butts in 2010, not only in elections but in legislation.
Anyway, if the GOP falls apart, more conservatives will just run as Democrats. It’s relatively cheap to buy a Congressman; corporations will just start buying up Democrats instead of Republicans. Instead of arguing with Republican wingnuts, we’ll be arguing with Democratic wingnuts.
The GOP organization may go away, but their agenda has already been implanted like a virus in the Democratic party and will survive. Plenty of Dems in Congress are Republican pod people.
I’m with Puck. Electable R’s will have to run as D’s.
They can use Delaware as their model. We’ve got a governor, a senator and a congressman who fit that mold, and I’ll bet there will be plenty of corporate support for the other senator when he runs for a full six-year term.
Think of it: The Delaware Way goes national!
“they kicked our butts in 2010”
Because they perceived that the Democrats were acting irresponsibly. People want responsible government. There is too much instability in their own lives. They want to be able to count on something and someone. When Democrats act responsibly and the GOP act irresponsibly, the elections reflect that. Responsible governance does not mean giving everything to everyone but it also doesn’t mean cutting them off at the knees.
What a joke. Thanks for that DC insider view David Broder.
“People” didn’t think anything of the sort. They don’t vote based on issues. The Republicans whipped up some Obama hate and the Democrats stated home. Period.
Because they perceived that the Democrats were acting irresponsibly.
And Democrats didn’t do much to counter that narrative, seriously. But I’ve been skeptical before of the death of the GOP. It is, however, very difficult to argue with Tuesday’s results — Obama pretty much kept his coalition and the GOP kept theirs. Theirs is just smaller than it was 4 years ago. And it will continue to shrink unless they can appeal to a broader group of people.
One thing that sort of surprised me about this campaign was how little the dysfunctional Congress featured in it. I expected Obama to run against Congress more than he did. But if I’m him today, I’m not only working out legislative strategies, but I’m building a campaign to run against Congress that starts January 1.
@Jason: I think Dave is right. People “perceived” the Democrats were acting irresponsibly because the Tea Parties convinced the media that the debt level spelling impending doom.
In truth, a stimulus, even with the increased debt, was the best way to forestall an even worse economic disaster. With two more years to educate people (and a large mass of Democratic voters who don’t turn out for the midterms), that perception both diminished and was overwhelmed by superior numbers.
For what it’s worth, Democrats have won the popular vote in 5 of the past 6 presidential elections.
@cassandra I discussed this with my daughters last night and I found this statement very prophetic “Obama effectively organized by far the best grassroots organization ever, and he and his political team have effectively trained hundreds of brilliant community organizers who will be running insurgent campaigns for the foreseeable future” . . . to me he has set up a well organized base of young, old and diverse voters that may very well be the movement to take on Congress.
“They don’t vote based on issues.”
Oh really? So it’s a waste to tell the people anything? Just whip up some sort of frenzy and people jump on the bandwagon? Crowd behavior and all that? Sheep? So the (D)s have to act like the(R)s doing the same thing only better? That pretty cynical.
I don’t buy it though. Sure there is a segment of the population for which that method works, but is a large segment that is tired of that type of frenzy.
@Geezer, it wasn’t just the stimulus — the HCA fight was overly messy , including Dems undermining bits of it AND the pulling the plug on Grandma BS AND somehow letting the GOP run in 2010 on not letting the Dems cut Medicare AND demonizing Nancy Pelosi. As far as I could tell, the Dems did very little to push back or counter any of these messages.
@Cassandra: All you cite is true, but the narrative the mainstream media fixated on and amplified most was the deficit. But you’re right in that all those things demoralized the left, leading to the low turnout that let the GOP gain so much ground.
Unfortunately that low point came at exactly the wrong time, putting Republicans in office in states that voted for Obama this week and allowing them to gerrymander themselves to a House majority that probably will hold until 2022, after the next redistricting.
I agree with Cassandra and Geezer. Dems made a lot of their own mess and the media fell in love with a deficit they were happy to ignore when Dick Cheney told them it didn’t matter. Actually, that’s not really true. They weren’t interested in the deficit before Dick Cheney told them that deficits didn’t matter.
Basically, the media – having become addicted to Sarah Palin stupidity – wanted another story that didn’t involve them doing much work. Enter the Tea Party.
In the beginning, most of the media portrayed the Tea Party as deficit intellectuals – which gave the movement undeserved validity – and gave the media the easy, fun story they wanted. It wasn’t until after 2010 that people started realizing that the Tea Party was full of nuts.
Then we are all agreed. Except Dave.
In related news, my customer has “fix the debt” postcards laid out in the common area today.
HCA took a good chunk of the air and IMO it was the 975 pages that got defined as “death panels” all way to “1% tax for Obamacare anytime you sell your home” (that was yesterday and it’s 3.8% not 1%) that caused a backlash in 2010. When you shove that much down people’s throats the first thing they do is turn bulimic. coule that with numbers people never heard of in a stimulus program and the (R)s buildiing a narrative around that, you have the perfect storm.
And it didn’t matter that most of the ACA didn’t come due till 2013 or so. All that mattered was everything was too big, too wrong, too everything, coupled with chicken little messaging and all of a sudden you have Doomsday Preppers (2011) on NatGeo instead of Cesar Millan, the Dog Whisperer.