I would really love to believe this, but I don’t. Romney came very close to winning. And we are only four years out of Bush/Cheney. Conservatism is as strong or stronger than it ever was.
Attitudes toward gay civil rights have changed an amazing amount in 8 years.
And this was what the white establishment could do against a black guy in a weak economy.
Imagine 2016, when the Democratic nominee is probably white, and the economy’s better.
That’s a remarkably dour outlook, and I don’t see how you can support it. As strong or stronger than in '84, when Reagan won by 18 points and carried 49 states? Since the '80s, the Republican candidate for president has carried the popular vote just once, and that was an incumbent president (Bush) in wartime, who got 50.7% and 286 electoral votes (also the most *electoral *votes a Republican has gotten since the '80s).
I think Conservatives definitely represented themselves stronger than ever. I think that in the 2008 elections Republican supporters were half asleep not taking it so seriously with not much to worry about (a black president? that will never happen.. NEVERRRRRR… and with the statistics showing both candidates at basically half and half they thought the battle was close or not worth fretting over. With this election I think EVERYONE that hated OBAMA showed up even if they didn’t like Romney and that’s why it even came as close as it did… and they still lost… hehe beautiful.
First you’ll have to show your photo ID.
No offense, but you need to take a step back and understand that this idea is why republicans lost. Pride came before last night’s fall. The more republicans circle the wagon and convince themselves they are OK, the more irrevelent they become.
I thought the same thing. Which is encouraging for the GOP…embrace minorities and women and they will become Bill O’Reilly
Or until 2014 when we have another transformational election cycle.
I understand how progressive values seem to currently be trending to become the standard, but every few years we seem to have a chorus of people saying “____ is a dying party! No way they survive. Their values have tarnished America for the last time!” But sure enough, give it 2-6 years, and things swing back the other way.
I hope I’m wrong, but these guys have too much money behind them to stay this stupid for long. They’ll figure out how to get their agenda out there somehow, some way, some tactical shift. Maybe in 2014, maybe in 2016, maybe in 2018, but it’ll happen. It always does.
Bill OReilly and the Republicans…heck most dems don’t understand it either: the 1%'s money is not their money. The US’s economy is set up in such a way that funnels all the money to the rich. They literally have done nothing for it other than show up and screw people over. What the government is doing is giving the money back to the people who make it, earn it and deserve it. Not the 1% thieves who steal it.
Hey asshole bossman/slave driver, if you don’t want to pay me properly, I will elect people who will take it from your evil claws. We aren’t taking anything, we are stopping you from stealing our money.
*Lunatic fringe
In the twilight’s last gleaming
This is open season
But you won’t get too far
'Cause you gotta blame someone
For your own confusion
But I’m on guard this time
Against your final solution
We can hear you coming
No you’re not going to win this time
We can hear the footsteps
Out along the walkway
Lunatic fringe
We all know you’re out there
Can you feel the resistance?
Can you feel the thunder?*
There’s a HUGE difference between current attitudes about things like what the proper tax rate is and what amount of spending the government should do, and issues like whether it’s ok to be gay and if a woman’s employer should decide if she can use birth control.
Do you honestly think that in the next 15-20 years the nation is going to swing back and we’ll see a trend of re-banning gay marriage? Or that we went too far and a woman’s decisions about birth control are best left to the corporation that employs her?
For the record, it’s not that the Republican party is dying. The hateful old people who are clinging to their “traditional America” are literally dying, of things like heart disease and strokes. They’re being replaced by young people who’re more likely to be minorities and over the next couple decades there’s basically 0% chance that we’re going to decide en mass that homosexuality really is a sin, drugs are our worst problem, and women shouldn’t control their own healthcare decisions.
Dour? Perhaps. But we ignore the current political climate at our own peril.
People are making comments that the Republicans are asleep at the switch and are overly confident about winning, and that’s why they lost. But that’s exactly what we’re doing in this thread. By saying “ha ha, the Republicans are totally irrelevant now and we don’t need to worry about them ever again”, we’re setting ourselves up for a nasty surprise.
There are still *racial *problems in this country that ebb and flow at different times. You don’t think there will be gender and sexual orientation problems that ebb and flow at different times too, from now until eternity? And yes, I can see a trend of re-banning gay marriage. It’s not going to magically cease being an issue with some people. And I never would have thought there’d be a fight to go backwards on birth control, but there is.
Cockiness that our side has won some sort of permanent victory is what ultimately sets us up for regression. Look at labor in Wisconsin. The birthplace of public sector unions. Who would ever have thought that such a stronghold of labor would suffer such massive setbacks at the hands of conservatives? Complacency and cockiness.
“Never happen here. We’ve moved beyond it.” Famous last words. Everything happens in a cycle.
No one is saying this. It wasn’t hard to divine that the Republican strategy in this election depended on winning a lot of the white vote. They succeeded in doing that, but still lost by a considerable margin, and given demographics, if they stick with that strategy they will lose again in 2016, probably by an even larger margin.
I don’t doubt there are smart leaders in the GOP who recognize this problem exactly. The question is, will they be able to overcome the O’Reillys and Limbaughs who base the reasoning for the loss on a thinly veiled racism? Moreover can they convince the money men like the Kochs and Adelson; a tall order since the former invented the Tea Party and the other seems gullible for the latest lunacy of Newt Gingrich.
I believe that, ultimately, the GOP will re-invent themselves to me more diverse; my guess is they will suddenly become pro-immigration over the next 4 years and try and get out in front of Obama on this issue. The Tea Party will certainly squawk, but if the strategy can be sold to business interests (who would probably like the idea of legitimizing a new pool of cheap labor), the current GOP leadership can ride it out and make some electoral inroads with Hispanics. Purging the party of the gay-hate would be another smart move; there’s just no way this social issue is as divisive as abortion, so I don’t believe the evangelicals would revolt that badly over the change. I guarantee if they sincerely made these changes to their party platform, they would turn Florida into a reliable red state and at least get Colorado and maybe New Mexico leaning red again.
yes, exactly.
Romney didn’t lose by NEARLY enough for everyone to relax and say we won’t go back.
I know this has been said before but were I in charge of the Republican party I’d be trying to figure out how to make the party more palatable to Hispanics. They’re now the largest minority in America and, to paraphrase the guy I just saw on television, they’re generally conservative on family, on religion, on social issues. But, said the Guy, “But they don’t want us.”
They’ve got four years to change that. If they can mute the racist narrative in the party and the anti-immigration stuff while putting up (to pick the obvious choice) Rubio in 2016, they might stand to gain some ground again.
But they won’t.
Nominating Rubio to pander to the Latino vote is like nominating Palin to get women voters.
For once bilious Bill-O is right. People do want things. (It’s a human thing; he wouldn’t understand.)
Yeah, like food, a roof over their heads, education, safe streets, equality, the right to vote–we must join with Bill to stop these greedy maniacs!!!
I am aware. But what are their other options?