"Rebellion brewing" in GOP base

[drkitten]

I'd have an easier time taking this seriously if his lack of fiscal conservatism wasn't the cause of Specter losing his partys support.

The only problem with that is that Specter's "party" is demonstrably much less capable of winning elections; the latest national polls show that fewer than 25% of the population identifies as Republican -- this is a much worse showing even than on election day 2008.

A candidate who draws 100% of the Republican vote would (and no one else) would still lose (today) to a candidate who drew 40% of the non-Republican vote (and no one else).

The smaller and more tightly-wound the Republican party gets, the fewer votes they can actually deliver in a contested election.

 

[Beerina]

Strange, I thought most polls in the runup to the election were showing the economy as the number one issue, not Iraq.

Is it your contention that "the economy" was a "distant, distant" second to the Iraq war in the 2008 presidential election?

Correct, sir. Had Iraq went swimmingly, we, Obama would have had a much harder path to haul. That's why Bush's rating was "the lowest" of any president. Not because of the economy, which was a latecomer to the party. It didn't help, and certainly hurt. But the GOP were already being handed their hat by that time.

Who are the "movers and shakers" you mention as supporting the view that Iraq was the overriding issue of the election - and that this is the sole reason for the GOPs stinging defeat?

As it would be foolish to redesign your party because of the "economic problems", given they were not the reason the GOP took a wipe in this past election, we may conclude such posturing is for the media and whatnot. Like the car companies waiting for bad times to recede so they can get back to profitable giant cars, the GOP will just sit back and wait for the economy to recover, then tank again, and hope the timing is right for the next election, when the Iraq stuff will be forgotten, or will be seen as Obama's problem, 100%, by that time, if it's still around.

 

[drkitten]

This seems exactly right but is it all that bad for the Republican Party? In a good part of the country there is enough support for that kind (i.e. social conservative) of Republican Party that they will be able to compete or dominate congressional elections.

The problem is that the demographic trends are not looking good for that strategy. Evangelical Christianity has taken some hard knocks recently -- especially the hard-core Old Testament God-hates-fags style fire and brimstone evangelical Christianity. There are newly emerging pockets of evangelical Christian types, but they tend (oddly enough) to be more leftist, New Testaments types and they're not particularly friendly to the social-conservatives.

Add to that the fact that traditional Republican evangelical christianity does not play particularly nicely either with Hispanic Catholicism or with much of the Black Baptism. Basically, the "big tent" of evangelism has turned into a golf umbrella, and that needs to be fixed to make the strategy you outline viable.

And then they can win a few more seats in areas less favorable to them with some RINO types

The RINOs are leaving. The nutcases who control the primaries are driving them out. Witness Specter.

 

[ponderingturtle]

So I think my prediction of a Palin/Joe the Plumber ticket for 2012 seems likely.

 

[MattusMaximus]

But what are the basics for the Republican party? Fiscal conservatism? After 8 years of Bush, with 6 years of sympathetic Congress, that's a pretty hard sell. Lately, they are running as the pro torture, pro christianism party. And purging the ranks, all in the cause of ideological purity. The big tent has disappeared in favor of a faithful minority that cannot be too selective and exclusionary. The country needs a viable opposition party now. You can blame the Republicans for the extent that they are increasingly making themselves irrelevant.

Yep. With the hardcore religious righties in control of the GOP, you can bet they won't be relinquishing power without a major fight. I think this is just the beginning of the "purge of the unfaithful" from the GOP.

After all, they have God on their side...

 

[davefoc]

The problem is that the demographic trends are not looking good for that strategy. Evangelical Christianity has taken some hard knocks recently -- especially the hard-core Old Testament God-hates-fags style fire and brimstone evangelical Christianity. There are newly emerging pockets of evangelical Christian types, but they tend (oddly enough) to be more leftist, New Testaments types and they're not particularly friendly to the social-conservatives.

Add to that the fact that traditional Republican evangelical christianity does not play particularly nicely either with Hispanic Catholicism or with much of the Black Baptism. Basically, the "big tent" of evangelism has turned into a golf umbrella, and that needs to be fixed to make the strategy you outline viable.

The RINOs are leaving. The nutcases who control the primaries are driving them out. Witness Specter.

I don't disagree that there is something to what you say. It is a question of numbers and I am just not sure that the numbers for the Republicans are bad enough to cause any big change in Republican strategy.

The Republicans can still put together enough of a coalition to win a lot of elections. The coalition is considerably larger than just the extreme social conservatives. I think the coalition consists roughly of people like this:

1. Hyper patriots who tend to believe that their country is always right and who favor almost unlimited military spending.
2. Fiscal conservatives who either have a realistic view of the degree that cronyism and fiscal irresponsibility dominates the Republican Party and just think the Democrats will be worse or fiscal conservatives who just believe the Republican patter about their fiscally conservative ways.
3. People swayed by the various Republican sycophant media, most notably Fox News, that maintain an almost constant buzz of anti-Democrat stories. The WSJ has shifted in the direction of Republican sycophant media and I notice that their newspaper is the only national publication to experience an uptick in circulation.
4. People with strong Israeli hawk views. My sense of it is that this is a major driver for most of the intense Republican partisans that participate in this forum.

 

[MattusMaximus]

The RINOs are leaving. The nutcases who control the primaries are driving them out. Witness Specter.

I wonder how long until the right-wingers start to go after Senators Olympia Snowe & Susan Collins of Maine? After all, they also voted for Obama's stimulus package.

 

[MattusMaximus]

I don't disagree that there is something to what you say. It is a question of numbers and I am just not sure that the numbers for the Republicans are bad enough to cause any big change in Republican strategy.

The Republicans can still put together enough of a coalition to win a lot of elections. The coalition is considerably larger than just the extreme social conservatives. I think the coalition consists roughly of people like this:

1. Hyper patriots who tend to believe that their country is always right and who favor almost unlimited military spending.
2. Fiscal conservatives who either have a realistic view of the degree that cronyism and fiscal irresponsibility dominates the Republican Party and just think the Democrats will be worse or fiscal conservatives who just believe the Republican patter about their fiscally conservative ways.
3. People swayed by the various Republican sycophant media, most notably Fox News, that maintain an almost constant buzz of anti-Democrat stories. The WSJ has shifted in the direction of Republican sycophant media and I notice that their newspaper is the only national publication to experience an uptick in circulation.
4. People with strong Israeli hawk views. My sense of it is that this is a major driver for most of the intense Republican partisans that participate in this forum.

The problem with the scenario you outline is that most of the people in the GOP base fall into all three of the highlighted categories. So you basically have two sections of the GOP - the relatively sensible fiscally conservative branch and the whackadoodle socially-conservative, religious right, hyper-"patriotic" nationalist types. And it is the latter group who forms the vast majority of the GOP base.

That's their main problem... because the rest of us, correctly I think, view those folks as frakkin' batcrap crazy.

 

[drkitten]

I wonder how long until the right-wingers start to go after Senators Olympia Snowe & Susan Collins of Maine? After all, they also voted for Obama's stimulus package.

Snowe just published an Op-Ed in the NYT discussing Specter.

I read it as a warning shot at RNC.

 

[dudalb]

I wonder how long until the right-wingers start to go after Senators Olympia Snowe & Susan Collins of Maine? After all, they also voted for Obama's stimulus package.

David Gergen on CNN mentioned that they are probably the next targets in the purge. Gergen is now treating the GOP like a very sick patient that just refuses to do what is necessary for it to get well.

Davefoc I really think overstimates the power of the GOP to make a comeback as a hard right party. He overlooks the demographics which are not favorable to the GOP. The big news in the last election was how well the Dems did in the Midwest and ,for the first time, made inroads in the West. The GOP is on the verge of being pretty much a regional party..a lot like the Democrats where for most of the last half of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th.

 

[Tricky]

So I think my prediction of a Palin/Joe the Plumber ticket for 2012 seems likely.

The GOP may be weak, but I don't think they've become suicidal.

 

[dudalb]

The problem with the scenario you outline is that most of the people in the GOP base fall into all three of the highlighted categories. So you basically have two sections of the GOP - the relatively sensible fiscally conservative branch and the whackadoodle socially-conservative, religious right, hyper-"patriotic" nationalist types. And it is the latter group who forms the vast majority of the GOP base.

That's their main problem... because the rest of us, correctly I think, view those folks as frakkin' batcrap crazy.

Of davefoc four parts of the party, I think the first might vote for a Democrat under the right circumstances..Webb comes to mind. And the Dems can make inroads if they keep the more extreme left of the party under control,since it has a tendacy to ridicule patriotrism at times..not smart.
And I don't think there are going to be massive cuts in Defense spending anytime soon.
3 and 4 are hopeless,however.

 

[Dr Adequate]

As it would be foolish to redesign your party because of the "economic problems", given they were not the reason the GOP took a wipe in this past election ...

Well, you know, that's not what the voters said.

 

[Sword_Of_Truth]

If a secular republican party is going to be taken seriously by the electorate, they need to be able to say with a straight face that they are a party of low taxes and small government and a real alternative and opposition to Obama style big government nanny-statism.

As the senators who broke ranks and voted for porkulus, Specter, Snowe and Collins are indeed the ones who have to go.

That so many here are painting this as a religiously motivated purge says more about your own biases than what the Republicans need to do to get back on top.

 

[davefoc]

...

Davefoc I really think overestimates the power of the GOP to make a comeback as a hard right party. He overlooks the demographics which are not favorable to the GOP. The big news in the last election was how well the Dems did in the Midwest and ,for the first time, made inroads in the West. The GOP is on the verge of being pretty much a regional party..a lot like the Democrats where for most of the last half of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th.

I would like to think you're right. I am afraid of my biases along this line clouding my vision a bit though.

I am amazed at the degree that Fox News functions as a partisan news outlet and it has a tremendous following. Combining this with Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, Medved, etc on the radio produces an enormous number of votes for the GOP and a strong reluctance to change when their media friends are telling them how great they are and how terrible the Democrats are all the time.

It also seems that while fundamentalist religious ideas about things like evolution might be on the overall decline there is a tendency for people who hold those kind of views to more strongly identify with the Republican Party so they form a base of consistently Republican voters.

And it seems like it is easy to overestimate the significance of the Democratic victory in the last election.

McCain got 47% of the vote. That's a lot given that he was following on the heels of easily the worst president of my life, a developing recession, a disastrous Iraq war and a strange vice presidential choice. And McCain was old in appearance and at times in behavior and he had dumped a sick wife for a hot, rich babe. The only factor that I see that cut against Obama a bit was that he was black, but in net that may not have had much effect. The increased participation by black voters might have overcome the we-won't-vote-for-a-black-guy-no-matter-what group. So if Republicans can get 47% of the vote in those circumstances I'm far from sure that they are going to see much of a need to make any major strategic changes.

And to MattusMaximus:
I agree there is a lot of overlap between those groups. It is interesting the way groups tend to form ideas on disparate things in similar ways. It is not always clear that the issues are related by more than they are the views of a group that they identify with.

 

[dudalb]

am amazed at the degree that Fox News functions as a partisan news outlet and it has a tremendous following. Combining this with Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, Medved, etc on the radio produces an enormous number of votes for the GOP and a strong reluctance to change when their media friends are telling them how great they are and how terrible the Democrats are all the time.

Fox News preaches to the converted. The people who are the diehard FOxNews fans are not going to vote for a democrat anyway.
And if it keeps on going the way it is, MSNBC will soon be a Left version of Fox news, so it balances out
ANd it is not like biased news is anything new. At times you really do strike me as very naieve if you are shocked by the idea of a news source that is biased.

 

[aerosolben]

I wonder how long until the right-wingers start to go after Senators Olympia Snowe & Susan Collins of Maine? After all, they also voted for Obama's stimulus package.

Specter is one thing - he's become increasingly unpopular with his own constituents and probably would be on the outs in 2010 regardless, and has a perception as a loose cannon. Snowe and Collins, OTOH, are wildly popular, steadfastly moderate, and will almost certainly remain keep seats for the foreseeable future, independent of their party affiliation or the success of the stimulus package.

The Republican party would alienate Maine for a long time (and probably much of the rest of New England as well - more then they've done already, at any rate). Frankly, I don't even know how they'd do it anyway.

 

[shecky]

If a secular republican party is going to be taken seriously by the electorate, they need to be able to say with a straight face that they are a party of low taxes and small government and a real alternative and opposition to Obama style big government nanny-statism.

As the senators who broke ranks and voted for porkulus, Specter, Snowe and Collins are indeed the ones who have to go.

That so many here are painting this as a religiously motivated purge says more about your own biases than what the Republicans need to do to get back on top.

The thing is that no GOP politician on the national level has been a serious fiscal/small government conservative since... well, since Barry Goldwater. Hollering about porkulus and smaller government increasingly only fools those who have been fooling themselves.

Doubt it if you may, but the religious right has a stranglehold on the GOP. Stuff like this is happening way too much for anyone to deny it:

[Civil union-supporting UT GOP] Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.’s appearance at a Michigan county Republican Party event was scrapped this week after the county chairwoman said that hosting the moderate Utah governor would mean abandoning the party’s conservative principles. Kent County Republican Party Chairwoman Joanne Voorhees abruptly canceled the party fundraiser scheduled for Saturday.

You simply don't get that kind of crazy by being secular.

 

[lomiller]

2. Fiscal conservatives...

There are few, if any, true fiscal conservatives left in the republican party. They have been replaced with "tax cutters" who refuse to say what spending they will cut and invariably want to spend more money on very big ticket items like defence and homeland security.

The true fiscal conservatives, the ones that say things like "if you want to spend that money show me how you are going to pay for it first" are all democrats these days. It's a little difficult to judge where Obama is relative to these dems because that's a policy that generaly needs to be suspended in times of emergancy so the immediate crisis can be dealt with first.

 

[Brainster]

Wow.

First of all, you're mistaking a statement by one of Obama's advisors for one by Obama himself.

Second, you're completely ignoring the much larger and nuanced context in which Romer placed that context. What killed McCain was not the fact that he was optimistic (hell, Obama ran on optimism), but his apparently thoughtless optimism that looked and sounded like he was completely unaware of the economic disaster that was happening all around him.

And third, you're completely ignoring the fact that, economically, things are actually doing much better now then they were last September; the stock market is moving up, leading indicators are improving, and there is a strong consensus among professional economists that the economy will be in recovery within six to nine months. At the time McCain made his statements, Merril Lynch had been forced into a shotgun merger and Lehman Brothers had filed for the largest bankruptcy in US history less than twenty-four hours before he made his Polyanna-ish statement.

Read the statement by Romer again and tell me what applies now that didn't apply in September:

Of course, the fundamentals are sound," Romer said on Meet the Press, "in the sense that the American workers are sound. We have a good capital stock, we have good technology. We know that, temporarily, we're in a mess, right? We have seen huge job loss, we've seen very large falls in GDP. Certainly in the short run, we're in a bad situation.

Excepting of course the fact that we had not seen huge job loss, and we had not seen very large falls in GDP. By every possible measure the economy is much worse off today that it was in September. The Dow? Was at 10,917 after the fall of Lehman and Merrill.

In fact, McCain's statement was true, just as Romer's statement essentially is true. That Obama was able to capitalize on it politically doesn't change that basic fact.