The Tea Party’s position (and Der’s) would make sense under a parliamentary system or under proportional representation. Your coalition supports you; your opponents critique. But our system assumes that Congress will keep the median voter in mind and tack towards the center. That worked for a while. But then we added primaries to the mix and after a couple of decades, Republican Congressfolk feared being primaried more than losing the general election. Oddly enough, the effect has been much less intense among Democrats. (Cite fwiw: http://voteview.com/images/polar_house_means.jpg
Cite2: http://voteview.com/blog/?p=494 ).
If we had parties choose their candidates with an eye towards the general election, the system might work. But we don’t. And Americans love their primaries: they are thought to be democratic. I say we should either move away from winner-take-all voting or go back to smoke filled rooms. But both options are currently unthinkable.
Anyway with regards to the OP, I think professional pols are pretty saavy, so Democrats will be pro-life or pro-choice depending upon the makeup of their electoral district. Republicans face litmus tests, so they have less flexibility in general.
I’m not sure what you mean. If you refer to the fact that they want to see their particular beliefs implemented rather than just voting for politicians who ignore them, then your insult fails since that’s one of the few areas where they make sense. Their problem is that they are ignorant, evil and stupid, so the beliefs they are pushing are disastrous.
Honestly though, if I was talking like a left wing version of a Tea Partier, I’d be talking about how the whites need to be sent back to Australia where they came from, how the military shouldn’t be in charge of the Superbowl, and how the Republicans are secretly working for the Pope as tools in his plan to take over the US.
Der: Dems should run conservatives in conservative districts. Liberals should clip the wings of conserva-dems in centrist or liberal ones. Specifically, it makes sense to eject Lieberman of Connecticut. Ben Nelson, OTOH, was an asset to the party since Nebraska was likely to go with the GOP anyway.
Tea Partiers apply their loony purity tests to everyone. There are 2 problems with that, a) they are loony, b) they are electorally naive. The only reason it works is that the Republicans have iron party discipline and the Dems suck at conveying the nuttiness of, say, the Ryan budget proposals. Phasing out Medicare isn’t especially popular, partly because it’s a really bad idea.
There’s no point, since you’ll just get “Democrats” who’ll side with the Republicans and do their best to sabotage the rest of the Democratic Party. The Democrats don’t have the kind of party discipline that the Republicans have, and they are already fairly right wing and a far more “big tent” party than the Republicans; you can’t get significantly more conservative than mainstream Democrats without essentially being a Republican. Nor are such people desirable regardless of party; a conservative politician is going to be both an extremist and amoral, because American conservatism is extreme and amoral.
I don’t think they’re right but if you could magically transfer an unwanted fetus into a test tube for the rest of their gestation, I don’t know that they would universally oppose the idea. I am well aware that SOME of them are trying to punish women for having sex but that is like calling ALL tea partiers racist. Only some of them are, the rest are just tolerant of those who are.
So trying to talk you down from a hysterical position makes ME sound hysterical?
Like I said, I’m pro-choice in the first trimester and get steadily more anti-abortion as the pregnancy proceeds past the first trimester.
I’m not trying to insult you but you don’t write that coherently. Like English is not your first language or something.
Pro-birth? Pro-birth would imply that they would support prenatal care, do you think they support universal pre-natal care?
THIS!!!
When you look at what Republicans have been doing with their legislative control of state houses and the house of representatives and you look at the sort of amendments they have been introducing into legislation, its mostly abortion/gay marriage related.
When the hell did this happen? When the hell did Bennett and Hatch become “not conservative enough”?
I was listening to Coburn a few weeks ago and he sounded rational and I can remember a time only a few years ago when he sounded like a nutjob. I suppose everything is relative.
There used to be such a thing as a reasonable conservative in politics and John Mace has always struck me as reasonable. If more Republicans were like him, I don’t know who I would have voted for the last 3 elections. But thats not where the conservatives are today.
And? So what? Saying that you can’t criticize people unless they are all identical is just a way of saying you can’t criticize them at all. And going along with and supporting bigots is just as bad as being a bigot; the distinction is invisible to the victims.
Nonsense; they don’t care if the fetus is dead, much less healthy. Even if it’s dead, they just want to force the woman to go full term and give birth because that maximizes her suffering and humiliation.
You cannot compromise with the present Republican party. The Democrats keep trying, and it keeps having predictably disastrous results. Compromise requires two sides, not for just one side to constantly cave in. The Republicans are not the loyal opposition, they are not reasonable; they will settle for nothing less than everything they want, and are willing to wreck the country in the process.
Perhaps you don’t understand me because I don’t sound coherent to you,There are others who do. Pro-Birth can just mean, once a child is born then too many who call them selves “Pro-Life” care nothing, or little, about the child’s welfare once born. Just want to push their beliefs on other’s.They seem to be the ones who do not want to pay the taxes necessary to support the born child to adulthood,nor want to pay the medical cost etc. to make sure the born child is taken care of,and are against birth control; perhaps you are not one of them, but I personally know several who complain about people who can’t care for their born children, and what they call welfare moms.
The OP isn’t coming back so I guess we’ll never know what he meant by “moderate on abortion”, but since his opening premise contained the falsehood the Democrats were being kicked out of the party right and left for holding the wrong views on abortion, I can only assume that his definition of “moderate on abortion” was equally defective and nonsensical.
Perhaps you don’t understand me because I don’t sound coherent to you,There are others who do. Pro-Birth can just mean, once a child is born then too many who call them selves “Pro-Life” care nothing, or little, about the child’s welfare once born. Just want to push their beliefs on other’s.They seem to be the ones who do not want to pay the taxes necessary to suppot the born child to adulthood,nor want to pay the medical cost etc. to make sure the born child is taken care of,and are against birth control; perhaps you are not one of them, but I personally know several who complain about people who don’t care for their born children, and what they call welfare moms.
This doesn’t have to be true, though. There are Blue Dogs, and then there are anti-choice democrats. My rep, Mike Doyle (PA-14) is the latter, at least nominally. He’s a pretty good dem, pro-labor, pro-progressive taxing, but he’ll vote yes on most abortion restriction bills that come around. (Though not on funding cuts. He sends mixed messages.)
Kathy Dahlkemper, who represented the Erie area until 2010, when she was hit by the tea party with attack ads that had her in a Rockettes kick line with Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer and Secretary of State Clinton (tell me that’s not sexist) was very much the same. She was specifically attacked in her general for being “pro life but not pro life enough.”
The brand of pro-labor Catholic (and yes, that’s functionally importnt because it’s why they’re nominally anti-choice) democrats that come out of the rust belt (Western PA, E. Ohio, Buffalo, etc.) are a far cry from the Heath Shulers (what a waste of skin he is) and Ben Nelsons who really have no functional support in them for the platform of the Democratic party at all.
