Politics The Elephant in the room...The GOP today

Charlatan · Feb 18, 2013

I am kind of hoping the Tea Party types merge with the Libertarian types to liberate the GOP from their taint.

Barring that, I hope that the GOP can just get it's shit together enough to work constructively. This, I am taking my ball and going home, attitude they are currently displaying is ridiculous.

redux · Feb 18, 2013

The Republican party is stuck in the mindset of playing to its base, rather than expanding its tent. The base wants no compromise, hard core ideologues who share their belief that government is the problem and offers no solution to any challenges facing the country. Of course, with the exception of government involvement (intrusion) in women's reproductive rights and gay rights.

Which might explain why the party is 29 point underwater in public opinion, polling at its lowest numbers in 15 years. (As opposed to Democratic party polling at +2).

rogue49 · Feb 19, 2013

redux said: ↑

The Republican party is stuck in the mindset of playing to its base, rather than expanding its tent. The base wants no compromise, hard core ideologues who share their belief that government is the problem and offers no solution to any challenges facing the country. Of course, with the exception of government involvement (intrusion) in women's reproductive rights and gay rights.

Which might explain why the party is 29 point underwater in public opinion, polling at its lowest numbers in 15 years. (As opposed to Democratic party polling at +2).
Click to expand...

Yes, they even have a new power-word for their worry and actions in compensation,
It's called being "Primaried"

Meaning, they are so concerned that they will lose in the primary with their base...and the more radical people of influence,
that they are ignoring the more centrist general election...and the moderate tone that goes with that.

redux · Feb 22, 2013

Michael Gerson in the Washington Post today summed up the Republican problem:

Out of the past six presidential elections, four have gone to the Democratic nominee, at an average yield of 327 electoral votes to 211 for the Republican. During the preceding two decades, from 1968 to 1988, Republicans won five out of six elections, averaging 417 electoral votes to Democrats’ 113.

This stunning reversal of electoral fortunes has taken place for a variety of reasons: changing demographics; the end of a GOP foreign policy advantage during the Cold War; a serious gap in candidate quality; the declining relevance of economic policies that seem better suited to the 1980s; and an occasionally deserved reputation for being judgmental and censorious.

A full Republican appreciation of these disturbing fundamentals was delayed by the 2010 midterms, in which an unreconstructed anti-government message seemed to be riding a wave. Just two years later came that wave’s withdrawing roar. The Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, lost by 5 million votes to a beatable incumbent presiding over an anemic economy. The explanation is not purely technical or personality oriented. At the national level, Republicans have a winning message for a nation that no longer exists.

In retrospect, last year’s Republican primary process was entirely disconnected from the actual needs of the party. One candidate pledged to build a 20-foot-high electrical fence at the border crowned with the sign, in English and Spanish, “It will kill you — Warning.” Another promised, as president, to speak out against the damage done to American society by contraception. Another warned that vaccinations may cause “mental retardation.” In the course of 20 debates and in tens of millions of dollars of ads, issues such as upward mobility, education, poverty, safer communities and the environment were rarely mentioned.

A Republican recovery in presidential politics will depend on two factors. First, candidates will need to do more than rebrand existing policy approaches or translate them into Spanish. Some serious rethinking is necessary, particularly on economic matters. In our Commentary essay, we raise ideas such as ending corporate welfare, breaking up the mega-banks, improving the treatment of families in the tax code, and encouraging economic mobility through education reform and improved job training. Whatever form Republican proposals eventually take, they must move beyond Reagan-era nostalgia.

Second, Republican primary voters, party activists and party leaders have a choice to make, ruthlessly clarified by recent events. They can take the path of Democrats in 1988, doubling down on a faltering ideology. Or they can follow the model of Democrats in 1992 and their own party in 2000, giving their nominee the leeway needed to oppose outworn or extreme ideas and to produce an agenda relevant to our time.
Click to expand...

If the extremists and Tea party types have their way, they will stick to their rigid ideology, dig their heels in and continue to move farther and farther away from the center where the majority of Americans are on most issues -- debt reduction, tax/economic policy, immigration, energy/environmental policy, health policy, women's reproductive rights, gay rights...

There is no winning strategy among this crowd.

rogue49 · Feb 23, 2013

The difficulty for the GOP is that their primaries are about "purity",
whereas currently, the Dems have a fairly open process, while not perfect, it is certainly not putting up too many extremists.

Frankly, I'm tired of saying what they should do, ironically they have become the mules...and I'll just firmly say what I do to my dogs,
Figure it out!!

/nuff said

rogue49 · Mar 5, 2013

GOP sniping over 2012 still going strong
By: Maggie Haberman - March 5, 2013

Four months after taking an electoral pounding, Republicans can’t agree on what went wrong in 2012 — let alone on a path to recovery.

Each week brings a new diagnosis of the party’s woes. Karl Rove says it’s candidate quality. Mitt Romney chief strategist Stuart Stevens argues Democrats have won over minority voters through government programs like Obamacare. Some Bush White House vets say it’s the GOP’s trouble understanding how to approach a changing electorate. Techy conservatives blame the party’s inferior social media presence and outdated voter targeting and data-mining.

With fault to go around for allowing a president mired in a weak economy to handily win reelection, the finger-pointing and blame-shifting from various corners are showing no sign of abating.

The next shot at the White House is years away, the Senate is firmly in Democratic hands and Rove is no longer the universally respected strategic hand he once was. That’s all left the Republicans — who, like Democrats, have seen their central party infrastructure weaken — without a consensus figure to interpret what the election meant.

The party is “leaderless,” as conservative writer Rich Lowry put it last week.

And the current crop of elected officials, uncertain of where the Republican electorate actually stands after a cycle of widely off-base polling, appears gun-shy.

There’s a split between those who believe the party’s problem is cosmetic, those who believe it’s data-based and those who think it’s ideological and policy-based. Within those camps, there’s no common ground on what a better approach would look like.

“If you’ve at least defined and everybody’s accepted the reasons why the election went so poorly, that’s just a critical starting point,” said David Winston, a veteran Republican pollster who does survey-taking for the House GOP caucus.

The post-mortems are playing out against the backdrop of budgetary fights that have become the Washington version of Groundhog Day — a deadline approaches, both sides blame the other, the president uses the bully pulpit to flog the opposition and polls show the Republican brand sliding further into a hole.

The constant drama, a number of Republicans say, has denied the party writ large a chance to take stock amid calm. Still, the Republican National Committee is moving ahead with what Chairman Reince Priebus has at times called an “autopsy” into 2012.

Its review of what happened last cycle is expected to wrap up in the next few weeks, and other players such as the Koch brothers are conducting their own dissection.

Winston said he hopes and assumes that the RNC critique will “define what went wrong so you can get everybody focused on what the solution should look like.”

And across newspapers and cable news flow a stream of center-right versus conservative-right stories, a perennial battle within the party but one that’s seen new heat in the past four months. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was not invited to speak at CPAC, but Mitt Romney was — and Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) is angry about it, goes one storyline.

“I think there will always be tension between moderates in the party and the conservative base, but that has existed for decades and only goes away after we win an election. It went away for a bit after Reagan, and it went away for a bit after Bush 41,” said conservative strategist Greg Mueller. “But in losing,” he added, “it’s back with some intensity.”

Democrats, too, went through spasms of revolt and recrimination after a presidential loss — most recently in 2000 and 2004.

King, in an interview, agreed that some of this public debate is par for the course, saying, “I’d rather be doing this in 2013 and 2014 than [closer to the next presidential election].” But he also argued that groups like CPAC are damaging themselves — and the party.

Another challenge for the GOP is a weakened party infrastructure, diminished in stature after the Supreme Court allowed unlimited donations to certain outside groups. Instead of one centralized entity, the RNC, drawing the allegiance and big dollars of conservatives, it’s now spread over several groups.

“It’s almost like asymmetric warfare,” said one Republican strategist of the disparate power centers.

The shifting balance of power has set the bar for the second phase of Priebus’s job — he earned kudos during his first term for erasing a massive financial deficit incurred under the previous chairman, Michael Steele — that much higher.

Reince is “hamstrung, because he was a good man for the moment. … someone who would put his head down and rebuild” the RNC, said one Priebus supporter.

But “now it’s a problem because the party needs to start running ahead of where the congressional leadership is,” the source added, saying Priebus needs to take his approach to running the committee to the next level to help the party navigate a path forward.

A number of Republicans privately bemoan the absence of a Haley Barbour-type figure, a chairman who could command the respect of forces outside the immediate party infrastructure and urge everyone to get on the same page. Someone who could stop Rove’s Crossroads and the anti-tax Club for Growth from their public sniping over whether electability should trump ideology — or vice versa — in the type of nominees the party picks.

But Priebus, several veteran Republicans who’ve worked with him acknowledge, is not that type of chairman. And there’s no one obvious for the job. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is up for reelection next year and looking over his shoulder. And House Speaker John Boehner is in a constant state of line-holding with his caucus.

The state of affairs has allowed Rove to remain a strong force in the party — despite his critics sensing vulnerability after raising $300 million to run ads that failed to move the needle. He emerged from 2012 dinged up by the results, but until someone unifies the party, he will remain one of its top strategists.

The party’s unsteady condition is likely to remain until it chooses a presidential nominee. Unlike the Clintons, who were de facto leaders of the Democratic Party during the George W. Bush years, the 43rd president has all but vanished from public view since Obama took office.

“The Bush-era Democrats didn’t do much rethinking,” Lowry wrote in his column. “They just found a good presidential candidate and benefited from serial Republican debacles from Jack Abramoff to the financial crisis.”

As for the GOP’s current debate about what the party represents, that discussion has gone on for the past decade. “Since 9/11, that’s been less clear,” said one veteran GOP operative.

Priebus’s efforts have been directed toward focusing on meeting with donors and some party activists. But the “Growth and Opportunity Project,” as he’s dubbed the internal review, will be a focal point for potential change.

After rejecting the urging of some donors to use an outside auditing firm, the RNC chairman set up a review committee that included RNC committee member Henry Barbour, longtime political operative and Jeb Bush adviser Sally Bradshaw, and former George W. Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer.

There have been cries of “inside job” from conservatives and some grass-roots activists, but several people familiar with the group’s work say they are taking it seriously and being thorough. However, it’s unclear how much time the ultimate report will spend being reflective on what went wrong, as opposed to looking forward.

“Everyone agrees that there are several areas that must be improved upon including better messaging, engaging with minority groups, improving our digital capabilities and a multiyear sustained ground and engagement effort,” said RNC spokesman Sean Spicer.

He went on to describe the review as “the single most comprehensive post-election effort ever undertaken by the party” that will include specific proposals for Republicans to “grow its numbers and win elections.”

Mueller, the conservative strategist, argued that Republicans need to focus more on the use of social media and data gathering — the latter in particular being an area where the party can fill a void.

“Obama and Democrats committed to a full integration of their messaging into social media, a coordinated spray of their message on all media channels. Romney, the GOP and many of its affiliated groups used it for fundraising and advertising,” he said. “And we all know the data-gathering operations deployed this cycle by the GOP did not match up.”

A number of consultants point to a generational divide — one that is not only about candidates but about the people who run campaigns and provide strategic advice.

“There now is a growing impulse that the generational shift that is occurring at the candidate level is also needed at the consultant level,” said pollster Kellyanne Conway. “It won’t matter which fresh faces the GOP runs for the presidency if the same folks are pulling the strings and calling the shots.”

Others in the party, in addition to the RNC, have started looking for fixes. They include operatives like Alex Castellanos, who worked on Mitt Romney’s 2008 campaign but was neutral this time around, and who has started a new super PAC aimed at repairing the party.

Castellanos dismissed the notion that the current state of affairs is a bad thing, and defended Priebus as the party’s leader.

“Even the longest journey begins [with] one step, says the wise man,” he said. “I think the debates and discussions are a sign of life, vitality and restless energy, exactly what we need.”

He added, “If I were a Democrat now, seeing this Republican restlessness, I would take it seriously. Something new is being born, ugly and bloody, as all birth is, but new nevertheless. We’ll get there.”

© 2013 POLITICO LLC
Click to expand...

Here's the GOP's real problem...
They don't realize it's their words and message and actions that aren't connecting as much anymore.
They are blaming it on who's using better methods and techniques and tech and ground game and, and, and...

They are alienating significant parts of the population.
They are pissing off another segment with their more obvious obstructionism.
They are losing another with the seeming support of the rich & large corporations and ignoring the less so.
They are turning off some with their inconsistencies.
And so on...

To make a good politician, you have to get a majority of people to support you, despite their differences.
If you're pissing off or pissing on more than you can get to vote for you...then you're going to lose with increasing frequency.
No matter your resources or skill in campaigning.

redux · Mar 6, 2013

No doubt it is the Republican message and policies that are not resonating with a growing number of voters.

But in 2012, despite being flush with money, there was a technology gap as well.

Interesting article in NY Times Magazine recently. Can Republicans Be Saved From Obsolescence?

redux · Mar 6, 2013

Republican science:

A Washington state representative has uncovered a previously under-reported source of greenhouse gas: huffing and puffing cyclists.

Ed Orcutt, who lists "Tax relief" at the top of his legislative priorities and who was 2000's Washington Young Republican Federation Man of the Year, emailed the owner of a Tacoma, Washington, bike shop who had written him to protest a proposed tax on bicycles, part of a larger state transportation bill.

Although he noted that he was "not a fan" of many tax proposals, Orcutt argued that "it only makes sense that bicyclists would also be required to pay for the 'roads' they use when they are actually biking on them." He then added his belief that two-wheeled transport is polluting the environment:

You claim that it is environmentally friendly to ride a bike. But if I am not mistaken, a cyclists [sic] has an increased heart rate and respiration. That means that the act of riding a bike results in greater emissions of carbon dioxide from the rider. Since CO2 is deemed to be a greenhouse gas and a pollutant, bicyclists are actually polluting when they ride.

When contacted by the Seattle Bike Blog, representative Orcutt stuck to his guns. "You would be giving off more CO2 if you are riding a bike than driving in a car," he said, but he admitted that he had not "done any analysis" on the amount of that EPA-identified globe-warmer produced by spandex-wearing devotees of two-wheel locomotion as compared to that which is spewed from the tailpipes of the gas-guzzling vehicles driven by Washington's 6.9 million residents.
Click to expand...

grumpyolddude · Mar 6, 2013

Seems legit

samcol · Mar 7, 2013

rand paul on a 12 hour filibuster?

has to do with obama's recess appointment and whether or not the government has the ability to drone strike us citizens on us soil.

Live Video - C-SPAN2 | C-SPAN

Plan9 · Mar 7, 2013

samcol said: ↑

whether or not the government has the ability to drone strike us citizens on us soil.
Click to expand...

Makes you wonder about that whole "The Second Amendment doesn't mean you should own anti-aircraft missiles!" argument, no?

redux · Mar 7, 2013

samcol said: ↑

rand paul on a 12 hour filibuster?

has to do with obama's recess appointment and whether or not the government has the ability to drone strike us citizens on us soil.
Click to expand...

The recess appointment argument is bogus, given that it has been a common practice for 100 years.

But holding up the appointment of the CIA director based on the drones on US soil policy is a legitimate use of the filibuster as it was intended, as opposed to the Republican blocking legislation and judicial appointments in record numbers based on politics, not policy or qualifications of candidates.

Rand is not nearly as wacky as his daddy and is likely to put a monkey wrench into the 2016 primaries.

samcol · Mar 7, 2013

redux said: ↑

The recess appointment argument is bogus, given that it has been a common practice for 100 years.

But holding up the appointment of the CIA director based on the drones on US soil policy is a legitimate use of the filibuster as it was intended, as opposed to the Republican blocking legislation and judicial appointments in record numbers based on politics, not policy or qualifications of candidates.

Rand is not nearly as wacky as his daddy and is likely to put a monkey wrench into the 2016 primaries.
Click to expand...

he's probably just as "wacky" as his father, but he's on the way in and not the way out. i think he's been neutral or indifferent on a lot of positions just to win over the hannity, rush, beck crowds tbh. these people were against ron paul when ron was running.

redux · Mar 14, 2013

samcol said: ↑

he's probably just as "wacky" as his father, but he's on the way in and not the way out. i think he's been neutral or indifferent on a lot of positions just to win over the hannity, rush, beck crowds tbh. these people were against ron paul when ron was running.
Click to expand...

Yeah, he is just as wacky in terms of policy.

But he doesnt come off as grumpy, angry and condescending as his old man and that gives him more credibility.
--- merged: Mar 7, 2013 at 1:19 AM ---
Ted Cruz has inherited the conservative/libertarian mantle as arrogant, condescending conspiracy nut and all around asshole.

rogue49 · Mar 7, 2013

Actually, I don't really care about his topic, it's stupid anyway,
but it IS really nice to see a Senator literally do a filibuster.

Not just the "threat" of it which makes them say forget it...and makes a 60 vote threshold, instead of the true 51.

They should put that into the rules, if you claim Filibuster...then you got to do it...for as long as you want. (no bathroom breaks either)

Make'em work for it.

Seaver · Mar 7, 2013

I disagree to why he filibustered, but I respect anyone who actually has the courage to pull it off. I never agreed with the filibuster rule change, always felt if someone wanted to completely abandon the right to vote for a subject, they should put up the actual physical requirements to do so.

redux · Mar 13, 2013

The Constitution and the Supreme Court...according to freshman tea party Congressman Jim Bridensten:

Just because the Supreme Court rules on something doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s constitutional...

And the left in this country has done an extraordinary job of stacking the courts in their favor. (note - five of the nine current justices were appointed by Republicans)

So what we have to do as a body of Congress is say, “look, just because the courts” – and I hear this all the time from Republicans – they say that the court is the arbitrator and after the arbitration is done, that’s the rules we have to live under and we can go forth and make legislation given those rules. That’s not the case. A perfect example is Obamacare. Obamacare is not constitutional, the individual mandate.
Click to expand...

So there you have it, another example of the Tea Party types and their twisted view of the Constitution and the separation of powers.

rogue49 · Mar 14, 2013

I'm beginning to agree of Bill Maher's idea of the Conservative Bubble they live in.

While I have some conservative values and don't agree with much of what he says (still damn funny though),
I have noted that many fairly conservative people have a VERY skewed way of looking at reality.
Because what they are viewing or saying isn't what I'm literally seeing or know directly.

Is it really what they see...or are they just trying to make a point or score for their side. (I certainly hope it's the latter... )

redux · Mar 17, 2013

Scenes from CPAC:

The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), hosted by the American Conservative Union, does not do moderation or restraint. At times it appears to maintain only a loose connection with political realities. This is an annual shindig of conservative clans from across the nation. But this year the conclave took place against the sombre backdrop of presidential hopeful Mitt Romney's disastrous defeat...
...
Obama's win has left many American conservatives angry. They are mostly furious at Romney – a vastly rich titan of free market capitalism and deeply religious social conservative – whom they consider not rightwing enough. "This Romney campaign was the worst campaign in the history of the United States," said pollster Pat Caddell.

Other consultants complained that Romney had failed to hone the right conservative message. But then it is not easy. The movement is a fractious mix of social conservatives who hate abortion and gay rights, fiscal conservatives who do not care about such things but hate government, and then foreign policy conservatives who are obsessed with the latest fashion in perceived threat – a hot seat currently occupied by Iran.

So instead, conservative activists often find themselves glued together by emotion, paranoia and a firm belief that America is about to turn into a liberal totalitarian state. Tea Party groups promoted themselves with events linked to the Hunger Games, the dystopian sci-fi novel and film, and a video that fantasised about violent revolution. In a giant exhibition hall in the bowels of the centre, dozens of stalls vied for who could be most apocalyptic about the state of America. One contender was Cliff Kincaid's group called America's Survival. Kincaid was also promoting a film about Frank Marshall Davis. But this work postulated Davis was not just Obama's political father but also his biological one: a development that would shock the many conservatives convinced Obama is a Kenyan. "He is a Marxist, though. It is his background," Kincaid said.

The idea that Obama – whose administration has seen a wild stock market boom and who boasts Goldman Sachs as a major campaign contributor – is to the left of Lenin would seem insane anywhere outside this place. But inside CPAC there is a vast self-referencing ecosystem of media and thinktanks to back up that world view. Corridors are lined with talk radio shows and booksellers all barking up the same tree that says Obama is a nightmare come true, the very embodiment of a leftwing anti-American autocrat. A cinema even beamed films like Frack Nation, America at Risk and Hillary: The Movie. Internal logic is not always a strong point. In one film screening about abortion, an interviewee onscreen declared: "They are attempting to do abortions on women who are not pregnant."
...

Not surprisingly, many have called on CPAC – and the wider Republican party on which it still exerts powerful influence – to change. Obama's victory was built on the votes of the young, women and minorities: all demographics that some conservatives have toiled mightily to offend. Nor have those habits been broken. CPAC embraced Trump but did not invite gay Republicans, with their GOProud organisation reduced to a single speaker on a single panel invited along by the Competitive Enterprise Institute. "We are taking tolerance out of the closet," boasted institute director Fred Smith, which raised the question of why it was there in the first place.

Yet, unlike gays, outreach to non-whites was a theme of Cpac. But it did misfire on occasion. One panel on conservatives from non-white backgrounds featured two white speakers, including a standup comedian from Hollywood. Panel moderator Suhail Khan explained – apparently in earnest – that Hollywood was considered minority outreach due to liberals dominating the entertainment industry. "Cartoon films have a very left message. The Lorax was a recent example of that," he said.

Another disaster was a Tea Party-organised panel entitled "Tired of being called racist?" which was attended by at least two white nationalists. As black speaker K. Carl Smith outlined his vision of a colour-blind ideology, two young white men, Scott Terry and Matthew Heimbach, spoke up to defend slavery, racial segregation and insult Martin Luther King. The meeting descended into an ugly shouting match, though Heimbach, who heads the White Students Union at his college, explained later to the Observer: "After a few drinks most people here agree with us."

More: CPAC 2013: An angry and beaten US right fires out scattergun wacky policies in hunt for victory | World news | The Observer
Click to expand...

All the crazies in one room.

rogue49 · Mar 17, 2013

I liked what Jeb Bush had to say...but I doubt they'll actually followup with them.

Jeb is more like his father than his brother.
But the party became more aggressive during his father's term...threw GHWB under the bus.

Log in or Sign up

Politics The Elephant in the room...The GOP today

Charlatan sous les pavés, la plage

redux Very Tilted

rogue49 Tech Kung Fu Artist Staff Member

redux Very Tilted

rogue49 Tech Kung Fu Artist Staff Member

rogue49 Tech Kung Fu Artist Staff Member

redux Very Tilted

redux Very Tilted

grumpyolddude Very Tilted

samcol Getting Tilted

Plan9 Rock 'n Roll

redux Very Tilted

samcol Getting Tilted

redux Very Tilted

rogue49 Tech Kung Fu Artist Staff Member

Seaver Vertical

redux Very Tilted

rogue49 Tech Kung Fu Artist Staff Member

redux Very Tilted

rogue49 Tech Kung Fu Artist Staff Member

Log in or Sign up

Politics The Elephant in the room...The GOP today

Charlatan sous les pavés, la plage

redux Very Tilted

rogue49 Tech Kung Fu Artist Staff Member

redux Very Tilted

rogue49 Tech Kung Fu Artist Staff Member

rogue49 Tech Kung Fu Artist Staff Member

redux Very Tilted

redux Very Tilted

grumpyolddude Very Tilted

samcol Getting Tilted

Plan9 Rock 'n Roll

redux Very Tilted

samcol Getting Tilted

redux Very Tilted

rogue49 Tech Kung Fu Artist Staff Member

Seaver Vertical

redux Very Tilted

rogue49 Tech Kung Fu Artist Staff Member

redux Very Tilted

rogue49 Tech Kung Fu Artist Staff Member

Useful Searches