The REpublicans are going to evolve in a more libertarian direction, which will make identity a lot less important in elections than it is now.
But only by going third-party. And the same lot voted for Nixon in ‘72. They migrated to the GOP by way of Wallace’ American Independence Party.
What do you base that on? ISTM the only safe prediction is that they won’t evolve in any direction that cuts against big-biz interests, which consistent libertarianism often does.
Is that why the GOP treats women like trash? Why don’t the women in their base do something about that?
“I know he really loves me. He keeps telling me so, too. He just gets this way sometimes, when he’s had a little too much to drink.”
Those women seem to approve; I don’t understand it either.
This illustrates the difference between letting people vote for a party and letting people control a party. If you have a party controlled by men, you might have policies that are friendly to women if you think that’ll attract women voters - but you can set those policies aside if you want to. But if you have women who have a share in the control of the party, those women aren’t going to let the party abandon policies that are important to women.
Some Republicans see this as a weakness in the Democratic party. They say that the Democrats have all these different groups it must answer to so it’s just a party of special interests. And they tell themselves they don’t have that problem.
But they do have this problem. In the Republican party, the special interest in straight white Christian men and they insist on the party doing things their way. The Republican party is just as controlled by special interests as the Democratic party is. The only difference is the Republicans essentially only have one special interest group while the Democrats have several. This means the Democratic special interest groups are more obvious because they argue and have to accommodate multiple interests. The Republicans, with only a single special interest group, are more unified and avoid these struggles. But the Democrats have the advantage in that once they’ve worked out an agreement among their various interest groups, they collectively represent a larger group of voters.
No, in 1972 Wallace was running for the Democratic nomination. He won Michigan of all places.
A lot of conservatives can be criticized for having a Biblical view of the role of women. So what happens when your party goes from a mostly non-religious party as it is now, to one that is very Catholic, and not the kind of Catholic that doesn’t pay attention to church teachings?
Democrats crow about how changing demographics will give them a permanent majority without taking into account HOW those demographics are changing and what it means for their party. The first change they are ignoring is that it’s going to be a party with a much more religious base. That’s going to change things.
The GOP on the other hand, doesn’t have the same worries. Their job isn’t to figure out how to make the coalition get along, it’s how to lure enough people into the coalition to make it a majority. Which will be easy with Democrats having to manage a bunch of groups that don’t like each other very much.
Assuming you’re referring to an increase in Latinos, well, how’s that workin’ out for ya so far? That deportation policy y’all got attractin’ lots of 'em, is it?
So where are all these new Republicans?
But, there are some women in GOP leadership roles, aren’t there?
No, the GOP has two special interest groups; the other is big biz, which you can be sure will always get its way in the GOP (and often in the Dems).
Not the point, since the more Latinos we have born here with all of their family here, the less deportation will matter. How important is the deportation issue to Italians these days?
Potentially, anyone who works for a living or is rich is a Republican. The only people we can never win are welfare cases.
Charles Barkley said it best back when he was a Republican. “Republicans are for the rich, so I guess that makes me a Republican.” Then he said they lost their damn minds, and I don’t really blame him for that sentiment. But parties going crazy is a temporary condition. If Democrats are counting on that for the next 20 years, they’ll be disappointed.
The Democrats actually have only one racial demographic in the bag: African-Americans, who are also shrinking as a percentage of the population. Latinos vote Democrat because Latinos are more likely to be lower income. High and middle income Latinos are swing voters. I believe that in 30-50 years, Latinos and whites will vote pretty much the same way.
Here’s the exit polling data on Latino voters:
So the answer is simple: make Latinos rich!
I think adaher means the Dems will attract more Latinos, which will make the party more Catholic demographically, which will create pressure for the party to move away from social liberalism.
Fine, I can live with that, I consider economic issues a higher priority anyway.
Meanwhile, as already asked, how’s that workin’ out for ya?
Oh. That’s how that’s workin out for ya. But, you’re still convinced that demographics work in your favor. Too bad the evidence is all skewed, isn’t it? 
If you’re counting on your party’s going sane, after 20 years starting with frothing Clinton-hatred and getting worse ever since, then you’re going to die still disappointed.
If you can point to any evidence that your guys’ fever has broken, it would be good to see it.
The GOP actually has more interest groups, but there is no natural enmity between the groups when it comes to pure interests. There are ideological differences which are being hashed out as we speak, of course.
The Democratic party, on the other hand, has a lot of conflicting interest groups, which are held together mainly by the need to be unified in the face of the Republican threat. They all lose if Republicans win. In a hypothetical future where Republicans are no threat to ever win anything, then the various groups have no reason to be team players anymore. We’re already seeing this play out in California, where the Asian-American community just defeated an attempt to put affirmative action back in university admissions. An activist complained that no one wins when minorities are pitted against each other, but in California that’s not true. The Asians won, African-Americans and Latinos lost, and Republicans didn’t gain anything. And such disputes will continue to be okay because Republicans aren’t going to win anything anyway. There’s no incentive to be team players in that environment.
I think most Democrats think as you do, but I’m not sure that a lot of casual Democratic voters who mainly just don’t like Republicans because of their stone age views would be as interested. Namely all those professional single women and gays. Jews have been threatening to bolt for awhile now, no chance they remain in a Catholic-dominated party.
Fair point. But then you have to get into how strongly Latino Catholics feel allegiance to the teachings of the guys in Rome, and then how the current Pope, a Latino himself, is getting rid of much of that shit and re-emphasizing Christ’s actual teachings about social justice - which are pretty radical stuff.
Cite?
And why? Something to do with U.S.-Israeli relations?
Threatening to bolt? The last Republican presidential candidate to get a majority of Jewish votes was Taft. Obama got 69% of the Jewish vote in 2012 and that was the worst any Democratic candidate has done since the eighties.
Oh, I agree Latinos will be economically liberal, probably even more progressive than the current Democratic leadership. Which might also be a bridge too far for a lot of well off liberals. Well off liberals are willing to pay more in taxes. They just aren’t willing to pay as much as some current Latin American leaders think they should pay in taxes.
But really, the outcome I’m hypothesizing about here isn’t all that likely either. Latino immigration is in decline. Whether that’s permanent or not, who knows? Asian immigration is on the rise. Cultural changes mean that groups change with exposure to the wider culture. Italians were once not considered white, now they are. It’s very likely that in 50 years Martinez and Rodriguez will be “white-sounding” names as surely as O’Connor and Vigorito.
Then there are ideological chances. The Republican party is undoubtedly more libertarian than it was 20 years ago and will become more libertarian as time goes on. RoN Paul was a crankish candidate in the last two elections, Rand is almost, ALMOST, a serious candidate for the nomination. Heck, we know the libertarians control CPAC, and they are the youngest element of the party, which means as the old guard dies off, the party becomes more libertarian.
Now a libertarian party will face a lot of challenges in gaining the support of a majority, but one of those problems should not be trouble with race and gender politics. Those problems are the Religious Right’s fault.