To stay viable in national politics, the Republican Party needs to rebrand itself. The current party is too easily caricatured as the “rich white guy” party, and some of it’s core positions are on the wrong side of social change. One path that could be promising is to move more centrist on the Right/Left axis, while also moving more Libertarian on the Libertarian/Authoritarian axis.
If the party’s core belief was “freedom”, I think they could capture a large number of Obama voters who are socially liberal, but not stereotypical “liberals” enamored of big government.
So, issues for the Republicans to compete with could be:
Free trade
Free labor: end the minimum wage, repeal the National Labor Relations Act and the Taft-Hatley Act.
End all federal subsidies to industry and agriculture, including price supports.
Continue to support Second Amendment rights, which the Democrats are weak on.
Reform of Social Security and Medicare to make them viable entities, and try to introduce free-market elements to them.
Immigration reform: we can all agree that the current system does not work, pursue a new one that provides more economic benefit to the nation.
Embrace the Ninth Amendment, and abide by it.
Fiscal responsibility: paying down the deficit and reducing spending, without confiscatory tax rates on the wealthy.
A state’s rights approach to other issues, such as same-sex marriage and marijuana, under Ninth Amendment grounds.
Abortion would have be surrendered on to keep the ideology coherent and to show a new embrace of women by the party.
Much like FDR co-opted the socialist movement in the '30s, the Republicans might be able to out-freedom the Democrats, while keeping a decent portion of their hardcore base. More Reagan, less George Bush. Rand Paul, Senator from my state of Kentucky, has advocated this as well.
Is it a viable approach? And other than Rand Paul, what other Republicans might champion it?
Rand Paul wouldn’t support the abortion or gay marriage provisions. The other ones are designed to help the Republicans become the party of the rich, not just the rich white men. Even then, the stance on immigration is slightly more protectionist than Reagan’s.
and that said, African Americans are unlikely to be rich in the first place (disproportionately less likely, in fact). So they’re quite likely to view attempts to cut minimum wage as wholly disadvantageous to their class, no matter how many times they’re drilled by Friedmanites that minimum wage laws are racist.
Surprisingly, the man has a point. I’m not seeing anything there that appeals to a group that currently votes Democrat but would switch if these policies were adopted.
The low-hanging fruit has got to be the Hispanic vote and appealing to their common interests (generally in the socio-religious area) while toning the anti-immigrant rhetoric waaaaaaaay down. It would indeed require a serious rebranding; the GOP have the mechanisms for it but not yet the necessary levels of self-awareness and empathy that would allow them to appeal to that demographic. Once they consistently stop talking about brown-skinned people (OMG ABC excepted, of course) as a bunch of freeloaders and illegals, they’ll start to make some headway.
On abortion, you are correct. Per this article, Paul is personall opposed to same-sex marriage, but believes it is a state matter under the Ninth Amendment.
Can you elaborate? How do these policies only benefit the rich?
Those Friedmanites are correct…again, it’s a matter of rebranding, spreading awareness and such.
They need an identity moving forward other than “the party that hates everyone.”
This, I think, is a good anecdotal example of at least a big part of why Obama dominated so immensely among minority voters (including the little-discussed but fast-growing population of Asian-Americans) and young voters. They (or we) don’t see all Republicans as racist, or most Republicans as racist, but they/we see the Republican party as the party that tolerates (or at best, weakly repudiates) racists and bigots as well as know-nothings and dinosaurs like Akin and Mourdock, because the party believes they’re at least a non-trivial part of their coalition.
It could change with a candidate like Christie who actually has a record of pushing back hard against the know-nothings, but I don’t think such a candidate would be able to survive the primaries.
The party can pander to Hannity and Rush Limbaugh and the like, or the party can have a good chance at significantly increasing their share of minority votes, but I don’t think it can do both.
This is never, ever going to be part of a Republican platform in any way, shape or form.
“confiscatory” as in “around the 70% top marginal rate paid from 1965 - 1981” or as in “anything above 0%”?
Not ever going to fly with Republicans. “state’s rights” sounds good when the states are likely to restrict freedom based on religious/moral grounds, but not so good when you realize that some states will expand freedom for things you don’t like.
Not ever, ever, ever going to be accepted by a very large percentage of Republicans. There is a significant percentage who, when they speak of “freedom” actually mean “freedom from any taxes”, but not “freedom for women.”
Free trade needs to be fair trade. Free trade is a euphemism for “let’s screw labor and engage in a race to the bottom!”
The minimum wage needs to be raised, not eliminated. We are not going to compete with slave labor by becoming slave owners.
Your proposals to eliminate the NLRB and Taft-Hartley are ill-advised and repulsive to a great many people.
The only people that give a flying fuck about (the Second Half of) The Second Amendment already vote Republican religously.
Social Security is viable throughout this decade and the next, only small adjustments in the payroll tax are needed (eliminating the ceiling). Bush wanted to introduce the market elements by investing the SS trust fund in the stock market, how do you think that would have panned out? Medicare would be more viable if we make minor changes, such as allowing it to bargain for drug prices.
Everybody agrees that immigration reform is needed, somehow I don’t think the Republicans would have anyone’s best interest at heart.
The Ninth seems to be an odd duck to hang your hat on, certainly I don’t see it as having much to do with states’ rights.
Same sex marriage is a basic human right, which should not be left to the whim of the backward states.
Supporting abortion would hardly make the GOP philosophy coherent.
Other than that, I’d say you’re off to a grand start there.
I see. I won’t debate the particular merits of the ideas, because the question was would centrist Democrats support them. Seems like a no.
Well, back to the drawing board. I shall look for other proposals from existing Republicans about the future of the party. We need a viable party of opposition, after all.
It really comes down to the Republican Party softening it’s stance on identity issues.
That’s all it would take.
A party that isn’t against Latino and Women’s rights while actively promoting a balanced budget could get someplace.
Note, though, that ‘balanced budget’ doesn’t mean cutting programs exclusively. It means making revenues equal outflows, or near enough to not matter.
The fact is that the most expensive programs in the federal budget are the enormously expensive ones. And any real attempt to cut their growth is going to do nothing but make sure that the other party wins Congressional majorities.
Your first item, for example, had an end to agricultural subsidies. I, honestly, would agree with you. But there are few ways that the Republican party could alienate a core demographic faster than to tell farmers, who are overwhelmingly rural, socially conservative and white “Hell, no, you’re cut off.”
The same, or a similar, thing would happen if big business subsidies and tax breaks were cut off. Except what would go away are campaign donations and that ain’t EVER going to be allowed to be threatened.
The simple fact is that the American people, in aggregate, want $1.40 worth of government action while paying $1.00 worth of taxes. Until there’s some way to finesse that simple fact it’ll be a bloodbath for any politician who tries to cut significantly OR raise revenue significantly.
The only thing in that list that would help Republicans is to pass Immigration reform. Notice i didn’t say go along with the President or Democrats plan, it will not help them one tiny bit to hand Obama a major victory like that. Specially if it looks like they had to be dragged into it, which it will if it is a Democrat plan. But they do control the House, which means they can pass their own plan, and as long as it is reasonable and contains a path to citizen ship, along with their own party wants like stronger border security and requiring english tests and fines/back taxes they can be seen as leading on the issue rather than reluctantly being dragged along.
The basic problem for the GOP is that they have become so anti-government that they have forgotten how to develop policies that actually use government to their advantage. For example, many of your suggestions–end the minimum wage, repeal the National Labor Relations Act, end all federal subsidies to industry and agriculture–are premised on what government should not be doing.
During the campaign, there was a lot of outcry on the Right that “Obamacare should be repealed”. Romney tried to soften that with “repeal and replace”, but the fact is most voters interpreted the “replace” part as a fig leaf because Republicans have utterly failed to engage the role of government in health care, other than to say there shouldn’t be any. Ditto their “reform” of Social Security and Medicare; the Dems could successfully argue that Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan would “end Medicare as we know it” because the general belief among voters is that the GOP does want to end Medicare as we know it. They don’t want to fix these things, they want them gone.
A sensible Republican rebranding would acknowldge the role of government in these and other programs that have become de facto expectations of the federal government. Ranting about the constitutionality of the 75-year-old New Deal is a failed strategy; ditto offering nothing other than lip-service to “preserving these programs for future generations” while actively proposing legislation that undermines them (this, IMO, is what deficit hawkery is all about: It’s an indirect way to attack and undermine government programs you just don’t like).
The Republican role should be to push back on the potential excesses of liberal government, and use government where necessary to promote conservative interests. This means accepting the parameters of the federal government as they exist today rather than fantasizing about what the founders intended. If you want to win the game, find a better way to play within the rules as they exist, rather than complaining they aren’t the rules that were in place 200 years ago.
Indeed, I feel like Republicans core message is often “The Government is the enemy, so vote for me!” It’s frankly a non-sequiter. Vote for you to what - become part of the government so you can become an enemy? :dubious:
I think it’s quite dumb to say it is only a matter of importance to the States, because there are significant Federal benefits to being married. Either get rid of all of those Federal benefits, or allow gay marriage on a national level. Nothing else really makes sense.
ETA: You could also create and pass a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Good luck with that.
The vast majority of the income to the wealthy is capital gains and carried interest, at 15%. Taxing capital gains and carried interest at the same rate as wage income is hardly confiscatory.
Conservatives oppose the right of states to regulate health insurance in their own state.
Seems to me it would be easier for the Republican Party to re-brand Obama. Just say “You know what, he’s our guy” would be their best bet. Think about how much Reagan would have loved what Obama has done:
Implemented the Heritage Foundation approach to health care reform
Gaddafi was killed and the US is not enmeshed in Libya
Bin Laden was killed and the US is getting out of Afghanistan
Government expenditures went up less than under any president since (I forget)
Dump the Tea Party, embrace Obama, and force the Democratic Party to split out a Liberal party to be the opposition.
I’ve always felt it was wacky for supposed defenders of freedom to rebrand themselves as defending freedom even while suppressing it
A restriction on gay marriage, whether enacted by the states or the feds, is NOT freedom. Individual states should NOT be allowed to ban gay marriage, no matter what. Its not a states right issue, this is a discrimination and civil rights issue. No state or local jurisdiction should ever be allowed to eliminate minority rights no matter what the majority believes. Until so-called defenders of freedom realize that their freedom to discriminate stops when they run up against my freedom to not be discriminated against, then they are fake freedom fighters and no friend of liberty