GOP Is Still Moving To The Right

[Orange_Juice]

LOL, the fanatics are still pulling this political party to the far right on government, God and guns. Republican failure begets more failure.

Great article on this:

National Journal Magazine - Self-Destructive Conservatism

One can look at the American electorate like a football field. Most voters are fairly centrist, sitting between the 35-yard lines. Democrats are on the left end of the field; Republicans on the right. The theoretical center for each party is roughly the 25-yard line on its side.

The Republican Party dropped from parity in terms of party identification four years ago and now is about 8 percentage points below the Democratic Party. The GOP has narrowed its base and moved to the right. The defections from the GOP have been among its least conservative members. Thus, the center of the Republican Party has moved to the right, between the 15- and 20-yard lines.

This shift means that GOP primaries have become more conservative, putting pressure on incumbents to chart a more rightward course than they would otherwise take. And it means that GOP primaries, particularly in open-seat races, will be even more likely than in the past to nominate ideologues. The party's contraction and rightward movement have become self-perpetuating, and will continue to be until something breaks the cycle.

At a time when Republicans should be starting to think about how they can expand their party to reclaim those who abandoned it, the party is instead lurching ever more to the right, exacerbating its problems. Many people who watched the recent debate between contenders for the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee came away thinking that the only memorable moments were when each candidate expressed love and devotion for Ronald Reagan and when all but one bragged about how many guns they own. Not to belittle the importance of Reagan's iconic status or the Second Amendment, but when the only takeaways are about the importance of a political figure who last won an election a quarter-century ago and how big a person's arsenal is, these guys are not hot prospects to chair the GOP's Welcome Wagon, much less to lead the party out of its wilderness.

 

[Truthmatters]

The major base they have left is the party of the stupid. They dont want any information they have made up their minds. They live in a fantasy land and will work hard to stay that way no matter what. The Rs are screwed. They were screwed even before they courted these people. They now cant get elected with them or without them.

 

[Orange_Juice]

The major base they have left is the party of the stupid. They dont want any information they have made up their minds. They live in a fantasy land and will work hard to stay that way no matter what. The Rs are screwed. They were screwed even before they courted these people. They now cant get elected with them or without them.

True that!

 

[HelloDollyLlama]

The GOP will have a civil war – with no guarantee it will end happily, or end at all.

For twenty years the leadership of the GOP has deliberately tried to destroy moderates and centrists in both parties, from Clinton to Jim Jeffords, to make the political center a scorched no-man’s-land. The aim was to force America to choose between the far right and the far left, in the hope that America would always choose the far right. They steered the national debate toward wedge issues and so forth. They tried to drive Obama, or at least Obama’s image, way to the left, screaming “socialist” at him for weeks.

Conservatives had their big powwow in Virginia to discuss the future of the GOP. They determined that the GOP lost the election because they didn’t stick to their far-right principles. They refuse to believe that Palin drove some voters away from the GOP. They were actually glad that some moderate Republicans lost. They declared that the moderate wing of the GOP is dead: they will not tolerate candidates who are “squishy” on conservative principles and will turn their backs on moderates. They will only support people who want fiscal restraint (i.e. Bush’s tax cuts), opposition to abortion, tough border security and a strong national defense. Others like Michael Reagan have echoed the sentiment: the moderates are not real Republicans, and they betrayed the cause.

The party moderates want desperately to send the backward racist loons on their march, behind T. Rex and the dodo, on the path to extinction. They want them stuffed, mounted, and displayed in the Smithsonian along with their intellectual equals in the Cro-Magnon family. They know that the GOP can only win national elections by expanding their numbers with centrists and independents. But how do they do it? The rightwing loons run the party regardless of who is chosen as RNC chair, and they control the congressional caucuses, the donors, the think tanks. By driving the less-hardy moderates out of the tent, they have improved their numerical advantage over the moderates, ensuring that the centrists can neither take over the party power structure, nor win any battles on issues, nor recruit more moderates into the party to expand the numbers of the centrists. Seldom have the GOP moderates even won a hearing, let alone a battle, on Capitol Hill, or anywhere else – the far right even forced McCain to go to the right for his VP pick, leading to the fatal choice of Palin. All they can hope for, is for younger voters to push aside the hardliners in the next decade or two.

Up and coming Republican leaders – potential RNC chairs and presidential candidates – are trying to have their cake and eat it too. We embrace both tradition and reform, we want both the right and the center, etc. McCain tried that and failed.

The overwhelming message from the GOP is that America still wants their message. The conservatives say

“X percent of America is conservative and Y percent are moderate,
so X+ Y = the center/right America”.

But that assumes that the moderates agree with the right. They don’t. Moderates went for Obama by more than twenty points. Moderates and liberals agree on homosexuality and on diplomacy, and on values, and on almost all issues, except the quest for small government – ironically because Republicans showed the danger of big government. But moderates do want effective government.

One poll showed that most voters said the Republicans lost due to excessive conservatism, but the Republicans themselves, by a 17-point margin, thought they weren’t conservative enough.

The gap between the far right and the rest of the country is so wide that McCain was unable to bridge the gap with his VP choice: his staff told him that choosing a moderate – who could have helped him win -- would cause a riot at the convention and among the GOP base. Thus, Sarah Palin.

It sounds as though the narrative is hardening: GOP principles are good; Bush and McCain strayed from them. This works in a number of ways: they try to stick to the fiscal message which is the only thing they have that might sell, and they steer the blame to two guys nobody likes much anyway. And they don‘t have to admit any mistakes.

All American presidential campaigns are won and lost on the same battlefield: the political center. Win the moderates and centrists and go straight to the White House. Obama is staking out the center for himself. If the GOP insists on adhering to its far-right standard, they are simply surrendering that battlefield and ensuring more losses.

Obama is a centrist who voted with Bush half the time and supports tax cuts, FISA, hunting down bin Laden, free-market economics, merit pay to separate good teachers from bad ones, nuclear power, more faith-based programs, an effort to cut government waste, more troops for Afghanistan, strong support for Israel, possible military action against Iran, the right to bear arms, the death penalty, outreach to evangelicals, and the Patriot Act, which he voted for twice. He is rock solid on family values.

Obama can stitch the center and left together on environmental law and consumer regulation, health care, energy independence, education, and infrastructure. He could even go after conservatives with bills that moderate Republicans can support or have supported, on things like children’s health care and with executive actions on issues such as greenhouse emissions. There will also be a temptation to get on the neocon scoreboard by blowing things up in a place like Iran or Korea.

 

[Toro]

The Small Tent Republicans are going to spend years in the wilderness if they keep moving further to the right.

 

[garyd]

That would be a good thing as those who pass for moderates in most of the country are people who simply vote their current economic plight and if that isn't better in 2010 look out Dems your resurgence will have gone the way of the Dodo - a far more appropriate symbol for the leftist hacks that currently control your party in any case.

You don't get 8 years of continuing economic decline to fix it this time, you'll get maybe 2. You can'ttax and spend your way to prosperity it just doean't work that way

You going to war with the chinese if they quit funding out debt? Your idiot leadership is walking you the wrong way down the yellow brick road and you are too damn dumb to see it.

 

[HelloDollyLlama]

That would be a good thing as those who pass for moderates in most of the country are people who simply vote their current economic plight and if that isn't better in 2010 look out Dems your resurgence will have gone the way of the Dodo - a far more appropriate symbol for the leftist hacks that currently control your party in any case.

You don't get 8 years of continuing economic decline to fix it this time, you'll get maybe 2. You can'ttax and spend your way to prosperity it just doean't work that way

You going to war with the chinese if they quit funding out debt? Your idiot leadership is walking you the wrong way down the yellow brick road and you are too damn dumb to see it.

Your assertions about moderates are baseless.

Your predictions about 2010 are not supported by the polling data -- the American people know it will take Obama years to clearn up Bush's mess and they are willing to wait.

Your tax-and-spend assertions -- more GOP agitprop crap.


As for your views on China, they're a tad, um, uncomplicated. There is a whole lot going on, all at once.

China is undergoing a wave of unrest – millions of people involved in protests. With factories closing across the Pearl Delta, the engine of the Chinese economy, watch for trouble there. Party hardliners don’t want any more reform – they fear loss of control. They cannot allow free speech, free media, freedom of association, elections, unions -- protests would skyrocket. China has 250 million internet users and 600 million cellphones, more dangers for the party. Can the Party reinvent itself as it did after Mao? Do these clowns have that much imagination?

The party is trying to take credit for China’s economic progress, when in fact they are spectators – or rather parasites – to the process. Corruption is preventing a lot of necessary institutions from working. The broken legal system abuses the powerless and the politically unpopular, and allows counterfeit and unsafe products. There is little modern accounting, and there are billions in non-performing loans on the streets. For all its embrace of central planning, government knows nothing of sensible investment and development, avoiding excess capacity and so forth. There is virtually no oversight of local governors or businesses, particularly in rural areas. Parasitic, corrupt and inefficient state-owned enterprises distort the market and drain financing.

The recession is pounding the Chinese economy. Debt-ridden firms are closing. They need millions of new jobs each year, and cannot keep up; unemployment is spiking. The growth sustained by the flow of foreign firms and capital to China has slowed. They have little economic innovation. Western China is poor and getting poorer. Water pollution is epidemic.

China has no pension policy and shaky property rights, so the Chinese already save instead of spending, to protect themselves. Add the one-child-per-family policy, and parents, who need a son to take care of them in their old age, are killing or abandoning their daughters, thus creating demographic chaos for the next generation.

Their problems will become our problems. Even before the current crisis, America was at risk because we borrow billions of dollars from the Chinese; we are vulnerable to blackmail. But now they need the money for their own problems.

Government will need to spend domestically now, not lend to us (or to other potential international borrowers like the IMF). China has failed to turn workers into consumers, so there will be little market for imported goods. The Chinese insist on keeping their currency weak, so the trade imbalance continues to flow outward from China to the world. A protectionist war may ensue. Meanwhile their endless series of coal plants is exacerbating the carbon problem.

China thirsts for global respect, after two centuries of humiliations. We want them to be players at the big table so they don’t go off and create mischief (i.e. nuclear technology to Iran and Korea), but we don’t want them impeding progress in solving problems. If needed, we can form an anti-Chinese alliance.

China is retooling its military doctrine to fight us, and we need to do likewise. One early advantage for us is our naval installations at either end of the Straits of Malacca, which brings China most of its oil. China is sharpening up its naval capabilities – they have a base on Hainan Island and good ties with countries that have good basing sites – but they are still way behind. They are developing counter-force weapons, buying submarines, and seeking energy sources that do not transit the Strait. Happily, neither side is looking for a change in the status quo ante on Taiwan; China will not risk the embarrassment of taking on the U.S. in Taiwan and losing.


China takes the long view, and they know they will gain little by "going nuclear" on the finance issue. They know there are many surprises coming down the pike in the next few years, and they are likely to need our help in a number of them, even as we squabble on everything from Taiwan to carbon -- they don't want to slam doors needlessly.


Glad I could help!

 

[garyd]

Polls are snap shots. What is true now will almost certainly not be in two years. If unemployment rates are above ten percent in 2010 the Dems are gone.

And my views on China are very complex and what I posted had absolutely nothing to do with them. They had to do with the fact that not only could China refuse to continue to fund our Debt if its 'trillions a year for the forseeable future' they simply might not be able to. Especially if Obama gets all protectionist on us as the big labor types want him to.

One last thing we aren't moving further to the right you are merely falling over the left hand rail and it appears to you that we are moving further to the right when in point of fact we are right where we have always been on every issue.

 

[Toro]

Your predictions about 2010 are not supported by the polling data -- the American people know it will take Obama years to clearn up Bush's mess and they are willing to wait.

2010 may turn that way if the Democrats are as astonishingly incompetent in Congress as the GOP were.

I give it a 50/50 chance.

 

[HelloDollyLlama]

Polls are snap shots. What is true now will almost certainly not be in two years. If unemployment rates are above ten percent in 2010 the Dems are gone.

And my views on China are very complex and what I posted had absolutely nothing to do with them. They had to do with the fact that not only could China refuse to continue to fund our Debt if its 'trillions a year for the forseeable future' they simply might not be able to. Especially if Obama gets all protectionist on us as the big labor types want him to.

Polls are snapshots? ...Another bulletin from the denial-based community.

I am perfectly willing to believe that you have complex views on China....Well, not really.

Bush has put us in a situation which is so disastrous that the China financing barely makes the top ten of our problems.

And Obama is not going to lead us back into protectionism. And you're exaggerating the power of the unions.

 

[HelloDollyLlama]

2010 may turn that way if the Democrats are as astonishingly incompetent in Congress as the GOP were.

I give it a 50/50 chance.

Pelosi has learned to be a competent leader. Reid -- the jury is still out.

 

[Toro]

Pelosi has learned to be a competent leader. Reid -- the jury is still out.

I watched the debates on the financial services bill and I was appalled at the way Pelosi acted. At a time when the country needed statesmanship, she resorted to crass partisanship. So I'll disagree with you there.

 

[WillowTree]

Pelosi has learned to be a competent leader. Reid -- the jury is still out.

 

[HelloDollyLlama]

I watched the debates on the financial services bill and I was appalled at the way Pelosi acted. At a time when the country needed statesmanship, she resorted to crass partisanship. So I'll disagree with you there.

If Pelosi was a crass partisan, Bush would have been impeached and removed by now.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

LOL, the fanatics are still pulling this political party to the far right on government, God and guns. Republican failure begets more failure.

Great article on this:

National Journal Magazine - Self-Destructive Conservatism

More importantly to me is that the article is written by Charlie Cook ::: ::::: Charlie, is no light weight. :::::::

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

If Pelosi was a crass partisan, Bush would have been impeached and removed by now.

Pelosi is partisan, but she is not an ideological wingnut. Pelosi comes from a family of old school politics where practicality and partisanship do not equal selling out. Politics is the art of compromise and even partisans compromise if they want anything to get done. When one become an ideological or party wingunt ala Tom Delay, you get what the GOP got in a few short years 2006/2008...a clean sweep. Watch the next election to see if the past two are bell weather years for Rove & Bush's*permanent GOP majority.

 

[Toro]

If Pelosi was a crass partisan, Bush would have been impeached and removed by now.

If Pelosi wasn't a crass partisan, she wouldn't have used her final speech on the day the first TARP bill was defeated to needlessly go through a long laundry list of why Bush had been so bad over the past eight years.

That was brutal.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

If Pelosi wasn't a crass partisan, she wouldn't have used her final speech on the day the first TARP bill was defeated to needlessly go through a long laundry list of why Bush had been so bad over the past eight years.

That was brutal.

What is wrong with partisanship? In moderation, partisanship and compromise are what makes a democracy work.

 

[Toro]

What is wrong with partisanship? In moderation, partisanship and compromise are what makes a democracy work.

There are times for statesmanship and times for partisanship. That was a time for statesmanship.

 

[Red Dawn]

This shift means that GOP primaries have become more conservative, putting pressure on incumbents to chart a more rightward course than they would otherwise take. And it means that GOP primaries, particularly in open-seat races, will be even more likely than in the past to nominate ideologues. The party's contraction and rightward movement have become self-perpetuating, and will continue to be until something breaks the cycle.

I think he's right. Every single member of the GOP base that posts on message boards I've seen, say their party has to become more rightwing, more conservative. That's fucking awesome.

They've become the party of cranky old white men yelling at the kids to get off their lawn. Let's face it, they never really had anything more than God, guns, gays and welfare queens. Maybe if we ever get back to a period of peace and prosperity people can indulge in that again.