This is correct, the biggest problem facing the GOP is not that we’ve lost two Presidential elections in a row, that’s not really even historically notable as I think in the modern era incumbency is very powerful and difficult to overcome. You basically have to actively fail as President to lose reelection, with George H.W. Bush being the only “fluke” in this regard in that he wasn’t seen as horrible (like Hoover or Carter), and he didn’t get torpedoed by Theodore Roosevelt (like Taft.) Instead the problem is it seems a good portion of the party has no idea why we’ve lost two elections, and the reason it’s rare for one party to remain dominant forever in American politics is the parties absolutely have changed to remain relevant. Right now the GOP actually does want to change, but in the wrong direction. Old school Republicans like me are viewed as not being true conservatives (despite being the true core of the party) and are a target of ire for the TP activist wing.
There is certainly hope for core Republican ideals. I heard On Point the other day and a young, gay, mixed race guy called in as they were discussing the future of the party. He basically said he’s very interested in a party that advocates minimal government regulation and basically “gets out of the way”, but not a party that is tied with hardcore social conservatism that is staunchly opposed to who he is as a person. If a mixed race gay guy actually is saying “I’d be a Republican if not for…” it shows hope for some parts of the Republican message as that’s a demographic most would never associate with Republicanism.
I believe it will, the structure is such now that I don’t think party “rebirths” will ever mean actual party changes any longer. Too much is tied up with all the various State party committees and groups and etc. In the past it made sense for the Whigs to become the Republicans or etc, but I doubt you’d see an actual technical change of parties again. At least as long as we have our current constitution.
Actually after the Whigs transformed into the Republican party the most likely party to actually get reborn and change its named would have been the Democrats. The Republicans won every Presidential election after Lincoln until Cleveland* in large part by “waving the bloody shirt” and associating the Democrats as being the party that started and perpetuated the Civil War. It would have made a lot of sense for the northern branch of the party to split off or something into its own party but it never happened. I doubt any party will actually change its name these days if the Dems didn’t feel the need to reform after the ACW.
*Actually Hayes probably lost to Tilden in the voting booth but won in the political settlement.
Reagan had a viable strategy. The parties had moved to the left in the sixties and seventies and Reagan saw a shift to the right would have popular support.
The problem for Republicans is the conservatives didn’t know when to stop. They moved from the left back to the center and then kept going towards the right. Meanwhile, the Democrats learned from their defeats and moved from the left to the center.
And the Democrats are still holding that center. They’re now at the point where Reagan was in 1980. So in that sense Reagan won but the Republicans lost.
Yes, many democratic candidates today I’d have no problem voting for, there are lots of Democrats I’d even call conservative, not just moderate/centrist. Obama is mostly an actual centrist and he’s probably around the center of the Democratic party (at least amount elected officials at the Federal level.)
The Democrats big weakness is the newly emboldened Progressives (people like Elizabeth Warren and Bill de Blasio), as it was precisely those type of candidates who are very popular in the liberal bastions of America but who have no national appeal that lead the astray and into irrelevancy for a time at the end of the 70s. Basically any candidate the SDMB gets really juiced about (like Warren) is someone that’s probably representing a too-far-to-the-left deviation from the norm that, if the Democrats are smart, will keep bottled up in their regional strongholds where their politics work.
If you don’t think someone like Warren or de Blasio could win the presidency, you might be surprised. Such a candidacy would inspire vast new swathes of voter turnout, and more for it than against it (those against it having already maxed-out on voter turnout since Obama took office).
Well it’s more important to you and I. We have to live with the effects but politicians who are doing the winning and losing have a different perspective.
I think it’s important to distinguish between popular opinion and the elite consensus. The latter unfortunately is usually more important in crafting policy and it is that which the Reagan Revolution was very effective in moving to the right. I’ve seen no evidence that it has managed to move popular opinion to the right in any significant way. Socially the country is obviously becoming more liberal with homosexuality and marijuana use becoming more accepted. Economically regular Americans have always tended to be less conservative than elites. The problem with the conservative revolution was that it was all image and no substance. If you convince whites to accept welfare reform by highlighting chiseling minorities you have achieved the policy but not altered the common belief that the government can and should feed starving children. You can lie to people about the benefits of free trade but that won’t make the people who lose their jobs turn invisible.
But given that caveat, yes the Democrats have not done a lot to move the realm of political possibility to the left. But then why assume that they want to? The Democrats are a big tent party of conservatives and liberals and others in between. Just holding power is a complex enough task for them.
This is the opposite of reality. GOP economic ideology is so extremist that hardly anyone supports it and their social policy is only popular with the persecuted Christians crowd. This is why their rhetoric is so confrontational. It’s not just that the GOP can’t win without lying to voters. It’s worse. If they just lie and give potential supporters a chance to listen to the Democratic lies they will lose. So they have to not only lie but also demonize their opponents so that potential supporters have an excuse to hold their nose and vote for the noxious plutocrats in order to keep the evil Dems out of office.
How can the GOP change their rhetoric? They need to keep the white male Christian vote as high as possible because they lose every other demographic. How can they kowtow to the racists in their base and still appeal to the increasingly multicultural rest of the country?
Yes, the Clinton triangulation. Again, that’s a nod to the Washington consensus. When voters had a chance to vote against NAFTA they did vote in large numbers for Perot despite the confines of the 2 party system.
Right. My point is that the GOP is very lucky this time around in that they missed having to deal with the economic crisis (except President Bush 2 who the GOP likes to pretend is invisible).
I think they realize this and that’s why you’ve seen a slight populist cast from the Obama Administration lately. The wages thing. There’s plenty of support to be found there, I believe. (But why wouldn’t I think there were many who want to vote like me?) I don’t expect Obama to pursue that very strongly, however. He’s shown himself to be conservative if somewhat moderate. But the health care reform is a big issue. Republicans haven’t had any luck convincing people that the New Deal programs need to go. Once people see programs helping them it’s hard to trick them into believing that those programs don’t work.
I continue to believe that Obamacare is good politics as well as good policy. Given the rollout problems reality might not catch up before this fall’s election but its going to work and that undermines the GOP narrative that government doesn’t work.
I agree with Martin Hyde. Both conservatives and liberals make the mistake of thinking voters are settling for a centrist because they can’t have the more extreme candidate they really want. But that’s not true. The reason it’s the center of the political spectrum is because that’s where people are. We want to be in the middle. We don’t pick candidates like Obama or Clinton because they’re the most left-leaning choice available on Election Day. We pick them because they’re not leaning too far to the right or left.
But that law was passed within the reality of the continued dominance of the Reagan Revolution. As so many have pointed out, the law is based on old Republican ideas.
So while it certainly counts as a policy win for Democrats, it doesn’t move the country to the left, anymore than Eisenhower’s farm support reforms moved the country to the right.
Sometimes the majority party is the one that goes away due to factionalism. See again: Democratic-Republican Party.
I’d say that’s actually more likely. The GOP is now a very concentrated, right-wing party. While that might mean permanent minority status if it doesn’t moderate a little, it also means they have a loyal core that can keep them viable forever, especially in Congress and in the states.
I don’t think that will happen, but if it did, and Democrats did indeed dominate the White HOuse, it would result in increasing factionalism within the party over time, which could lead to a schism, as with the Democratic-Republicans. Since the Democratic Party is the one that’s changing due to demographics, that will probably mean the death of the Democratic Party as we know it.
Democrats are always counting on vast swathes of new voters. Barack Obama did a great job at turning them out in 2008. De Blasio and Warren are not Barack Obama. Plus Obama had to campaign as an Eisenhower Republican to accomplish it.
Now I’d be thrilled to test the viability of an unabashedly liberal Presidential candidacy as much as you would be. How about it in 2016?
In the Pew Political Typology, the new “loyal core” of the GOP, i.e., the Tea Party wing, figures as the Staunch Conservatives – and demographically they are the oldest of the typology groups, “61% ages 50 and older.” That’s why I expect them to die out. There will be younger generations of conservatives, but they will be more moderate, especially on social and moral issues, having grown up in a different America than that which shaped the Staunch Conservatives’ world-view.
That’s a misinterpretation of the data. Besides, according to standard theory of how young voters’ beliefs are shaped, if Obama doesn’t start doing better he’ll breed a generation of young Republicans. And the VA governors’ election showed the danger: the young voted more Republican than Democrat in that race.
2014 will be very interesting in terms of how voting patterns shake out.
On the social conservative front, I agree, but that says nothing about support for political parties because both parties have moved to the left on social issues and to the right on economic issues over the decades.
We can reliably assume that the Republican Party will be where the Democratic Party is now on social issues in 20 years, and the Democratic Party will be where the Republican Party is on economic issues 20 years from now.
And when the Republican Party arrives in twenty years at where the Democratic Party is now, it’ll claim it’s been there for thirty years.
As for economic issues, the worst thing that could happen is if the Democrats started imitating the economic policies of the current Republican party. The Republican Party used to be the party of fiscal responsibility but it’s become the party of short term thinking. Things like deregulation and deficit spending can give you a temporary boom but they always lead to a bust in the end.
