What did the Republicans do wrong?
 

So what changes do you think the Republicans need to make in order to compete again in the next election?

Here is my list as someone who is independent but voted for Obama. What do you think, would you add anything or change anything?

1. Stop all of the negative campaigning. Or at least limit it. I need to know what the candidate will do instead of only what is wrong with the other person.

2. Need to appeal to young people. They need to figure out how they can win people like me. I had no problem with McCain's age, but I didn't think that he would be able to change things like health care, censorship laws, and energy policies.

3. Immigration. Maybe it's because McCain is from Arizona and he would have a hard time getting elected in his state if he wanted to reform immigration too severely. But we need to know who is coming into this country, and actually let good hard working, smart & productive people in. From all over the world, not just one country.

4. They need to get their approval numbers up. And it's going to be tough unless the Democrats fail and have even lower approval numbers.

5. I don't care about gay marriage. I'm sorry. As long as two people can live together in the same home and be together, it doesn't affect my life. But making laws to take away other people's life choices won't win my vote.

6. Environment. Teddy Roosevelt set aside large areas for national parks and conservation of natural resources. They need to come to the middle on recycling programs (why throw away things when a company can make money recycling), drilling (a lot of jobs can be made switching cars and homes over to non-oil energy), and low emission power plants (new jobs, cleaner air). I would rather see thousands of Americans working good jobs like these than to save a few bucks a month on my electric bill.

7. Entrepreneurship and taxes. This is the American dream and they tried to use Joe the Plummer, but the RNC/McCain needed to make a 30 minute on-line video showing how there are middle class Americans who followed their dream and started a business and are now making lots of money. But also show the people how lower taxes keeps the doors open and allows them to employ more people.

8. International Relations. The war is an issue, but it's not just that. Trade partnerships and less regulations have improved relationships and quality of life in many countries. There has to be some example of a previously poor country now being able to afford American products, isn't there?

9. Big spending. When they were in power, they didn't raise taxes, but they just shifted it to the deficient. If the Republicans want to win, they will need to figure out a way to balance the budget and keep it balanced even in wartime and depressions. Smaller government programs aren't all bad, they need to show how some agencies are doing more with less money. Now a large portion of my tax money goes to pay the interest on the debt and can't be used constructively.

10. Urban and the North areas. They need to figure out how to appeal to these areas. The current message isn't working for millions of Americans.

One more thing:
http://www.foxnews.com/images/299305...alin_sarah.jpg

I think you've got some good ideas there.
If you were curious about trade examples, you could do some stories on middle class americans starting businesses in Colombia and China and consumer ability to now purchase cheap (low quality) and/or inexpensive (but still high quality) commodities.
I think they might pick some voters up if they actually held true to the idea of limited government, which would necessitate them not harping on abortion and/or gay marriage and/or school prayer. But I don't know whether the pickups would offset the losses.

I'd just rather see some logical coherence in their platform. I don't agree with it, but maybe that'll change when I'm 80 rofl.

http://cache.boston.com/resize/bonza..._2652/539w.jpg

Don't forget this jackass.

The whoring of Joe The Plumber was by far the most disingenuous and exploitative aspect of their entire campaign.

Actually, I think she was the only thing they did right. She was a breath of fresh air into a base that felt hopeless.

To answer the OP, I think they abandoned the far right wing, and even more so abandoned their conservative base. They nominated the most liberal Republican possible. It was funny to see conservative sites practically begging the libertarians and Ron Paul crowd to suck it up and vote Mccain. I bet more Ron Paul people voted for Obama than Mccain, but that's just a guess.

The conservative politicians followed in the footsteps of Bush far too long to jump ship 8 years later. I don't think voters forgot it even as the candidates tried to distance themselves from him. That was by far their biggest failure.

Yeah, I think that pretty much sums it up....

That being said, I don't think Senator McCain lost so much as Senator Obama won. If that makes sense....

She helped to rally the base, but the independents? They were inundated with SNL and gaff after gaff. Her interviews undoubtedly scared a lot of people that were interested in learning what she was all about. Tina Fey was the echo that was louder than the voice, too.

Nominate a socialist in his 40's. If they can do that, they're golden.

ASU2003, I like what you wrote. Balanced and thoughtful, and I feel you sincerely are looking for
answers. Here's my two cents;
-Adherence to their own standards personal conduct. Walk the walk before the talking of the talking.
-You mentioned a few of their stereotypes that should be changed. How about the perception that
they are in the hip pocket of big business. One way they could change that is to promote campaign
finance reform. Politicians have so many favours they owe by the time that they reach office that they
are no longer able to operate efficiently, or honestly.
-Actually helping the government in power to effectively rule with options to proposed legislation,
not just nay-saying.

Just a few ideas....

They need to go back to being true republicans, small government, giving more power to the states, conservative spending, not policing the world. You know, all the stuff they used to stand for before they sold their souls to the far evangelical right and the oil companies. This facade of being for small government and conservative spending doesn't work when you spend well outside of your means and fight ridiculous wars.

what did the republicans do wrong in the context of the mc-cain campaign?
depends on what you thought a good outcome was: as it turned out, they did everything right.

actually, many of the problems the campaign faced were not exactly of their own making--boxed in by the coalition and language that enabled them to exercise power since the reagan period; boxed in by the actions of the bush administration and all the more by the loss of traction that the bush-brand experienced after 2005; boxed in at the last minute by the consequences of the economic ideology that the campaign had no choice but retain because of the first problem...

the campaign itself went to hell early. once mc-cain had the nomination, he should have run to his actual political positions rather than becoming a pantomime hard rightwinger. once the schmidt squad took over, it seemed like Mister Leadership was being bossed around by his own campaign team. palin may have made sense had mc-cain himself been running more centre, but he wasn't. the decision to run at the far right base indicated that the campaign imagined that, in the end, the election would come down to machine vs machine and that they could get the bodies out. this was an obvious miscalculation.

the financial situation did not help, but the campaign managed to set up a photo op in the context of which mc-cain came off as the kind of "leader" who has no particular ideas but who feels the need to lurch into situation after situation and REACT. it's a sad state of affairs they engineered.

running an amateur copy of a rove campaign was stupid. it seems to me that the explanation for that lay in the language the conservative coalition used to talk to itself, the old conservative identity politics thing, which meant (in tandem with everything else) that the campaign did not seem to have any actual ideas to offer, merely an endless positioning game (NOT ONE OF US, NOT ONE OF US)--you know the drill---obama is not a citizen (NOT ONE OF US), he's a "socialist" (NOT ONE OF US), a "terrorist" (NOT ONE OF US)---you can't run a campaign based on this level of stupidity and imagine that you're talking to anyone but the base. this because these are not arguments--they're about drawing a line around the base, encouraging the base to draw a line around itself. this is inside. this is outside. that is not an argument. any territorial animal does that.

but none of this is anything "wrong" in the sense that the mc-cain campaign played the shitty hand that was dealt them in a way that was entirely hamstrung by the accumulated past that conditioned the game for the right.

that's why the republicans now find themselves entering a long march across the desert.

personally, i think the right should dump the entire language of conservative identity politics and make actual arguments about their positions, appealing to what folk might think rather than appealing to some fiction as to who they are.

all in all, i'm glad i wasn't a political consultant who was hired to try to play the hand of shit the republicans had to work with.

While they may have picked the wrong guy, it is the dream that a normal person can work hard and be successful that carries a lot of weight.

I don't want to see the monetary benefits to success go away to people who are not working on improving themselves or society, but I think that is what churches should be helping out with. There needs to be a separation of church and state, but creating or expanding a AmeriCorp type organization to manage volunteers from various churches across the country to help the less fortunate would be a good smaller government step that would have a lot of impact on our communities. Look at Extreme Home Makeover edition. If on Sunday afternoon, churches invited people to volunteer in large numbers (as well as people that aren't in their congregation), they would improve their communities more than any government project with the same amount of money could do.

I didn't vote against McCain, he is a great guy and I have voted for him in the 2000 primary and wish he won in 2000. I voted the way I did because Obama ran a great positive campaign and I think he can improve this country more than what the Republican platform and past experiences have shown. But it's not to say that the Republicans are going anywhere, and the Democrats need to realize that they can't do whatever and turn their backs on the millions of people who have a different idea on how the country should be run.

No one is more sorry than I am that pedobear didn't win, but let's not pretend that "socialism" is something that can be associated with a centrist like Obama.

I don't have to pretend. Obama's political views are about as centrist as those of 99% of TFPers.

Not going to sit and argue the fact though, that time has come and gone. I'll just sit back beneath my sheet of plastic for four years, bracing for the imminent barrage of shit spattering from the fan blades.

Pedobear in 2012!

Go back to every Democratic nominee since Kennedy and see who he was. Old? Crotchety? Totally unhip?
Nope.
Everyone won because of what they were: younger(or seemingly so), in touch with their world and enthusiastic about the future; and were not: part of the good-ol'-boys club.

McCain's ideas regarding taxes and health care made more sense to me than Obama's, but when we see from whom the ideas were coming, we don't listen. You don't go after corporations for more tax money-they'll just take their toys and go offshore. Give them some incentives to hire and to expand, not tax them to death. Employer-backed healthcare? Been doing that since I first got a job and it hasn't gotten any better in all those decades. We should be able to shop around and make decisions and make it competitive to keep costs down.
But we bought the opposite views because of the vessel.
I registered Republican when I first registered because of their "less government" attitude while the Democrats wanted to pay for everything except my new car and then tax everyone accordingly.
Now we have a Republican party that wants to enter our bedrooms and be just this side of sticking tracking chips in everyone's head and Democrats who are seemingly out of touch with the way things work in the everyday business world.

And as long as the "liberal" media keeps harping about things like how much it cost to dress a candidate on one side but says nothing about the $450 plates of lobster on the other, we will always end up hearing defensive insults being hurled instead of actual discussion about what matters.
Like I said, gotta consider the vessel and the Republican party hasn't done well in picking a good one, giving everyone plenty of fodder.

The republicans were "old and stale", at the helm before and during an unpopular undeclared "war"/police action, and running things as the economy tanked due to poor business decisions.
Obama was fresh and exciting, much like the public appearance of Kennedy (minus the actual poor health/painkillers, massive voter fraud aided by dear old daddy when Nixon actually clearly won in '60, and womanising)

The Republicans could have put up the second coming and promised people free money, and they would probably have lost.

That is the legacy of Bush.

From this side of the water, it looks like the problems were:

McCain was old.
Palin was incompetent and probably corrupt (or at least prone to nepotism and undue influence), this only mattered because of McCain's age - so people have a real beief that he might die in the net 4 years.
Bush was looming over it all.
The campaign was negative.

But a lot of it was about getting the vote out. The Democrats won the popular vote in 2000 and 2004, but the republicans won the college each time - there was no way on God's earth that the Democrats were not going to mobilise and get every conceivable vote on the poll this time.

From the same side of the water, I wholeheartedly agree. I had been saying that the Democrats would win this time, since talks started up about elections again.

No way would they "win" twice, and still lose the seat. No way would the Republicans talk themselves out of the mess that they created over the past 8 years.

I started getting worried when they seemed to actually do this very thing, so I'm glad to see that it did fail in the end.


I'm not sure you've seen the last of Palin though.

The campaign seemed to be very scattered. From the debates and interviews I saw most of the points conveyed were just straight talking points. I felt Obama had talking points as well but was better able to tailor his speeches to the crowd he was in front of.

I also believe that Obama was more optimistic about the future. He told people there was work to be done but that we can do it together. The helped bolster the mood for many people during a dreary time. I think McCain could have come out being sort of like a wise old father figure. You know, "I have been around and seen what works and doesn't work. Here let me guide you to success." He came out as just wanting to keep doing the same things over and over again.

I think if what has been posted here were taken to heart 3-4 months ago, McCain stood more of a chance to win/be very close in the electoral votes.

At the end of the day, Obama ran a very positive campaign full of hope and rays of sunshine. McCain had run a very negative campaign, full of fear and harshness.

People wanted to hear something positive.

The fact that so many first time voters and young voters came out and supported Obama speaks to that.

The Republicans have been a doom and gloom party for years now - they need to change that.

Can we as a thinking group put this myth to rest? Every media empire in the United States is owned by a capitalist. Politico broke the wardrobe story, and you can pick that up at your local paper boxes... what? Oh, you can't. It's a DC web publication read mostly by wonks.

You know who still leads the country in magazine circulation? That liberal Reader's Digest with their slanted Humor In Uniform and Life In These United States.

USA Today is the largest paper, followed closely by Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal.

The fact is, owners of papers, radio, TV and net publications are in it for the money.

mythologies like the "liberal media" and "obama is a socialist" will die off slowly simply because alot of folk like them. liking this sort of thing and that sort of thing being accurate about the empirical world have little to do with each other---myths like "liberal media" and "obama the socialist" operate to make the conservative the Center of Persecution, which presupposes the Vast Importance of the Individual Conservative, who must be an object of concern for the Natas that is the non-conservative world because the Individual Conservative is at the center of this vast machinery the sole point of which is to Persecute the Conservative. so it follows that everything is an Affliction: the state is an affliction, taxation is an affliction, watching television is an affliction...when you drive you car, the image of environmentalists is an affliction...the terrorist is an affliction--everything and anything that is not you is an affliction. and you are Defined by your Martyrdom, the Extent and Quality of your Suffering at the hands of all that Persecutes you. it's all very evangelical. i remember this from back in the day--we used to be encouraged to wear this goofy wooden crosses around our necks even though we all knew that wearing them to school would bring down Persecution upon us--but that was good, because telling detailed and bitter stories about the Awful Outside World was the central activity at prayer meetings as such.

but if that's the case and the Depth of your Belonging is measured by the Magnitude of your Persecution, then conservatives *need* the rest of us. without us, they'd all be like monopolies in hayek's political economy--you know, the most influential conservative economist that none of the conservatives have read. they'd be blinded, operating in a world or projections, substituting what they want to see for what there is. wouldn't want that.

and all this is a pretty straightforward discursive structure. it's a psychological mode that's grafted into the center of conservative identity politics and fed back to you.

and it is an example of the type of being-conservative that has helped bring the republican party to the edge of the big desert, which it will now walk through for 40 days and 40 nights. you know the rest of the story. the choice out there will be whether to continue this story or to make a new one. i hope that this repetition of the same old story turns out differently. for all our sakes.

Of course, the "liberal" media is a myth...but one that enables the conservatives to rationalize the fact that their message doesnt sell.

Their first response after Tuesday's dramatic loss up and down the ballot was to proclaim that the country is still "center-right" ...another myth they continue to perpetuate in denial of the facts.


The country is "moderate" by most measures...leaning a bit more left than right on core issues (social agenda, tax fairness, health care, Iraq policy,...)

The Republican party has been hijacked by the social conservatie base at the exclusion of the other factions that once had a voice. Nearly every candidate the party ran for open seats in the House/Senate this year (and in 06) were from that base, having to pass a de facto litmus test from the evangelicals ..and most lost. The Democrats, on the other hand, mostly ran centrists rather than their own extremists on the left.

To compound their problem, the greatest accomplish of the Bush neo-cons was to further alienate mainstream moderate voters.

The party has lost it way since Gingirch was the party leader and knew how to balance the competing interests and appeal to those beyond the base.


The Repubilcan brand is in serious trouble. Pary leaders know it; they just havnt yet figured out how to respond in a way that will keep their social conservates happy while appealing again to the broader electorate.

I wish them well......not really.

damn. that sucks.
because if you just slotted them into the desert wanderer role, that means they will eventually be led into a land of prosperity and enjoy wealth eventually ending in executing The One who patiently explains they didn't understand the message...

OR

maybe it means that after they execute him that he rises again for his people, ends term limits, and sits on the throne reigning over everlasting peace and prosperity and we can all beat our swords into plow shares

that'd be cool, heh

Other than the obvious..Palin.. Palin targeted the core GOP and evangelicals which are 20-25% of the base and by catering to them alienated moderate independents and GOP voters. CNN stated that McCain's age played a big role in people's decision and placing an unknown Governor as VP did little to calm any fears.

The Dems targeted young voters and new voters, which will provide a new and growing base. The use of the internet and text messages to get volunteers active and keep them informed was part of the reason the Dems raised so much cash. Meanwhile, the McCain camp played to the masses that barely won them the elections in 2000 and 2004, and didn't even try to get the young vote.

Hm! It would be in Democrats' interest, then, to further the perpetuation of those myths and keep conservatives happily rationalizing and justifying their further failure.

There's a reason the word liberal was in quotes...don't get on my case because I used someone's idea-I don't trust ANY media when it comes to politics.
Until the Republicans can get their act together and stop promoting old fogeys and old ideals, they're going to be doomed. That or the Democrats need one major fuck-up....

there's a problem with blanket 1-d cynicism when it comes to infotainment, though--if you follow it to its logical conclusion, you exempt yourself from having to gather and sort through any. it's a thin line between healthy distrust of sources and an attitude that enables you to avoid possibilities of dissonance by limiting your intake. i say this as an experienced cynic. while you'll be hard pressed to know "what's really going on" by way of the streams of infotainment out there in the world, it's still the case that there are better and worse streams, and that it is possible to fashion your own by juxtaposing a range of them rather than accepting what any one of them feeds through itself. this is a possibility that the net opens up.

it's always seemed strange to me that folk (and here i'm not talking about you in particular, ng) transpose their habits onto the net rather than allowing the diversity of information to alter them.

Working in media, I'm as frustrated as anybody at how broken some of it is. When you see people like Nora O'Donnell glitzing it up at a DC party, and she's reporting the next day on her fellow party goers, it just seems wrong.

The other myth that we've already heard is that Pelosi willl now be the real powerbroker in Wash...ramming a liberal/socialist agenda down the throats of America.

The fact is that Pelosi's power is depdendent on those 50+ newest and most centrist Democrats elelcted in 06 and 08. They will not be rubber stamping a "liiberal" agenda, particularly those with a high price tag.

IMO, Obama will attempt to govern from the center-left.... In the first days and weeks of the new administration/congress, and while he is putting together the priority economic/financial recovery program, Obama (and Pelosi)i will also push through two bills that Bush vetoed, to get two quick victories on centrist progarms that have widespead popular and bi-partisan support - expansion of children's health (SCHIP) and stem-cell research funding.

The conservatives will scream "socialist (schip program) and "baby killers" (stem cell research)...the American public will push them aside and move on to the bigger issues without them.

If the Republicans want to play...they damn well better learn how to tone down the rhetoric and accept that compromise is their only option.

Are you assuming that people don't diversify from where they get their information?
I don't trust media re: politics the way I don't really trust them re: gossip-they feed us what is assumed we want to hear and many times resort to bandwagon leaping.
The case I pointed out earlier-Palin's wardrobe spending vs. Michelle Obama's food choices-isn't the best case but it's the example that came to me first. WSay too big a deal was made about clothes-Palin spends so much, but Obama looks great in her $100 dress. Big Whoop....
My primary media sources are newspaper and news radio because I tire of talking heads too easily. Then if I hear or see something touched on that I want to know more about, I google it.
Even suggesting that some people (not me "in particular") don't diversify where they get their information and thusly form their views, is, to me, just as narrow-minded as the suggestion itself; assuming an ignorance in others is intellectual snobbery.

that's not what he said, but whatever

that really isn't what i said, ng.

Here is the problem the Republican Party will continue to face:
These guys reprsesent the most extreme of the extemisits on the right.

If the Republican party lets Bozell, Grover Norquist and Tony Perkins set their agenda...it may appeal to the base, but who will it attract beyond that?

They never cease to amaze me with the narrow focus and "small tent" appeal that they believe is the path to victory.

Great. Assholes in my neighborhood.

Yup. Move closer to the centre where most of the voters are. Aim to get a vote from at least 2 standard deviations from the centre. E.G, make use of democratic principles to get elected. There are idiotic extremists on both the left and right, and the GOP seems to have embraced those strident, monied few on the right.

It became clear to me that the Republican party either a) is out of touch with 2008 America or b) is in denial about it and think they can "fix it".

They thought that running a campaign centered around "Country First" (that tried and true "Republicans are real Americans" angle), Joe the Plumber ("Real America is Joe Six Pack") and "Liberals are Boogeymen" would be enough.

Something that struck me during the final speeches (and pointed out by several of the analysts on CNN) was the difference between the crowds. McCain's concession speech was given to a crowd of rich white people, while Obama's acceptance speech was given to a crowd of young and old people from every race and background.

As a middle-class white American, I can say (without irony) that I'm happy that I'm not the one being pandered to anymore.

I posted this in the Palin-is-stoopid-thread, but decided to post it here as well to see what all of you think... breath of fresh air, eh? Pretty bad breath, if you ask me:

It was just four years ago that they did well on the theme of stopping guys from kissing each other. Maybe they should try that again.

i think chris rock said it best:
Bush sucked so hard that he made it impossible for a white man to get voted as president.

honestly, the reps lost me when they started the strict black/white thinking and rejecting any and all new ideas. the bashing of anything remotely intellectual is a huge turnoff and the negative campaigns/getting involved in what goes on in the bedroom and just trying to legislate morality...


these things are very costly in this country.

McCain should not have been the nominee of the party. In the primary Romney got the fiscally conservative vote and Huckabee got the religious vote - these two categories form the Republican base. McCain got everything else, including some Democrats who voted in the Republican primary. McCain is as close to being a Democrat as a Republican can get, given the choice between a real Democrat and a "Democrat light", moderates and independents picked the real Democrat. McCain also ran a character campaign, which was a mistake. I prefer to vote "for" someone or something, not against someone or something. McCain never made his case for why I should vote "for" him, he mostly made the case of why I should vote against Obama.

ace...IMO, your comments are why the Repubilcan party will continue to shrink and become the "small tent" party with a conservative litmus test.

Remember the days of Rockefeller/Dirksen/Percy repubilcans..that party no longer exists.

Apparently, "everything else" is now the majority in the GOP. They better embrace that rather than coming back with the two men kissing issue.

The Republicans are technically competent, too. In fact, until very recently, they were better at it than Democrats. Their problem was that they didn't have anyone to use the tools. Here in Wisconsin, the Obama campaign had operations everywhere, in little villages as well as Milwaukee and Madison. That difference is apparent in the county results. Obama won 59 out of 72 counties, everywhere except the Milwaukee & Minneapolis suburbs and a few scattered outposts like Fond du Lac & Walworth Co. Even where the McCain campaign had operations, they didn't have enough people to keep them open. They were empty most of the time. We got robocalls and mailings, but never direct human contact.

They didn't get people excited about their campaign becayse they didn't have a message. The economic crisis and Obama knocked away the two pillars of post-Goldwater Republicanism.

From the passage of the Civil Rights Act up until this summer, the Republicans were able to exploit white resentment & backlash against the civil rights movement. Although they would not and could not admit it explicitly, the identity politics they adopted in the campaign were clearly a politics of whiteness. That backfired against Obama, because the implicit message contradicted the surface projections of neutrality. The conflict in messages made McCain seem either out of control or duplicitous. Voters who wanted to move America beyond race -- which is the GOP message on racial issues & what Rush & Fox say they stand for -- voted for Obama. And that does not mean that Obama supporters voted for him because of the colour of his skin. Alan Keyes would not have defeated Obama. Of course, given the way the party defined itself, Keyes or Rice or Powell would not have won the nomination.

The problems with the identity-based campaign exposed other weaknesses. The biggest of these was the collapse of neoliberalism, another pillar of Republican ideology. McCain and the Republicans at first wanted to deny the problems even existed. When that was no longer viable they announced they were "going negative", in other words, that they had nothing to offer. They're going to have get beyond that kind of reaction.

Where do you go when the terms and operations that define who you are politically no longer function? That's up to them. I'm not a Republican.

I don't remember the days of Rokerfeller...I became a Republican when Reagan was in office. When I look back on a historical basis I found it interesting that Martin Luther King was a Republican.

Regarding the "small tent" issue - I am not concerned with the size of the "tent", I don't compromise on my core beliefs and if being "big tent" means bigger government (in terms of the percent of GDP - I know government gets bigger when the economy grows but government should not grow at a faster rate than the economy and should be smaller than it is now) count me out. The conservative case can be made and conservatives can get votes without compromising core beliefs.

ace....ff thats what you believe...it works for me too!

The narrower your ideology, the smaller your voter base and the less appeal to the growing number of independents.

I believe that a party can represent a diversity of views w/o comproming core beliefs.

In a simplistic way I would divide the Republican primary votes in 3. McCain had the advatage of 2/3's of the real Republican vote split and he got independents and cross-over votes. McCain did not get a majority of the Republican vote. Also, compared to Obama, McCain's support was weak among those who supported him. When Bush ran in 2000 and 2004, I volunteered to work both times. I did not do anything other than vote to get McCain elected.
-----Added 6/11/2008 at 12 : 46 : 15-----
I think there can be a diversity of people in a party, but not a diversity of views on the core issues. What you describe seems to be a collection of people with no direction to me.

ace...thats the problem I have with rigid ideologues of any persuasion.

Ideologues see things solely in black and white...no shades of gray allowed!

Just for the record there are differences between core beliefs/values and general ideas and concepts. For example the concept of taxation can be explored and debated and compromises reached, but the core belief in the individual benefiting from their labor in their own legal manner is not.

How so? Here are two leading democrats from that time: Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond. Would you think MLK would register to vote with them? Democrats at that time, especially in the south, were all for segregation. Many of them became republicans when it was inevitable.

Ask any southern historian, the republican party of today is the democratic party prior to 1970. The democratic party of today is the same as the republican party prior to 1970.

And if Dr. King were alive today, no doubt he would be disappointed in what his party has become.

i'm going wtih poppin jay on that one...plus, i think he owed a pardon to one of the parties...

but still..when you look at who he could have supported..you get : Jesse helms an strom thurmond...the dem party was ...just 'sliiightly' racist...strom thurmond having the record filibuster against ending segregation....oh yea, SC is so great sometimes. plus, he was on the dixiecrat ticket...oh yea..lots of reasons for MLK to be republican back then.

Actually, thurmond's change to the republican party is part of what caused the state to go red..and stay there.

This, right here is what a lot of people don't understand.

The answer(s) are simple:

1) The long primary season
2) South Carolina

1) By having the primaries spread out across weeks, the media has the ability to control the nominees. Think back, if all primaries were held on the same day as the Iowa caucas, the general election candidates would have been Hilary Clinton and Mitt Romney. This rule should be changed, as the candidates have many methods to spread their message and no longer need the time to campaign in every state. It would also mitigate the influence that the media has on the election, which would be a very good thing.
2) This is a bit of a stretch, but stick with me. In 2000, Karl Rove introduced untrue and slanderous accusations into the South Carolina primary regarding John McCain's service and captivity in Vietnam. As a result, South Carolinians voted against McCain and propelled Bush into the nomination. Over the past 8 years, South Carolina has come to realize they were dupped by the Bush campaign and couldn't WAIT to apologize to McCain in this primary. Hence, SC voted for McCain in the primary over candidates that actually could have had a chance against Obama - the younger, more charismatic Romney....and even Huckabee. McCain was barely even noticed in the initial leg of the primary season. It wasn't until he won SC that the media started pushing him into the top spot and other states followed SC's lead. In short, I blame my state for electing Bush and now, by propping up an unelectable alternative, for electing Obama.

While this doesn't have anything to do with the thread - I vote third party and did not vote for McCain or Obama. Why yes, I believe Obama will be the worst President in history, will make us all long for the Bush years, and will set his race back 40 years. For decades, all other black candidates will suffer from the "remember the last time we elected one of them?" This is not because Obama is black, it's because....it doesn't matter what I say, he's the president elect. The election is over and I hope that I am wrong.

You took the words right out of my mouth will.

Are you guys suggesting that you would have voted for McCain if not for Palin?

For some of us Republicans, McCain got our support because of Palin. I was considering a vote for Barr and would have voted for Clinton if she was running against McCain.

Just remember one thing.

Four years of Bush brought us a major terrorist attack, two wars, of which one was even then unpopular, and the Patriot Act, and and he still beat a legitimate Democrat candidate.

Four more years of unpopular war, political scandal and questionable legislation, the loss of Congress, running likely the worst possible candidate for the time, a polarizing VP pick, and a Democrat candidate who had a cult-like following and was worshiped and protected by his supporters and the media at-large...and Obama only won 53%-46%.

There seem to be an awful lot of cocky liberals in here who should be far more wary.

The Democrats may have control but if history tells us anything it is that things can change quickly. Four years is a long time.

I want to see this country remain great, so I would love to see Obama do well. However if anything bad happens he suddenly becomes Jimmy Carter, and in four years power will move back in the other direction even if the Republicans change very little.

Supposing this were true - could the Republicans have won?

Not at all. What I'm suggesting is that Palin being put on the ticket was a horrible idea. Sure, it rallied some of the base, but rallying the base isn't how you win after 8 years of Bush. You need centrism in order to recuperate. McCain sold his soul to try and win instead of remaining the John McCain of yore, and Osh Kosh Barbi was a slap in the face to anyone left of the far right with more than a few brain cells.

A vice presidential candidate shouldn't have to be told what the vice president does.

No I think what most people are saying is that they made sure not to vote for McCain because of Palin. She sure scared away a lot of independents and undecideds.

aceventura, did you see some numbers that democrats voted for McCain in the primaries?
In California, voters can't vote for the opposite major party during the primaries. I think it's the case in Oregon, too, but I haven't voted there for about 15 years.
If most states have open primaries, then I guess unscrupulous people could sabotage the other party :\

I don't get the SC argument, cimarron. I mean, I understand what you're saying and it makes sense, but it seems like you're saying that if not for SC in 2000 McCain would have been a viable candidate against Bush. But now he's not? Why was he a viable candidate in 2000 but not in 2008?

Was it 7%? a 7% win is huge and the electoral college was a landslide.

Edit: Okay I guess not super huge but still. It was closer than it should have been because of the bible belt.

dj---you'll notice that the thread is for discussing what happened to the republicans in this election--there's not much about what anyone thinks will happen next, or what they understand obama to be able or likely to do--so there's no real "cockiness" on anyone's part that i can see. instead there is a series of statements about the many ways in which the republicans find themselves boxed in by the turn to the extreme right, the right that in any other country would be clearly and obviously neo-fascist---which enabled the bush administration to get into power. the republicans are being hoisted by their own choices, structural and conjunctural. personally, i find much of populist american conservatism to be not only foul by dangerous and i am glad to see it hit the wall.

but that doesn't say anything about what i might see as happening next, nor anything about my relation to obama, which is not at all what you might think.

the main difference at this point between those who supported obama and those who supported mc-cain is that the former was supported for ALOT of different reasons in part because the language that obama's campaign used ALLOWED FOR THAT.
you cannot look at this ad hoc coalition in the same way that a republican would look at republicans.
it ain't like that.

The Republican Party has a serious identify crisis at the moment and before its over it could lead to nasty internal warfare.

Who will be the face of the party....social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, neo-cons? Their greatest problem is that these competing forces just dont get along.

That and the fact that a growing number of Americans, particularly Independents, dont share the core values of any of these groups.

That's a pretty bold statement that you just tossed out there. Kind of a threadjack, and I don't really buy the rest of your post, but would you care to elaborate? I don't know that anything could happen to make anyone yearn for the Bush years, since I don't know anyone who thinks the last eight years have been a productive, happy time in American politics. Do you think he's incompetent? Do you think he's stepping into an unfixable situation like Carter did and is just going to have to sleep in the bed he made for himself? Are you just an unhappy third party voter whose exact political ideology isn't being represented?

I believe you are asking me, "If it were Clinton vs. Romney, would Romney have won?" It's difficult to say - there are many Christians who distrust the Mormon faith and so I believe he would not have energized the religious right - much the way that McCain could not capture them until he picked Palin. Palin may have captured the religious right, but she ostracized the female vote due to her extreme views on right to life. Obviously, she lost more votes for McCain (women) than she gained for him (religious right). Obviously, these are broad statements and anecdotal, at best.

However, I believe Romney would have appealed to moderates and he certainly didn't carry the baggage of Clinton. Overall, I believe he would have won the election. I also believe he would be more effective at leading us through the future economic struggles than Obama. If the financial crisis had occurred during the primaries, Romney would have won the nomination by a landslide.

Again, I didn't vote for McCain or Obama.

No, I would have voted Obama anyway. After 8 years of Bush and GOP, I really have no faith left in the party. Simple truth is I feel it's time to let someone else give it a go. Even if the Dems don't do any better, the lose will force the GOP to redefine itself a bit, hopefully for the better. And really, McCain had to many of Bushes lackeys running his campaign for me to have any faith that his presidency would be any different the the retarded monkey he would be replacing.

For the purposes of avoiding a threadjack, I will move my response into the President Elect Barack Obama thread.

Interesting, how this seems to work. "People" say Palin was a drag on the ticket. The media doesn't like her, says she is a drag on the ticket, and polls show she was a drag on the ticket, but when we dig a bit deeper, we find that "people" (not all, I know some Republicans said it too) saying she was a drag on the ticket would not have voted for McCain anyway. On that basis Wayne Allen Root was clearly a drag on the Bob Barr Libertarian ticket.

On the idea of needing a centrist, I don't know many who would call Joe Biden a centrist. Chaney was not a centrist. Gore was not a centrist. Quayle was not a centrist, etc., etc.,...actually have we ever had a true centrist VP?

I voted for Obama. I would've voted for McCain if he'd picked Romney as his running mate. The instant he picked Palin was the instant I stopped paying attention to the presidential race. I know several other republicans and libertarians who felt the same way and voted accordingly. She was an unmitigated disaster, and there's ample evidence to show that a McCain/Palin administration would've been divided and hostile before it began.

ace....I dont know where you are "looking deeper" to find those people who would not have voted for McCain anyway.

She shored up the base and drove away the Independents....which IMO is a microcosm of the Republican party at the moment. they cant figure out how to appeal to both and you cant win w/o both.

Beyond that, many of those who dont like her or dont think she is presidential material are DC party insiders and again, there's the problem.

"Real Americans" (ie mostly the social conservatives) love her...the party establishment doesnt.

Taking "fiscal conservative" first, I seem to recall many, left and right leaning people complaining about budget deficits, the national debt and wasteful spending.

On the "social conservatives" one, California just voted to ban gay marriage.

I don't understand what a "neo-con" is. Perhaps its like defining the "Bush Doctrine", something liberals just make up.

You didn't even bother responding to my comment about her pushing away the undecideds and independents. Pick the post that's going to prove your point and ignore the others, right? Many republicans also called McCain's choice as VP a mistake.

centrist is one of those perspectival words--in a gop that has redefined conservatism in part by generating a wholly self-serving way of looking at the political spectrum, such that moderates like clinton and obama (who is a bit to the left of clinton in words, but we'll see in action--clinton was to the left of clinton in that way) are cast as "socialists"...make it hard to have a rational discussion. you say "socialist" with reference to obama, and i just laugh at you. i say moderate with reference to obama, and you may well laugh as well.

when i feel like doing it, i lay the french political spectrum over the american: the populist conservative language of the republicans maps more or less directly onto that of the front national (switch the french referencepoints for the american and the match is eerie).
the front national is neo-fascist.

from that kind of extreme rightwing viewpoint, a moderate looks like a democratic socialist and a tepid trade union supporter probably maps as a stalinist.

it all works if you don't have the faintest idea what these terms mean.

but this is a discussion i am tired of having.

addendum: neo-cons operate with a view of foreign policy that has nothing---at all---in common with the blinkered worldview of populist conservatism.
for example, it is most unlikely that a neo-con would have thought, as palin apparently did, that africa is a country.

ace...the difference between "fiscal conservatives" and "fiscal disciplined" is the latter believe in a role for government, that government is not the enemy and the "free market" is not the answer to everything.

The social conservatives can win a single issue with enough money and scare tactics...they cant win on a broader platform.

Neo-cons? We know who they are and what they represent and a diminishing number of voters share their view of the world.
-----Added 6/11/2008 at 06 : 17 : 50-----
And these three groups are fighting for control of the party.

Just look on TFP, so far I see one person who indicated they voted for Obama because of Palin. And then consider the numbers of opinions saying she hurt the ticket, there is a clear pattern.

The coverage on this issue has been superficial at best, the media disliked Palin from the start. Women who supported Clinton disliked Palin. People passionate about protecting a woman's right to abortion disliked Palin. I think these groups drove the anti-Palin crusade and were able to skew poll results.

ace...cool, blame the media and the liberal elitist of TFP.

It wont stop the infighting within the Republican party...buts thats fine with me :)

I think a bigger factor was the economic crisis. McCain faltered on this issue. Even for me, I strongly disliked the fact that he said the economy was fundamentally sound, which it is, and then backed off of that statement. I dislike McCain not backing Phil Gramm when he told Americans to stop whining. McCain's mis-steps made Obama look like a hero on this issue.

it's called being awake, ace.

wait...South Africa is not a province in the nation of Africa?

do you agree the problem as you define it affects both sides?

Phil Gramm? The fiscal conservative who led the de-regulation of the banks and financial institutions while in Congress then went to work for them as a lobbyist?

And you think he has broad appeal in formerly red suburbia?

I don't believe the government is an enemy of the free market. I think there is a role for government in a free market - I consider myself a fiscal conservative.

How about school choice, I know many left leaning people and right leaning people who both honestly support school choice. We can do more examples if you want to ignore my point.

Neo-cons? We know who they are and what they represent and a diminishing number of voters share their view of the world.
-----Added 6/11/2008 at 06 : 17 : 50-----
And these three groups are fighting for control of the party.[/QUOTE]

Still don't understand it, so you may be correct.
-----Added 6/11/2008 at 06 : 31 : 13-----
I am not blaming anyone for anything, I just made an observation.

I was voting for Obama anyways, but I hate Sarah Palin. She celebrates mediocrity in America, is a fundy religious nut who believes the end times are coming, her family is a walking joke about the failure of celibacy for sex ed, makes absurd claims about executive experience for a state of less then a million people, gets huge sums of money from the government dole(oil taxes for everyone in Alaska, and pass on the higher prices to the rest of America), and believes that shooting wolves from planes has kept the borders safe from marauding Russians. Oh btw, William Ayers wanted to change America, Todd Palin was the traitor who wanted to secede from America.

no, ace, i really don't agree with your claim that the problem of warped perspective on the american political spectrum is shared. i think the perspective i outlined is an entirely conservative phenomenon---by which i now refer to that type of conservatism which is heading at speed into the toilet, dragged into it in significant measure by this sort of thinking---which (again) is geared to appeal to a sense of identity, not to a thinking person who seriously weighs arguments. there is no merit--at all--to the conservative-specific claim that obama is a socialist. there is no argument for it. there is no data to back it up. it is not a claim that you make to folk who do not already share your map of the world. people who share your map are most likely brought to that because it is a part of being-conservative in that now-hopefully-outmoded way of being as a human being conservative and not being a thinking person who happens to find conservative arguments compelling on this or that issue.

i am referring to the LANGUAGE of populist conservative ideology--to be clear---and how that language stages relations to being conservative.
i mention this again because i am not interested in you defending yourself against a personal attack that i am not making.

unfuckingbelievable.
if you don't know what something is, you just label it liberal?

why not look up the definition of "neo-conservative" and "Bush doctrine" so you don't look like an ignoramus?

Let me help you there:

Bush Doctrine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Neoconservatism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The first paragraph of each article will give you a nice, relatively neutral understanding of both of those phrases. They've been part of mainstream political discourse for Bush's entire term. I'm not sure why you think "libtards" just made them up.

Edit: Reading through the Bush Doctrine page alone might do you well enough, since it includes a section on neoconservatism, of which the Bush Doctrine is a prime example.

Incidentally, I still haven't seen any Palin supporters react to the video I posted in post #36. I'm keenly interested in knowing how you can justify her NOT being a drag on the ticket, especially when even FOX News and people within McCain's own campaign can no longer keep their mouths shut about what an effin' drag she was.

How many undecideds have you dug up?
Obama has charisma, so Joe Biden can just be foreign policy experience. Lieberman was the obvious choice for McCain.

The war within the Republican party is intensifying....with Operation Leper:

I've read a LOT of stuff about the backlash against people who dared to talk about what Palin was really up to for the last two months. Apparently no one thinks it's important that the VP candidate was openly defying the policies of her presidential candidate or that she thought Africa was a country. Those things needed to be covered up for all our good, but god help anyone who speaks poorly about her. The nerve of those people.

Well, who cares about Africa. There are gays trying to visit each other in the hospital, dontcha know.

Of course there are a number of things that the Republicans did wrong. And many of those "errors" led to losing swing voters.

McCain had a chance of winning until the economy took a dive.

It should be called Operation: Sore Loser. The level of backbiting and whining from a political party that was so disciplined is stunning and equally disappointing. Instead of taking a step back, finding out how they lost themselves in a sea of hubris, and refining their identity and how they can reconnect with the American people, they'd rather engage in petty bickering.

It's apparent that this party has lost it's way. This isn't the way to get back on track.

I think I'll turn my Republican card in now.

i think folk like malkin see the writing on the wall already for the kind of politics that made their careers possible.
i think shit like this "project leper" initiative are little more than rear-guard actions, ways of attempting to defend collapsing positions by threatening to inflict damage in some nebulous future.
that any shred of dignity heads out the window with the adoption of this tactic is no surprise.
we are, after all, talking about people like michelle malkin.

I really liked this article from Salon, regarding how this was a Generation X election, never thought about that until I read the article.

A Gen X response to Barack Obama | Salon Life

great article, a rarity from salon life. I don't hear about Gen X stuff anymore since 'gen y' took over the headlines, but that is amazingly accurate from my perspective..

I think Michelle Malkin is batshit crazy and doesn't see that at all. But I get your point.