What's a Republican to do?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I am not American. That said, I know that if I were, I’d have been a pretty loyal Republican (voter).

Despite what you may have thought then, or believe now so many years later, I was a big fan of Ronald Reagan and surely would have supported him in 1980 and 1984. And, although I wasn’t quite as enamoured with George Bush the first as I was with Ronnie, I would have voted for GHB as well. In 1992, of course, I’d have gone for him again but whether I would have bothered to support the uninspiring Bob Dole in '96 is another matter. Bush II, sure, both in 2000 and 2004.

Then, it gets more interesting.

Simply because of his choice for VP, I doubt I would have voted for McCain in 2008. Beyond that, though, by 2008 it was already becoming apparent that the Republican party was seemingly beholden to a rather reactionary segment of its supporters, a segment with views and agendas far removed from the ideals and aspirations not just of the Republican Party, but of the USA itself. And so, at the end of the day, for the first time in my life I would have voted for the more liberal of two candidates. I would have gone for Obama. All of which brings us to now.

It seems that each day I become more appalled, and ever more saddened, by what seem to be common, recurring themes among many Republicans (whether expressed by candidates for office, party officials and spokespeople, or just plain old Republican voters). I see too many Republicans embracing and extolling positions and policies of ignorance, intolerance, and hypocrisy. It’s become a party of hate and fear, where dissent is treason, and notions of personal freedom blasphemous.

Freedom of speech is just fine so long as it doesn’t extend to my kids’ school ('cause we know what’s best for them and sure ain’t the gay lifestyle). And, “global warming” is just code to disguise an attack on American industry. Muslims simply don’t understand freedom; they just don’t get it, and would rather we all observed their laws and not those of this glorious nation. And now we hear they’d even ban football, what with the pigskin ball and all. Evolution? It’s not just false and misguided, it is an attack on ‘The Lord’ and his design. The government has no business in the lives of its citizens unless, of course, its to order and enforce the invasive testing of pregnant women considering an abortion. Likewise, the government should stay out of the health care ‘business’ but damn well better keep a tight rein on the rules governing healthy minds and marriage. But, especially this: freedom and liberty for all - so long as you’re a God-fearing, gun-toting, flag-waving, fag-hating, red-blooded, English-speaking, American.

I exaggerate, of course (and apologize if I have offended anyone). Still, my little screed serves to preface my question: What are erstwhile Republican supporters doing given this new Republican reality? Do they hold their nose and still pick the elephant? Wait things out? Look for a new party (maybe Green, or some Libertarian one)? Might they even conceivably vote for Barack Osama, er, Obama? I know that I, as a vicarious American, who most certainly would have been a life-long Republican voter, could not, and would not, vote Republican today.

2

Republicans sometimes say they won’t vote GOP, but the GOP candidate still got about 59 million votes in 2008, and will likely get 63-ish million in 2012.

I don’t think Mitt Romney is an idiot by any means (he has a JD/MBA from Harvard, among many other accomplishments). But he does have to pretend to be in order to cater to the dumbest/angriest 10% of the electorate in order to get elected both in the primary and the general election. Global warming is fake, Obama is a marxist, we have the best health care on earth and foreign citizens come here in droves because of it, we can balance the budget by minor discretionary spending cuts combined with massive supply side tax cuts, etc.

So in conclusion, I don’t know what choice republicans who identify more with new england republicans, Nixon or Eisenhower have to go. What I want to know is how the hell do the tea party republicans do it? The tea party is about 11% of the electorate. Liberals are about 15%, blacks are about 13%. Libertarians are about 15%. Yet nobody really cares what blacks, libertarians or liberals want. However the tea party are catered to like royalty. As a % of the electorate, they are no bigger than various other groups, yet they have far more clout. The GOP does not take the tea party for granted.

I don’t know how they do it. Maybe it is because their philosophy caters to the interests of wealthy industrialists, which makes them ‘media friendly’ and leads to tons of positive press coverage. Or the fact that they devote themselves to primary and general elections campaigns which intimidates politicians (but unions and liberals do that on the democratic side, and democrats still ignore liberals and unions). Maybe they just yell the loudest.

3

I am a Republican… and have never voted for a Republican for president. I have always voted for the candidate rather than the party. 20 years ago I voted about 2/3rds of the time for Republicans. Now I tend to split my vote mostly between Democrats and third party candidates.

4

I hate to have to inform of this, but you’re not a Republican anymore.

Sorry. But your statement is like me saying “I am a baby…I haven’t actually shit my diaper in over fifty years, and I graduated to solid foods about that long ago, but I consider myself to be a baby to this day.”

5

Until a few years ago I considered myself a small-l libertarian. But when the libertarian movement began aligning themselves with the Religious Right . . . who consider me a second-class citizen . . . it was more than I could take. I am now an unabashed Liberal, and don’t even feel the need to hold my nose when voting.

6

Is this thread satire?

7

Sure I am. I vote in Republican primaries. I participate in local politics. I agree with the party a bit more than I do the Dems. Despite what some of the far right want to believe there is no such thing as a RINO. If there were the Dems would have 80% of the US House and Senate. The tent may not be nearly as big as the Dems, but it is still big enough to hold me. And like it or not I have just as much of a voice in the party as any other single rank and file member (that is not much).

Likewise I still hold out hope that I can help the party adapt and change. That said, they are very close to losing me. Will I go Independent? Libertarian? Democratic?

8

I’m undeclared, probably a conservative liberal if someone really needed a label, but I’ve felt really sad about the Republican party lately as well. It’s almost as if they’re TRYING to screw themselves. Sorry, but that’s really what it looks like.

9

Run for Office.

10

You forget about the ® or (D) after the name, and vote for the least worst option offered you. From your OP that is clearly Obama. Not voting is itself a choice, and IMO is (or should be) repugnant to any citizen.

11

Insofar as this viewpoint extends to Muslims abroad, current events in the Middle East tend to support it.

That’s O.K. Karl, we’re starting to think of you as an honorary American. Sort of the anti-Sam Stone. :slight_smile:

12

It seems that the GOP started playing to the most extreme-right people who voted Republican – the Moral Majority/Christian Coalition, the people who are afraid of Communism, the racists, the “I’ve got mine” nouveau riche – and their reward was that these voters could most easily be motivated to get out the vote on Election Day.

Then we had this anti-gay, anti-choice, anti-gun control, “family values” Christian conservative culture war that kept becoming more pronounced with every election cycle, and Lee Atwater and Rush Limbaugh and Fox News came along and frightened and angered these voters and gave them a sense of both community and persecution. And the rhetoric got weirder and angrier, and I think some people went along with it just because they felt “this is my team, my family, and I don’t want to leave.”

My dad voted Republican all of his life until 2000. Now he and his wife are helping people get registered to vote in North Carolina and are big Obama supporters. Now some of that is just that stuff like abortion and gay rights were never things that had anything to do with his life, and he never thought about it, and some is that he has become much more socially liberal as he’s gotten older. He’s still a Christian, but he doesn’t think the world is only 6,000 years old. He didn’t like Clinton, but he recognized that Clinton is very smart and worked very hard to make America better. Bush came along, and he recognized that Bush was in no way prepared for the job of PotUS.

It’s like, conservatives have been trying so hard to get a “true conservative” into office, but they can’t agree on what that means, and since Reagan, it seems to me, their strategy is to get somebody kind of superficial and underprepared but charming and telegenic, and also someone who can be easily controlled by others, and then do whatever it takes to get this person into office: Reagan, George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, or else get somebody who isn’t so helpless but who is willing to smile and shake hands and follow orders: McCain and Romney.

Rush Limbaugh, Rupert Murdoch, and the big dogs on Wall Street have more power than elected officials. They are running themselves over a cliff and they don’t know what to do about it, except to get even nastier and sneakier about winning elections (turn your opponent’s greatest strengths into liabilities, play on people’s fears, and mess with the voting machines and the voter rolls if you have to). The ends justify the means.

I honestly don’t know if it is all going to collapse some day, or if the younger Democratic voters are going to take it back.

13

They say it started with Nixon’s “Southern Strategy,” was solidified with the deification of Reagan, and then went totally corrupt due to Lee Atwater and his protoge Karl Rove. But really, this all started with Barry Goldwater.

Nowasays everyone remembers him as this gruff but cool old grandpa who thought Vietnam was bullshit, told Nixon to resign, and had a radical tattoo. But here’s what he stood for when he mattered: while government shouldn’t hurt negroes by act of law, if people don’t want their kids to go to school with htem, or to sell their houses to them, or tend to weigh negroes’ fates harsher as jurors, etc, why, isn’t that a God-given right? Gosh, when you think of it, it only makes people worse to to force them to be better than they’re ready to be. That’s where this started.

The GOP used to be a bunch of small-minded elites who’d be sure to eventually do the right thing in the overall national interest: Thomas Dewey, Robert Taft, Everett Dirksen. But when they became brokers between the Big Money and the middle class it required a lot of legerdemain. Better to destroy all and rule the ashes than share.

14

Some great comments her. Much obliged for your insights and candor.

I wanted to add something I toyed with including in my OP but decided against: Who would have thunk it - the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt now represented by Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, and Sarah Palin. Sometimes the fruit does fall far from the tree.

15

I think the OP brings up a very valid point, I consider myself a Republican, but IMO they have as many bonehead ideas as Democrats. I’m a fiscal conservative and for smaller government, but I don’t want to turn those savings into a large war machine which is what Republicans are apt to do.

A third party candidate is certainly an option, but is really a waste of time in our two-party system.

I could hold my nose and vote for Romney or vote for Obama and hope it’s 4 more years of the same, not a new improved liberal Obama.

16

Mr. Obama will be saddled with a mixed Congress and won’t be as radical as many on the right fear, or as many on the left wish. He is essentially a centrist. If he had not been obstructed by the GOP’s rather scurrilous tactics, I imagine somethings would be different now, but I doubt that Mr. Obama would have confiscated guns, established death panels or handed our sovereignty to the Unites Nations. When those are talking points of your opposition, you have to imagine that the things that Mr. Obama would have promoted if given the chance would be considerably less revolutionary.

The USA voted for change. They got change. The GOP does not appear to actually have a vision for the future except to drastically tip the tables towards corporations and the plutocrats who allowed the economy to run up on the shoals. That is a significant failing and will probably cost Mr. Romney and the GOP’s leaders who support him to lose their bid for the presidency this autumn.

17

Lots of Republicans didn’t change, but the party did. I started in 1972 voting for Nixon, and never voted for a Democrat until 2000. That year it became apparent to me that Shrub was a moron (I was clearly right) and I never looked back. I changed my registration a few years later.
The Republican party used to have room for lots of opinions, but now anyone not adhering to strict orthodoxy gets tossed out, unless they are in a very liberal state. (And even then it is tough.) Someone like Romney has to toe the line or else be ignored. There is no room for important political discussions in the party any more. None of them are brave enough to tell Norquist to drop dead, which is not the party I used to be in.

Being an independent is a perfectly reasonable choice these days.

18

I voted Republican in every presidential election from 1988 through 2004, although in 2004 I had some reservations. Now I can’t imagine ever doing so again unless the party radically changes.

I’ve moved a bit to the left, to be sure… but man, that party has gone off the rails.

19

I’m Independent, but I voted for Republicans more often than Democrats up through Reagan. I’ve voted for a few Republicans since then - but generally down ticket - and not any for several years. I’d be happy to vote for a sane one, but haven’t had many opportunities.

My Dad was a Republican and is now a flaming Liberal - Newt pissed him off so bad he hasn’t looked back.

At some point you stop voting a party ticket - congrats, you are now a right leaning Independent. If at some point you find yourself voting left more often than right, you are now a left leaning Independent.

Your other option is to fight from within. The people I know in the Republican party say that’s very hard to do right now - don’t tow the tea party line and you are NOT WELCOME. But I know a few decent people who are trying - some of them quite powerful at least with the local party.