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Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Posted: Fri Jun 12, 2015 9:05 am
by hepcat
Would you say the show is not "hard" to get into?

Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Posted: Fri Jun 12, 2015 9:17 am
by Max Peck
hepcat wrote:Would you say the show is not "hard" to get into?
That depends on whether or not you have a Gibson Girl fetish.

Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Posted: Fri Jun 12, 2015 12:54 pm
by Zarathud
Hepcat has a Bea Arthur fetish. So, yes.

Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Posted: Fri Jun 12, 2015 1:28 pm
by hepcat
Why do you trivialize my feelings for Bea?

Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Posted: Fri Jun 26, 2015 11:11 pm
by Kraken
A few days ago I read a column that purported to explain why Republicans keep sliding farther and farther to the right. The gist of it went like this:

The Republican Party is an ideological party that believes in small government and low taxes above all else. When they lose an election, it's because they weren't ideologically pure, so they move farther to the right. When they win office and fail to shrink government (which is virtually always), their voters accuse them of not being ideologically pure enough and demand more extremism.

Democrats, OTOH, are a coalition of groups with specific objectives. When Democrats lose an election, it's because they appealed to the wrong groups or failed to turn out their voters or backed the wrong programs. Democrats react to losses by rebalancing their interest groups or promising more stuff to more people.

This is why Republicans try to out-conservative one another while Democrats don't dwell on liberalism as a philosophy or even self-identify as such.

One party pragmatically tries to advance the agendas of disparate interest groups while the other is ideologically bound to block them. When Democrats fail, they blame tactics. When Republicans fail, they blame ideological impurity.

I thought that was an interesting perspective.

Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Posted: Sat Jun 27, 2015 9:51 am
by Holman
Yep. And It didn't used to be this way, either.

I know I keep harping on this, but the modern GOP was established on new-found Southern strength in reaction to the Civil Rights movement. Reagan wedded this new base to full-blown opposition to government, and Newt Gingrich solidified it by declaring Congressional war on a sitting president in ways that really hadn't been done in modern times. The grounding for all of this is ideological rather than practical. Ideology is the promise the party makes to its members.

The tension between the ideological purity and national electability gives rise to the pattern Kraken laid out above. Ideology is successful in local races (especially with gerrymandering), but it doesn't win you the White House. When the time comes to choose a presidential candidate, the compromise nominee might win or lose, but in the end he never seems Republican enough: Bob Dole, John McCain, Mitt Romney, all three Bushes.

Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Posted: Sun Jun 28, 2015 1:37 am
by GreenGoo
The last 16 years (close enough) have been split down the middle. So they were ideologically pure enough during Bush's terms?

Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Posted: Sun Jun 28, 2015 2:28 am
by Zarathud
President George W. Bush offered a relief from Clinton, 10 years of tax cuts, another war on Iraq, a new war on terrorists, school testing, oil drilling, and social conservatism. Any ideological impurities were swept under the rug. You can't get more Republican than the son of the former President who rebuilt the modern GOP after Nixon with Karl Rove and then served under Reagan.

Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Posted: Sun Jun 28, 2015 3:09 am
by Kraken
GreenGoo wrote:The last 16 years (close enough) have been split down the middle. So they were ideologically pure enough during Bush's terms?
You'd think that winning two national elections would be a Yes. But he expanded the government and ran up the biggest deficit ever, so Hello Tea Party.

Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Posted: Sun Jun 28, 2015 9:28 pm
by Pyperkub
Zarathud wrote:President George W. Bush offered a relief from Clinton, 10 years of tax cuts, another war on Iraq, a new war on terrorists, school testing, oil drilling, and social conservatism. Any ideological impurities were swept under the rug. You can't get more Republican than the son of the former President who rebuilt the modern GOP after Nixon with Karl Rove and then served under Reagan.
You forgot Medicare part D

Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Posted: Sun Aug 16, 2015 1:13 pm
by Kraken
Inside the GOP Clown Car is an entertaining and occasionally insightful look at the GOP field's attempts to out-crazy one another. (Spoiler: Blame Trump.)
Politics used to be a simple, predictable con. Every four years, the money men in D.C. teamed up with party hacks to throw their weight behind whatever half-bright fraud of a candidate proved most adept at snowing the population into buying a warmed-over version of the same crappy policies they've always bought.

Pundits always complained that there wasn't enough talk about issues during these races, but in reality, issues were still everything. Behind the scenes, where donors gave millions for concrete favors, there was always still plenty of policy. And skilled political pitchmen like Christie, who could deftly deliver on those back-room promises to crush labor and hand out transportation contracts or whatever while still acting like a man of the people, were highly valued commodities.

Not anymore. Trump has blown up even the backroom version of the issues-driven campaign. There are no secret donors that we know of. Trump himself appears to be the largest financial backer of the Trump campaign. A financial report disclosed that Trump lent his own campaign $1.8 million while raising just $100,000.

There's no hidden platform behind the shallow facade. With Trump, the facade is the whole deal. If old-school policy hucksters like Christie can't find a way to beat a media master like Trump at the ratings game, they will soon die out.

Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Posted: Mon Sep 14, 2015 5:37 pm
by Pyperkub
CallBuzz takes a look at a "Reasonable Republican":
GOP conundrum Here’s Duf’s challenge: While he’s an economic and foreign policy conservative (he opposed the Iran nuclear deal, for example), he’s essentially pro-gay marriage, favors a pathway to legality for undocumented immigrants, opposes further offshore oil drilling, takes a libertarian stance on abortion rights and wouldn’t shut down the government over funding for Planned Parenthood and, perhaps most politically perilous of all, believes – gasp – in actually governing...

...Bottom Line: Duf Sundheim is a thinking person’s Republican. We’re just not sure there’s a thinking person’s party out there on his side of the aisle.

Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Posted: Mon Sep 14, 2015 5:54 pm
by LordMortis
I'd like to know more about his economic and foreign conservatism. He passes, can you send him here, please?

Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Posted: Mon Sep 14, 2015 6:40 pm
by Pyperkub
LordMortis wrote:I'd like to know more about his economic and foreign conservatism. He passes, can you send him here, please?
Some tidbits from the article:
He wouldn’t immediately repeal Obamacare, for example, but he’d like to replace it with a system based on medical care, not medical insurance controlled by Washington.

His biggest concern is that the economic system is not working for average, working Americans – “people with full-time jobs, stagnant wages and rising costs” who are being squeezed by a system that doesn’t work for them.

He’d like to resurrect the community bank system, make it easier for small businesses to depreciate capital equipment and “encourage job growth in the U.S.” (although exactly how he’d do that is still rather fuzzy). Of one thing he’s certain: “The middle class is being hollowed out.” And he’d be dedicated to reversing that.

He says he’s for clean air and water, but he also argues that some environmental regulations go too far (like EPA regulations on truck emissions, for example) and that the feds could do more to help streamline development of manufacturing plants and keep gasoline taxes from overwhelming small businesses.

Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Posted: Thu Sep 17, 2015 1:18 pm
by Jaymann
I have been wondering why, if the Republicans can't come up with a decent presidential candidate and their ideology is bankrupt, do they control both houses of Congress? I think what voters hear is similar to what a dog hears when it's owner is speaking:

"Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah blah blah, blah blah, lower taxes, blah blah blah, blah, blah, blah."

Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Posted: Thu Sep 17, 2015 1:28 pm
by Zarathud
Gerrymandering districts based on demographics makes for uncontested elections. All you have to do is avoid a primary contest.

Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Posted: Thu Sep 17, 2015 3:08 pm
by Kraken
Zarathud wrote:Gerrymandering districts based on demographics makes for uncontested elections. All you have to do is avoid a primary contest.
That explains why the House is a lock until at least 2022, after the next census. It doesn't explain statewide Senate elections. For that, you have to invoke Democratic voters who only turn out for presidential elections; by that reasoning, the Senate will flip in '16.

Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Posted: Thu Sep 17, 2015 3:22 pm
by Pyperkub
Kraken wrote:
Zarathud wrote:Gerrymandering districts based on demographics makes for uncontested elections. All you have to do is avoid a primary contest.
That explains why the House is a lock until at least 2022, after the next census. It doesn't explain statewide Senate elections. For that, you have to invoke Democratic voters who only turn out for presidential elections; by that reasoning, the Senate will flip in '16.
Also that all of the Democrats from Red States who swept in on Obama's Coattails in '08 didn't hold in '14 - which was primarily a Red State Senate year. If Obama had been a bit more of salesman and not a policy President, maybe the Democrats don't lose as many - but he's more the type to go quietly about his business, and he really needed to do a better job of selling what he was doing on the job (in addition to actually doing it).

If you look back to '08, he has accomplished an awful lot of what he said he would set out to accomplish, despite the complete lack of cooperation from across the aisle.

Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Posted: Thu Sep 17, 2015 3:29 pm
by Pyperkub
Back to the 21st Century GOP reaping what it has sown:
Today the Republican Party has two choices before it: It can either reform itself, or fracture and surrender to the Troll Party.

Let me explain what I mean. The Troll Party’s central characteristic is an ever tightening spiral of self-reinforcing and self-referential purity tests that makes communicating with anyone beyond the febrile and furious a nearly impossible task. The people pushing for this transformation aren’t a majority yet, but when a virus infects the body politic, its minuscule size belies its massive impact.

That’s what is happening inside the GOP, and why the disease vector, in the form of Donald Trump, puts the entire conservative movement at risk of being hijacked and destroyed by a bellowing billionaire with poor impulse control and a profoundly superficial understanding of the world. The Troll Party puts nationalist, anti-establishment bluster before the tenets of our constitutional republic.

So who comprises the Troll Party? Some of them are a distaff faction of the Tea Party, angry that the leadership in Washington doesn’t pursue their agenda with the bloody-mindedness and tempo they demand. Many are angry that the GOP lost to Barack Obama twice and, in their minds, allowed through action or inaction a set of economic, social, and cultural changes that make them feel powerless. ..

...Others are reality television viewers who don’t get the artifice and irony, even after almost two decades of the form. Some are walking, talking comments sections of the fever swamp sites. Some are your aunt or mom, sending the long, rambling chain emails about Obama’s birth certificate with multiple forwards, fonts, colors, and glittery eagle gifs. Some pose as strict Constitutionalists, loyal unto death to the founders, except when Trump is talking.

Some of the dregs of the creepier neighborhoods of Reddit, Voat, and 4chan have joined for the lulz. The Troll Party looks at the kooks, the overt white supremacists (oh, pardon me, “race realists”), neo-Nazis, flaming anti-Semites, birthers, truthers, Jade Helmers, chemtrailers, and assorted other conspiracy whackjobs in their midst and shrugs it off with a grin.

The same people who viewed Obama’s long associations with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers or the endorsement of his candidacy by assorted Panthers, commies, cranks, and graying 1960s revolutionaries as disqualifiers for holding the presidency are now largely silent as David Duke and company board the Trump Train...

...The contagion hasn’t infected the entire GOP, not by a long shot. But it’s spreading. The traditional elements of limited-government fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, and defense hawks are still there. But the Troll Party screams louder, and its members have reached a point where they are more than content to watch the world burn around them if they don’t get their way, right this minute...

...It’s pointless to try to explain to Troll Party members that they’re blind to the tensions and realities of how the world, humanity, and Washington actually function. It’s impossible to explain to them that politics is transactional. That’s not a defense of Washington as it is but a description of its dysfunction. They ascribe Washington’s nature not to their own contradictory desires (“Keep the Government’s Hands Off My Medicare!”) but to conspiracy and contempt...

...The shift is evident online and on conservative radio. Hosts increasingly aren’t drawing an ideological contrast with the Democrats or liberals, even though they’re in the most target-rich environment of the last decade. They’ve taken to whipping the Troll Party into a daily frenzy, driving home the message over and over that somewhere there is an establishment of people in their own ideological and political movement or party who hate them and seek to destroy them.
There is FAR too much truth in this article.

Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Posted: Mon Oct 12, 2015 5:28 pm
by Holman
A pair of amazing charts comparing the ideological make-up of the House of Representatives in 1967 and today.

Linked from Daily Kos, which is obviously a liberal site, but the numbers tell their own story.

First the GOP:

Enlarge Image

And now the Dems:

Enlarge Image

And it should be remembered that the Democrats of the late 1960s were a mixed party with many Southern conservatives still on board. The Dems "became more liberal" simply by jettisoning their own right wing.
That's what we see in the dramatic figure above: The most liberal Republicans of today occupy the same ideological space as the most conservative Republicans of the 1960s.
Put another way, if Democrats had lurched as far to the left as Republicans have to the right, Bernie Sanders would have been more conservative than almost the entire Democratic Party back when he was serving in the House.

Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2015 12:34 am
by Defiant

Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Posted: Fri Oct 23, 2015 6:02 pm
by Pyperkub
A pretty bad 24 hours for the 21st Century GOP Witch hunts. Both Benghazi! and the IRS investigations are shown to be complete duds in terms of scandal! and shown to be complete political witch hunts.

Maybe, along with the Speaker mess, the GOP is at a turning point where an increase in their sanity stats are possible...

Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Posted: Fri Oct 23, 2015 6:05 pm
by Max Peck
Pyperkub wrote:A pretty bad 24 hours for the 21st Century GOP Witch hunts. Both Benghazi! and the IRS investigations are shown to be complete duds in terms of scandal! and shown to be complete political witch hunts.

Maybe, along with the Speaker mess, the GOP is at a turning point where an increase in their sanity stats are possible...
Or... It just may be the opportune moment to double down.

Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Posted: Fri Oct 23, 2015 6:50 pm
by Zarathud
I expect Carson will surge on the momentum of OUTRAGE!

Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Posted: Fri Oct 23, 2015 9:33 pm
by Holman
Pyperkub wrote:Maybe, along with the Speaker mess, the GOP is at a turning point where an increase in their sanity stats are possible...
More likely they are riding this train all the way to R'lyeh.

Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Posted: Fri Oct 23, 2015 10:34 pm
by Kraken
And yet nearly half of Americans keep voting for them. I don't know if that's a bigger indictment of the electorate or the D Party.

When you live in a declining empire, maybe crazy is the way to go.

Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Posted: Fri Oct 23, 2015 10:52 pm
by Max Peck
Kraken wrote:And yet nearly half of Americans keep voting for them. I don't know if that's a bigger indictment of the electorate or the D Party.

When you live in a declining empire, maybe crazy is the way to go.
"The people are never wrong." - S. Harper

Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Posted: Fri Oct 23, 2015 11:06 pm
by Rip
Kraken wrote:And yet nearly half of Americans keep voting for them. I don't know if that's a bigger indictment of the electorate or the D Party.

When you live in a declining empire, maybe crazy is the way to go.
It is a strategic move. Swerve towards anarchy and since only crazy right wingers have kept their weapons they take over.

:ninja:

Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Posted: Sat Oct 24, 2015 12:59 am
by Pyperkub
Hmm - the problem isn't even just the Freedom Caucus. 538 breaks it down:
House GOP factions in 2015

51 “Dependables”: voted with leadership all five times
39 “Allies”: voted with leadership four of five times
51 “Helpers”: voted with leadership three of five times
53 “Skeptics”: voted with leadership two of five times
25 “Agitators”: voted with leadership one of five times
11 “Rebels”: voted with leadership zero of five times

Note: 17 Republicans didn’t cast enough votes to be counted in one of the above groups.

Most House Republicans aren’t simply “establishment” backers or “tea party” rebels. In fact, the plurality in the middle belongs to what The New York Times has dubbed the “Vote No, Hope Yes” caucus. These Republicans vote strategically with the leadership just enough of the time to jockey for plum committee assignments, but they voted against Boehner enough to shield themselves from a tea party primary back home.

Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Posted: Sat Oct 24, 2015 2:50 am
by Alefroth
Pyperkub wrote:Hmm - the problem isn't even just the Freedom Caucus. 538 breaks it down:
House GOP factions in 2015

51 “Dependables”: voted with leadership all five times
39 “Allies”: voted with leadership four of five times
51 “Helpers”: voted with leadership three of five times
53 “Skeptics”: voted with leadership two of five times
25 “Agitators”: voted with leadership one of five times
11 “Rebels”: voted with leadership zero of five times

Note: 17 Republicans didn’t cast enough votes to be counted in one of the above groups.

Most House Republicans aren’t simply “establishment” backers or “tea party” rebels. In fact, the plurality in the middle belongs to what The New York Times has dubbed the “Vote No, Hope Yes” caucus. These Republicans vote strategically with the leadership just enough of the time to jockey for plum committee assignments, but they voted against Boehner enough to shield themselves from a tea party primary back home.
ftfy

Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Posted: Sat Oct 24, 2015 10:56 am
by Little Raven
I've been so trained by the internet that I read that 3 times looking for the 'fix' before I found it.

It never occurred to me that you were actually just fixing something.

Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Posted: Sat Oct 24, 2015 12:41 pm
by Alefroth
:ninja:

Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Posted: Sat Oct 24, 2015 8:23 pm
by Grifman
Funny but pathetic story today in the WSJ. Paul Ryan was meeting with some Republican lawmakers to try and convince them to support to Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal. These lawmakers told him they were against it because they thought it was too easy on China. Ryan had to explain to them that China was not part of the pact :doh: :grund:

Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Posted: Sun Oct 25, 2015 11:11 am
by LordMortis
Grifman wrote:Funny but pathetic story today in the WSJ. Paul Ryan was meeting with some Republican lawmakers to try and convince them to support to Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal. These lawmakers told him they were against it because they thought it was too easy on China. Ryan had to explain to them that China was not part of the pact :doh: :grund:
Paul Ryan is either ignorant of what the TPP is doing or he is obfuscating. The TPP will allow member countries to label things as originating in their countries while allowing them to be mostly build in non member countries.

We won't know the greater details until there is a large public review but here is an example in my industry:

http://www.strtrade.com/news-publicatio ... 91515.html

Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Posted: Sun Oct 25, 2015 11:19 am
by RunningMn9
LordMortis wrote:Paul Ryan is either ignorant of what the TPP is doing or he is obfuscating.
Or he knows that the TPP can't be harder on China, because China is not a member of the TPP. I suppose you could suggest that the agreement could be harder on member countries in their dealings with China - but then there wouldn't be a TPP. And while that might be fantastic for LM, not having a TPP is probably not one of the stated goals of the 12 nations involved in negotiating the TPP.

Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Posted: Sun Oct 25, 2015 11:33 am
by LordMortis
RunningMn9 wrote:Or he knows that the TPP can't be harder on China, because China is not a member of the TPP. I suppose you could suggest that the agreement could be harder on member countries in their dealings with China - but then there wouldn't be a TPP. And while that might be fantastic for LM, not having a TPP is probably not one of the stated goals of the 12 nations involved in negotiating the TPP.
If by LM, you mean the production of things in the US in an attempt to slow the gap between labor and children of the trust fund, um, yep, I guess?

Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Posted: Sun Oct 25, 2015 12:08 pm
by Max Peck
What are the implications if any of the 12 countries fails to ratify the TPP? Would it still go into effect, just with fewer members, or it mean more rounds of negotiations? My guess would be that it depends on the country in question; the impact of losing the USA would be something different from losing Canada, for instance. With our new government, ratification here is not a given. The agreement was reached just prior to the election, and neither Trudeau nor Mulcair were briefed on it at the time. Trudeau has stated that he is pro-trade, but all that means is that he favours the idea of a trade pact in principle, but not necessarily the terms of this one. This puts us in the strange, if not unique, position of having a deal negotiated by one party that will need to be ratified by a different party with (on the surface, at least) a very different ideological position. It should be interesting to see just how that plays out here, even if it doesn't affect the bigger picture all that much in the end.

Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Posted: Sun Oct 25, 2015 2:48 pm
by RunningMn9
LordMortis wrote:If by LM, you mean the production of things in the US in an attempt to slow the gap between labor and children of the trust fund, um, yep, I guess?
By LM, I mean you and the line of propaganda (true or false) that you've been fed.

My point is simply that those that are trying to negotiate the TPP obviously aren't going to try to not negotiate the TPP.

Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Posted: Mon Oct 26, 2015 7:32 am
by malchior
Pyperkub wrote:Maybe, along with the Speaker mess, the GOP is at a turning point where an increase in their sanity stats are possible...
We'll see...we can only hope but meanwhile on the other side of Hazard County.

I particularly love the call to have a Speaker from outside Congress. Everyone in Washington is ... from Washington ... so bring in someone from outside of Washington ... because they won't be from Washington. :grund: In my mind. I don't think that is a nut we want to crack. If you really pursue it to an *very unlikely* end Congress could pick the President without a single vote being cast for that person.

Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2016 11:41 am
by Defiant
This thread probably deserves a resurrection, given the likelihood of a Trump candidacy (and the possibility of a realignment that's been raised by FiveThirtyEight), but I'm bumping it to post this article by a former Republican governor and senator.

This Congress, which will most likely be the last Republican Congress for some time, needs to use its majorities to lay down significant conservative policy markers.

If it does so correctly, a couple of these proposals might even make it to the president’s desk. There they will be vetoed, but at least they will have been put on the record — and into prominent public view.

These markers will also give Republicans a basis for rebuilding the party on strong, clear policies in the “post-Donald” or “post-Ted” period of resurrection.