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

Can a Republican Win 270 Electoral Votes in 2016...or Ever? - The Daily Beast

Simple math does not lend itself to the horse-race the media has portrayed the last two elections. The GOP supporters screaming for a more conservative candidate are simply unaware of how utterly the GOP was defeated in the last election. Mitt Romney lost by the biggest landslide in Presidential elections since 1984. The biggest landslide in 28 years. I've pointed it out to coworkers who insulate themselves in the bubble, and always fall back to the position of "well, people stayed home".

I, for one, wait patiently voting Democrat while I wait to see if the GOP return to the moderate roots or continue down their path of the modern equivalent to the Dixicrats.

 

The only 'conservative' I would consider is someone like Joe Scarbourgh. Although he gets denounced by the far right, he is somewhat rational.

And, good luck with the popular vote thing. If it was a true nationwide popular vote, I don't think the GOP would be doing any better. Now, their gerrymandering ways based on congressional districts would probably be the only way they could win. Just look at Ohio. Even though Obama got more votes, the Congressional election went 12 to 4 to the GOP.

 

Well, the GOP will get one chance here in 2016 to run the most extreme, 'true' conservative, that they can find. If I were a betting man, I think Rand Paul might be a little too liberal on some of the issues to convince the most radical members and the old guard, and Chris Christie is too big of a spender. I hate to say it, but I think Sarah Palin vs. Hillary Clinton could be the 2016 election. It would eliminate the 'sexism' issue, but Palin better be prepping for the campaign and debates already...

 

I'd register Republican to vote in the primaries; just for the entertainment value.

 

why on earth would the republicans veer that hard to the right if they actually entertained any hope of winning?
for those outside the dwindling faux news demographic, it would confirm that the republican brand is shit and they talk only to themselves and
no amount of gerrymandering and bogus charges of voter fraud will help them.

 

Simply put, the lunatics are running the asylum. The Tea Party has already started with threats against established conservatives like Lamar Alexander if they don't veer harder right. There's always another far-right puppet to run against them in the primaries, and the money is backing a lot of the lunatic fringe

 

Goddamnit! I am not *that* old. This is recent history!

I am not sure this will apply to the US situation. Our multiparty, Westminster style of Parliament allows for splinter groups to rise up and gain power at the Federal level. Have a look at the Reform Party (it grew from ultra conservatives in the Western provinces), the Bloc Québécois (a party solely based in the province of Quebec) and even the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) -- which morphed into the New Democratic Party -- was (ironically) an extreme leftist party that rose up (ironically) out of the Western provinces.

(as an aside... it's fascinating, the thing that lead to the rise of the left in Alberta was an agrarian culture of cooperation working in the face of commercial interests in central Canada. The thing that lead to the rise of the right in Albert many years later was a now oil rich culture working in the face of a central Canadian government that was heavily influenced by the CCF -- rich, rich irony). -- of course this is greatly simplifying things, but still.

@Baraka_Guru's list of player above doesn't go back far enough. There was once also a Progressive Party and Conservative Party that melded together to form the Progressive Conservative Party that most of us grew up with (I don't go back that far, but it's interesting to note that these sorts of mergers are not a new thing). The Progressive Conservative Party was a party that represented the so-called right wing of Canada (socially liberal but fiscally conservative). That party reached its zenith with the Mulroney government of the 80s. For a number of reasons, that government was one of the most despised governments in recent history and owing to some actions late in Mulroney's final term as Prime Minister, they were reduced to two seats in an election cycle that saw the Liberals hold one of their largest majorities ever.

Part of this decimation had to do with the Liberals sliding from the centre to the right (their fiscal policy, managed by Finance Minister, Paul Martin was a classic case of Keynesian austerity during times of surplus -- I could be wrong on that, but that's how it felt at the time). They out conservative-d the conservatives. On the other side of things was the concurrent rise of the Bloc Québécois in Quebec and the Reform Party in the West. What has been, pretty much, a three way race between the PC Party, The NDP and The Liberals (ignoring the truly fringe parties here) was now at Five way race with strong regional pull from the West and Quebec.

There are a significantly large number of parliamentary seats available in Quebec and the success of the BQ was that they, as a Federal seperatist party held the role of Offical Opposition (ie second most seats after the government). The Reform Party started small but grew until the next election cycle saw them in Opposition. The PC party stumbled along with small handfuls of seats. The PC party was not going to come back without making some in roads into Quebec or the West (they survived largely on holding seats in the Maritimes and Ontario). The Reform was continually shut out anywhere East of Manitoba. There was support but no seats in seat rich Ontario (once a PC strong h0ld).

Suffice it to say, the Liberals kept winning because the right was divided. They owned the centre and centre right vote and there was little that was going to change... until.

1) The Reform Party (essentially the Tea Party of Canada before there was a Tea Party in the US) merged with an offshoot of the Progressive Conservative Party. They initially formed a party called, The Conservative Reform Alliance Party. They quickly changed the name to Canadian Reform Conservative Alliance when they realized that the anagram of their original name was CRAP. The Canadian Alliance was a still officially separate from the PC party but had made some significant concessions (though some would argue the change was in name only) to conservatives that gave them confidence to swing their votes to the Alliance when they would never have voted Reform. This lasted for a short while until the PC party's then leader, who ran for the leadership saying he would never merge with the Alliance, merged with the Alliance. Both the Alliance and the PC Party folded and out of the ashes was born the Conservative Party of Canada (note the loss of the word progressive). This newly minted party was lead by Stephen Harper (the current PM of Canada... so you can see where this is going).
2) The Liberals were caught in a very nasty wide ranging scandal. I won't bore you with the details but it was the kind of scandal that takes you off the top of the game and kicks you repeatedly in the nads until you slide from commanding Majority to a Minority government, to Opposition, to third party status. The Liberals are, arguably, still paying for this scandal 10 years on.


TL;DR
All of this to say that Canadian politics are very different from the US. The current Conservative government came to power only after the divided right was able to reign in it's most mind-boggling right wing members and allow the more centrist Conservatives a seat at the table. People in Canada have point out that Stephen Harper is a control freak who doesn't let his ministers speak to the press, etc. I would suggest that the continued success of his party is largely a result of this control. Back in the days of the Reform Party, it was one gaffe after another as the extreme right spoke their piece to the national audience (Canada at its heart is socially liberal and fiscally conservative - to have God mentioned in a stump speech was a rare thing, let alone talk of making abortion illegal, etc. -- the Reform Party often did these sort of things). Harper keeps a lid on the crazy fringe.

It's not clear whether the Liberals will recover their footing. They have bounced from bad leader to worse leader. They have faced a united right with a growing surge of the NDP (bolstered by their own shift to the centre and a large protest vote of those not interested in voting Liberal but aghast at the idea of voting conservative -- as well as the implosion of the Bloc Québécois, which I won't go into).

 

I'm not entirely sure the GOP feels a Presidential win is worth losing ground at the state and local levels, which they might do if they moderate their stance on right wing conservative issues. They're very successful at winning governor seats and state legislators with their current platform, even in some traditionally blue states - and that is where the big changes are taking place. They get enough of their representatives elected to Congress to stifle things at the federal level while states gain more autonomy and power - which is in essence, the conservative Republican view of the correct balance.

This may be the method to their madness.

 

The Tea Party types have done best where they can rely on redistricting -- for both state and federal legislative elections.

It is true they did well in governor races as part of the 2010 sweep, but can they get reelected state wide? Eight of the top ten governors with negative approval ratings are Republicans.

High profile Tea Party governors, particularly in blue or purple states, have significant deficits in public approval ratings - Rick Scott, FL (-20), Tom Corbett, PA (-14), Paul LePage , ME (-12), Rick Snyder, MI (-8). The only two above water in blue/purple states are Scott Walker, WI (who might run for president instead of reelection) and John Kasich, OH (vulnerable in more recent polls)

 

I think there are some real similarities between Tea and Reform. The differences are greater though. As you know, the US is not Canada. The kind of tolerance for the brand of conservatism that they both represented is not going to find a significant root in Canada. There just isn't enough Jesus in Canada to care about that kind of message. The brilliance of Harper is his ability, despite his ideology, to see this and squash it from within (let's face it, for all I despise him, he's a fiscal conservative first and social conservative second... he's a great strategist and has held onto power by force of will rather than strictly populist means).

The US is just a different beast. The GOP needs to embrace the workable parts of Tea and take the rest to the shed out back and do an old yeller on it.
--- merged: Aug 21, 2013 at 10:21 AM ---
And I am not *that* defensive... well, maybe a little.

 

I think that if you look at the GOP as a way of funneling campaign contributions to individuals, then their strategy makes sense. And if you take seriously their rhetoric on how people ought to function in a free market, then I don't know why you'd not view their strategy as one of wealth redistribution via the political process rather than one of seeking political power.

Isn't the idea that the Democrats carry the torch of the 'conservative' values of the late 90s so that the Republicans can thus be free to focus on converting white lower class disillusionment/anomie to cash money?

 

I think your second statement provides an answer of sorts to your first.

Isn't the ACA built on an idea floated by the Heritage Foundation in the 90s?