Are we now beginning an era of one-party rule in the USA? If not, how can that be made to happen?
How do the GOP secure a permanent victory in the USA, and destroy the Democrats’ chances henceforth?
How can the GOP and/or the conservative movement destroy the Democratic Party forever?
How can the GOP and/or the conservative movement secure permanent one-party rule?
Can the “Right” destroy the “Left” forever?
How do the GOP secure a permanent victory in the USA, and destroy the Democrats' chances henceforth?
I’m thinking back to right after 9/11 – when the President announced that, if you’re not with us, you’re against us – and the Dems, by and large, went with it.
Obama wasn’t in Congress then, and so didn’t okay any of that stuff; that was one of his selling points, went a long way to winning him the nomination and the election.
So what happens if Trump puts some of his talk into action – keeping a vast number of folks on the other side of the border, backing Israel 110%, showing plenty of strength in the Middle East, stepping up surveillance of Muslims hereabouts, and so on – only this time, the Republican rallying the populace doesn’t mire ground troops in an unpopular war, because, hey, why do that, right? Just the rest, is all.
What happens if the Dems, by and large, oppose that?
What happens if the Dems, by and large, support it?
Strong gerrymandering can do a lot in this direction…but, nah, there will be swings back and forth, between parties, between ideologies, for as long as we have democracy at all.
We, the People, are fickle.
Arrest everybody who disagrees with them.
This never happens, on either side, over the long run, because the center is always shifting. And over centuries, it has been shifting leftward. Hardly anyone is in favor of slavery now. Most people accept women having the vote. Most people don’t support legal segregation. Most people support Social Security and other aspects of the social safety net. This was not the case 100-150 years ago,
Yes. yes, you can.
You see, voting isn’t as private as you may think. With some effort, it is not that hard to match ballots to voters.
So, you round up all the people that don’t vote the way you want them to. You can put some of them in re-education camps to learn to be a more patriotic republican, but most can be safely discarded.
Alternatively, you could suspend elections, and have all new govt representatives appointed by the existing legislative body. This will also entail a bit of the round 'em up plan, but not as much. People may get uppity if you ignore them and take away their rights, but it shouldn’t be too hard to quash any uprisings.
Of course, this assumes that your party is pure enough itself. It is quite likely that there are some RINO’s that will need to be purged along with the democrats, or else they may start up some sort of opposition to your rule.
While we are at it, it’s not just RINO’s in your party that may object to the authoritative rule that you are looking toward, so you should have regular interrogations of all those lawmakers left in govt, to make sure they keep to the party line.
Spend, baby, spend. A breakdown in the financial health of the US Gov’t is the best chance the Republicans have of becoming a stable majority. This could occur as the baby boomers retire and spending on non retirees becomes squeezed. The middle class suddenly become much more stingy when big Gov’t progressives attempt to increase their taxes. Until now big Gov’t progressives(and indeed many conservatives) have relied largely on borrowing to fund their programs. This ability may well end soon.
Hey, remember when budding conspiracy theorists were glomming on to the idea that Trump was some kind of operative tasked by the Clintons with (a) defeating everyone in the Republican primary by (b) saying and doing stuff that would surely be poison in the general election?
So the idea was, he was still secretly a pro-choice guy – but he’d rally folks on the right with casual talk about not just punishing doctors who perform abortions, but punishing the women who get them? So, that, times a hundred: tossing red meat to the right audience, getting the nomination by alienating folks in the center?
Yeah, that wasn’t what happened. But could the GOP pull it the other way around?
I would dispute this. Look at Jim Crow voting laws. We saw a period of almost a hundred years where a substantial portion of citizens were effectively barred from voting. And the problem did not correct itself; the only reason black southern voters got the vote was because it was a regional problem and the rest of the country finally chose to intervene.
What happens if the same thing reoccurs on a national scale? Suppose the Republicans figure out a way to disenfranchise enough Democratic voters to guarantee themselves a permanent majority? At that point, it doesn’t matter where the center of public opinion is.
Step one: Nominate about a dozen new justices to the Supreme Court.
Step two: Rule everything you like constitutional, and everything you don’t like unconstitutional, by a vote of 12-8.
Step three: Profit.
Why bother trying to match actual ballots to voters? You could, much more easily, just get a list of all registered Democrats and Greens. No need to fuss over who they actually voted for or against.
Force everyone to physically write checks to pay their taxes. Since taxes are taken from paychecks, or taxes are included in the sales of an item, or your property taxes are included in your mortgage payment, force every one to pay these taxes separately. I think if people knew how much they pay in taxes they would be a lot less in favor of big government and more conservative.
I’m reminded of a Facebook friend who hates Trump and conservatives and posts endlessly about how awful they are yet admits she never lifts a finger to help anyone.
I think the only thing your proposal would do is inconvenience the piss out of everyone. Do you seriously think if taxes weren’t withheld from wages, that people would set enough aside to pay their taxes in April?
The underlying assumption in your post seems to be "TAXES!!! OMG TAXES!!! EVERYBODY HATES HATES HATES paying TAXES! They base 100% of their life decisions on TAXES so if they knew how much TAXES they paid, they’d happily sign up to eliminate the social safety net, stop infrastructure improvement, and so on. People aren’t that fucking stupid. They see their check stubs every paycheck. They see their tax forms every year. They know how much taxes they pay. Good government is not, as you seem to assume, nothing more than cutting taxes.
If Republicans want to have long term power, they need to adopt Democratic proposals. If they insist on their 80 year wet dream of ending Social Security and their 50 year obsession with ending Medicare, they’re doomed to die. If they go through with their 7 year obsession with destroying the ACA, they shall inherit dire consequences. So my best advice to Republicans is: “do you know how you always are? Don’t be that way!”
The thing about Jim Crow, though, was that it was very popular among whites, who were a majority. Even if they’d allowed a free election on the subject, Jim Crow would have won. When you have a majority that feels like stepping on a minority for whatever reason, that can indeed last a good long time.
You can also have a minority rule a majority for some time, but it usually requires some creative use of power, like the current shenanigans in North Carolina - or even outright violence. Doing it too much erodes democratic legitimacy. And as it’s been said above, there’s no way for the Republicans to “destroy” the Democrats’ chances forever (or vice versa) without massive civil rights violations or purges.
Sometimes people register strategically. If you live in a dem stronghold, you vote in the dem primaries, as that is where the office is really decided. If you vote in the R primaries, then you get to vote for the loser of the general. This is true in reverse as well, of course.
So, just going off of registration may not be as accurate as you like, you’d be scooping up some of your patriotic republican voters along with the traitorous democrats.
Though yeah, you can safely round up anyone registered as a green.
If the Soviet Union couldn’t maintain itself for 75 years, I seriously doubt that any Republican (or Democratic) victory could ever be “permanent.”
How would you do that in, say, the State of Washington?
The only persons the State of Washington asks for a party affiliation from are candidates for President of the United States. (This is required by federal law.) Your list will thus be quite short.
Why do residents of other states think that it’s any business of the government what their political affiliations are? I’ll take my freedom of association without any government monitoring, thank you.
Just mere months ago, people were saying the GOP was doomed, but now it’s suddenly an unbeatable juggernaut?
It’s the *Democratic *Party that will dominate in the decades ahead.
But anyway - if the GOP were to achieve one-party rule, it would probably have to be done by underhanded means. Vote suppression, rigging, a SCOTUS that would rule in its favor, Ginsburg would have to pass away, even more gerrymandering, and maybe get the media to become less left-wing.
The state of Washington just had an elector vote for “Faith Spotted Eagle” and you need me to explain why a political party might have an interest in exerting a bit more control over their membership requirements? Just round up the whole state of Washington and re-educate all of 'em.
After Obama was elected, many here on the Dope were noting that the Republican party was finished. Many of the same were saying that after Clinton won, the Republicans were clearly finished.
Some of the Republican side are taking the same way now.
I think that Americans like the two party system. It’s not going away any time soon.