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Illinois Nazi Wins GOP Nomination...

They allowed their party name to be implicated in an ideology that in theory they do not endorse. This gives observers the impression that they are moving towards, or at least supporting, these views.

Eta: in practical terms, you are right and a sophisticated observer would get what happened. But branding is a real thing, and enough of it will give credence to the belief that Republicans are closet nazis.

In the UK, people have been expelled from political parties for bringing them into disrepute. As long as there is due process, I can't see why that can't work in the US.
 
Look, the President convinced millions of voters that he was fit to best serve as President.

Donald...J...tapdancing...Trump.

He is really in the Oval Office. This is not a joke. I am done with hyper polarizing politics.

And he has a history of embracing the very groups he was being called on to condemn after Charlottesville. Also if you paid attention he is back to saying that there are a lot of good people who just happen to be white supremacists.

I get it you don't care, but some do.

How can we try to get rid of polarizing politics when you have the party of Trump on one side? I guess we can all join with the president in attacking uppity athletes who do any kind of political statement.
 
In the UK, people have been expelled from political parties for bringing them into disrepute. As long as there is due process, I can't see why that can't work in the US.

Because you have more political parties than we do. In the US everyone who registers as a democrat is a democrat and everyone who registers as a republican is a republican. Look at out President, he was never involved in the Republican party in any serious fashion until he became president.

So it isn't the party controlling these things as much, hence things like primaries to decide who will represent the republican party in the next election. The voters chose the nazi.
 
This wasn't a rightward move by the Republicans, though. This was simply not bothering to contest a primary election in a district where they weren't going to contest the general election.

Did they have enough time to promote a reasonable Republican with a reasonable chance of winning?

What I meant to say is that the Democratic incumbent already covers the moderate right sector of the electorate, so a more extreme candidate was a natural ... and Jones came to fill a void.

Anyway I want to believe Jones will manage to get some 20 or even 30% of the votes. In the current political environments, he would have to be a total cretin to fail to achieve that goal.
 
In the UK, people have been expelled from political parties for bringing them into disrepute. As long as there is due process, I can't see why that can't work in the US.

I've heard of that, a vote of no confidence, I think? I gather that the American system assumes that it would create instability, with controlling parties voting out their opposition. Looking at the treatment of the Clintons, it certainly doesn't seem implausible that they might do just that.
 
Does anyone know why US political parties can't kick people out? Noted Klansmen David Duke has run for office as both a dem, until the late 80s when he switched to the reps. Neither party ever kicked him out. It was a big enough problem in the late 80s and early 90s that the GOP would have if they could.

Also, Trump thinks there are "very fine people" on both sides, not good people. Duh.

There's also footage of trump condemning duke and the Klan when Duke make his first big media splash. So either Trump is demented and forgot the Klan existed or he's blatantly pandering to racists(I'm still not convinced he cares about race except for votes and or profit, not that that would be better in some way.)
 
Does anyone know why US political parties can't kick people out? Noted Klansmen David Duke has run for office as both a dem, until the late 80s when he switched to the reps. Neither party ever kicked him out. It was a big enough problem in the late 80s and early 90s that the GOP would have if they could.

Also, Trump thinks there are "very fine people" on both sides, not good people. Duh.

There's also footage of trump condemning duke and the Klan when Duke make his first big media splash. So either Trump is demented and forgot the Klan existed or he's blatantly pandering to racists(I'm still not convinced he cares about race except for votes and or profit, not that that would be better in some way.)

You forgot senile as an option. He might have no idea who anyone is anymore broadly speaking.
 
I've heard of that, a vote of no confidence, I think? I gather that the American system assumes that it would create instability, with controlling parties voting out their opposition. Looking at the treatment of the Clintons, it certainly doesn't seem implausible that they might do just that.

No, that is where parliament decides it doesn't want the government, and is quite a high hurdle to overcome.

I was talking about internal party matters.

Face it, even the BNP expelled their former leader.
 
Did they have enough time to promote a reasonable Republican with a reasonable chance of winning?
It's an overwhelmingly Democratic district. The Republicans don't really have the votes to win the general election. Why would they want to waste time and money on an empty gesture?

What I meant to say is that the Democratic incumbent already covers the moderate right sector of the electorate, so a more extreme candidate was a natural ... and Jones came to fill a void.
The only void was the party not bothering to put forward a candidate for an election they wouldn't win anyway. Jones was not a "more extreme" candidate. Just a vanity candidate.
 
And he has a history of embracing the very groups he was being called on to condemn after Charlottesville. Also if you paid attention he is back to saying that there are a lot of good people who just happen to be white supremacists.

I get it you don't care, but some do.
How can we try to get rid of polarizing politics when you have the party of Trump on one side? I guess we can all join with the president in attacking uppity athletes who do any kind of political statement.

You couldn't be more wrong. The President is in office because of hyperpolarizing, and i care a great deal. The more we polarize, the worse it will likely become, till we have no sensible choices left. Of all the people on God's green footstool, we have Donald Trump serving as our Chief Executive. We are at the extreme of silliness. I'm dialing down the rhetoric and will do my part to drag things back to discussion of reasonable candidates, positions, etc
 
Are you comfortable with Trump's encouragement of bigotry?

Dudalb's point isn't that the GOP is powerless, it's that the party of Lincoln (or even Reagan) is now the party of Putin.

Reagan is turning over in his grave at what the GOP has become.
 
You couldn't be more wrong. The President is in office because of hyperpolarizing, and i care a great deal. The more we polarize, the worse it will likely become, till we have no sensible choices left. Of all the people on God's green footstool, we have Donald Trump serving as our Chief Executive. We are at the extreme of silliness. I'm dialing down the rhetoric and will do my part to drag things back to discussion of reasonable candidates, positions, etc

And dialing down the rhetoric means we have to take their alternate facts seriously and stop using reality as our guide.
 
You couldn't be more wrong. The President is in office because of hyperpolarizing, and i care a great deal. The more we polarize, the worse it will likely become, till we have no sensible choices left. Of all the people on God's green footstool, we have Donald Trump serving as our Chief Executive. We are at the extreme of silliness. I'm dialing down the rhetoric and will do my part to drag things back to discussion of reasonable candidates, positions, etc

One of my real fears is that the Progressive Wing of the Democratic Party..which is showing every sign of becoming a "Tea Party Of The Left"..
will decide that over the top rhetoric and Trump style hyperolarizing is what works,and we will be treated to what amounts to a Left Wing Bizarro version of Trumpism. Some of the progressives are already using the term "DINO"..Democrat In Name Only ..to describe anybody more centrists or moderate then them.
At which point I will actively work for a viable Third Party, to be made of both Ex Democrats and Ex Republicans who have had it with the hard line ideolgues on both sides of the isle.
 
From what I have read, the Neo Nazi had a history of trying to get the GOP nod in that district, and the Illinois GOP knew it,and failed to act. Even if there is some logic to not wasting resources in a district where you have little chance to win,this Illinois distrect was one of the exceptions where they should have just paid the bills and recruited somebody to run against him. The Illinois GOP failed to do this,and that is why many in the National GOP Have a low opinion of the Illinois GOP leadership at the moment.
And, sadly, a lot of those 20'000 people just voted for the guy because he was a Republican,without even inquiring about him. It's the Mickey Mouse syndrome at work.
 
And dialing down the rhetoric means we have to take their alternate facts seriously and stop using reality as our guide.

Not at all. The reality we can take as our guide can be a reasonable one

Eta: you actually just gave a great example of leaping to the extreme, BTW
 
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Does anyone know why US political parties can't kick people out?
They can kick people out, though. Here's how it works:

  1. All the people who want to represent their party for a political office announce their intentions and describe their platforms.
  2. The party holds a primary election, in which all the voters registered with the party cast their vote for whichever candidate they think best represents them for that office.
  3. The winner of that vote becomes the party's candidate to represent them against candidates from other parties in the general election
  4. In scenarios where the party does not care to contest the general election, they may decide not to pursue or promote anyone for the primary election.
  5. Since the primary election happens anyway, there's an opportunity for any old jackass to get enough protest/troll/ignorant votes to win the primary and become the party's "representative" candidate. This doesn't really matter, though, since they're going to lose the general anyway.
  6. The national party can't tell state and local parties who's allowed to compete in their local primaries. And the national party can't contradict the results of a local primary election.

Basically what it boils down to is that each local party is an independent organization, and they conduct a vote of their members to decide which self-styled "republican" gets to represent them in the general election (and in office if they win).

There are obvious problems with this arrangement, but the perfect is the enemy of the good as they say. I'd be very interested in any improvements you might think to suggest.
 

I don't see how this is not obvious. It isn't about this district, which was going to go to the Democrat in November anyways. It is about public relations, and image. It is about how the Democrats can now beat the Republicans over the head with this because, as should be obvious from this thread, it looks really bad. It doesn't matter what the details are, just like the average primary voter didn't bother to worry about whether they were voting for a Nazi, the average fence-sitter isn't going to bother to look into the details of this either. Instead they are going to be targeted with ads pointing to this Nazi as representative of the Republican party. This can affect other races. Races where the Republicans are more competitive, and are running candidates they hope will win.

That is why the Illinois GOP should have made sure to have a real candidate for the primary.
 
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