# How is all this Republican overreach going to play out in November 2014? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [July 7, 2013, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884 "2013-07-07T18:55:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![OurLordPeace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/e8c25b/32.png) [@OurLordPeace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OurLordPeace)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2013, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884/81 "2013-07-10T21:14:02Z")
There are other substantial demographic shifts that, while not big secrets, are perhaps not receiving enough consideration. I’m thinking of the increasing numbers and proportion of unmarried Americans, and the generational drift towards secularism, while the GOP appears ever more theocratic. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2013, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884/82 "2013-07-10T23:44:16Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Then why celebrate a possible future where most voters are assumed to be Democrats based on nothing more than their race? That’s an illiberal future. > > Thankfully, Democrats are completely wrong about what demographic changes will mean. Hey, let’s go back and look at your assessment of the '12 POTUS election; that should give us a good gauge for how how accurate your prediction is likely to be. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2013, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884/83 "2013-07-11T01:10:30Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > I’d stay in Florida. Don’t make no difference, thim dam furriners is gonna keep on retirin’ to here. Pensions drive the state economy. Don’t matter if the checks are made out in in Yorkies or Texapesos or Calibux. Despite the fact I hate it here, Florida does indeed have one of the most successful purple or red economies that aren’t based on disproportionately taking federal dollars. ---
**Author:** ![Kolak\_of\_Twilo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kolak_of_twilo/32/73_2.png) [@Kolak\_of\_Twilo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kolak_of_Twilo)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2013, 5:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884/84 "2013-07-11T05:43:40Z")
The way some Republicans keep making it clear they will prevent women from being able to make decisions about their own bodies is likely to reach a breaking point before the elections. How it will play out in the end is anyone’s guess but I would suggest treating women like [they treated Sarah Slamen](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvuNSr3CaGo) is probably not going to work out in their favor. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2013, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884/85 "2013-07-11T14:09:53Z")
Yeah, I know, getting between pain patients and their doctors has got to stop. This is a war on women, especially, since women are more likely to suffer from chronic pain than men. The decision to take pain medications is between a woman and her doctor. The government has no business getting involved. ---
**Author:** ![Truman\_Burbank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecc23a/32.png) [@Truman\_Burbank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Truman_Burbank)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2013, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884/86 "2013-07-11T14:32:59Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > Despite the fact I hate it here, Florida does indeed have one of the most successful purple or red economies that aren’t based on disproportionately taking federal dollars. I’m confused. If a major driver of the Florida economy is SS and retirement dollars (which have often received preferential tax treatment), doesn’t that mean the economy is based upon “taking federal dollars”? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2013, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884/87 "2013-07-11T16:26:09Z")
> [@Truman\_Burbank](#): > > I’m confused. If a major driver of the Florida economy is SS and retirement dollars (which have often received preferential tax treatment), doesn’t that mean the economy is based upon “taking federal dollars”? Well, we also have agriculture and tourism and lots and lots of both. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2013, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884/88 "2013-07-11T16:32:08Z")
The reason both parties focus on identity politics is simple: they can’t focus on economic issues because doing so reveals the simple truth that both parties are OWNED by Wall Street. They have the exact same approach to regulating banks and big Wall Street investment houses: do whatever their masters say. That’s why I’m a progressive and won’t be voting Democratic or Republican in the next election. Why bother? Economically, which is increasingly becoming the only thing that matters, they are both the same. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2013, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884/89 "2013-07-11T16:34:48Z")
They are also becoming the same on privacy issues. The days of Democrats protesting Patriot Act-type surveillance is long gone. At least there’s Rand Paul. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2013, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884/90 "2013-07-11T20:13:26Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > The reason both parties focus on identity politics is simple: they can’t focus on economic issues because doing so reveals the simple truth that both parties are OWNED by Wall Street. They are. The difference is that the Dems are not **wholly** owned. (Having some elements in their voter-base deeply inimical to the 1% and the megacorps, which the GOP base lacks.) It really does matter. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2013, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884/91 "2013-07-11T20:37:41Z")
I agree with BrainGlutton. From the perspective of economics, Democrats are actually less bad from a liberal perspective. I shake my head at Greens. However, I have to nitpick that recently the rise of the Tea Party has created a Republican faction inimical to many things on the corporate wish list. For example, the extra engine for the F-35 that existed purely to provide jobs in various districts, was rescinded by a coalition of Tea Partiers and liberals. The Tea Party is also not playing ball on immigration reform for the most part, which is something corporations want very badly. And liberals also want it, which is why they let the corporations write the bill. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2013, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884/92 "2013-07-11T21:21:51Z")
The mission from the AstroTurf money people behind the Tea Party was to get people that were against regulations and taxation that was ¨coincidentally¨ affecting fossil fuel companies. Other items, like the fact that mostly nativists also came with that package, are not important to them. > **[Study Confirms Tea Party Was Created by Big Tobacco and Billionaires](https://www.desmog.com/2013/02/11/study-confirms-tea-party-was-created-big-tobacco-and-billionaires/)** > > A new academic study confirms that front groups with longstanding ties to the tobacco industry and the billionaire Koch brothers planned the formation of the Tea Party movement more than a decade before it exploded onto the U.S. political scene. Far... > [@](#): > > A new academic study confirms that front groups with longstanding ties to the tobacco industry and the billionaire Koch brothers planned the formation of the Tea Party movement more than a decade before it exploded onto the U.S. political scene. > > Far from a genuine grassroots uprising, this astroturf effort was curated by wealthy industrialists years in advance. Many of the anti-science operatives who defended cigarettes are currently deploying their tobacco-inspired playbook internationally to evade accountability for the fossil fuel industry’s role in driving climate disruption. > > The study, funded by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institute of Health, traces the roots of the Tea Party’s anti-tax movement back to the early 1980s when tobacco companies began to invest in third party groups to fight excise taxes on cigarettes, as well as health studies finding a link between cancer and secondhand cigarette smoke. > [@](#): > > Freedomworks and Americans for Prosperity are both multi-issue organizations that have expanded their battles to include other policies they see as threats to the free market principles they claim to defend, namely fighting health care reform and regulations on global warming pollution. The report’s warning about overseas expansion efforts by Freedomworks should therefore also be heeded by groups in the health and environment arenas. > > **Finally, this report might serve as a wake-up call to some people in the Tea Party itself, who would find it a little disturbing that the “grassroots” movement they are so emotionally attached to, is in fact a pawn created by billionaires and large corporations with little interest in fighting for the rights of the common person, but instead using the common person to fight for their own unfettered profits.** ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2013, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884/93 "2013-07-11T21:32:32Z")
None of that is wrong, but it misses the point. Tea Party protests were organized on a grassroots level and the individual chapters are the very definition of grassroots. The fact that an astroturfed version exists alongside it doesn’t take anything away from that. Especially since the corporations that funded these groups want say, immigration reform, yet the Tea Party is not having any of it. So who really holds the reins? We know it’s the grassroots, because liberals can’t stop bitching about how the Tea Party is uncontrollable. Liberals aren’t used to uncontrollable advocacy groups. After all, they control them very strictly. And any who don’t get on board soon find themselves ostracized. Just ask Cindy Sheehan. The anti-war protests in 2002 and early 2003 were by contrast, completely astroturfed. They were sponsored by International ANSWER. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2013, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884/94 "2013-07-11T21:44:54Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Liberals aren’t used to uncontrollable advocacy groups. After all, they control them very strictly. And any who don’t get on board soon find themselves ostracized. Just ask Cindy Sheehan. > > The anti-war protests in 2002 and early 2003 were by contrast, completely astroturfed. They were sponsored by International ANSWER. Uuuhh, I think you’re just desperately throwing words out there to try to convey, “Liberals bad.” ANSWER is not “astroturf.” It is also not, “the left.” See, there is a great diversity of “the left,” because “left” means dissent in favor of reform, and there are different forms thereof. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2013, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884/95 "2013-07-11T21:55:03Z")
> [@Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](#): > > You know… This maybe deserves it’s own thread, but let’s say for a moment the U.S. was broken up into fifty countries, with each state being it’s own country, which one would you rather move to on a purely economic basis? Probably would stay in California. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2013, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884/96 "2013-07-11T21:55:57Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > None of that is wrong, but it misses the point. Tea Party protests were organized on a grassroots level and the individual chapters are the very definition of grassroots. The fact that an astroturfed version exists alongside it doesn’t take anything away from that. It does, only ignoring history is that you could make such an asinine assertion. > [@adaher](#): > > Especially since the corporations that funded these groups want say, immigration reform, yet the Tea Party is not having any of it. So who really holds the reins? We know it’s the grassroots, because liberals can’t stop bitching about how the Tea Party is uncontrollable. Liberals aren’t used to uncontrollable advocacy groups. After all, they control them very strictly. And any who don’t get on board soon find themselves ostracized. Just ask Cindy Sheehan. > > The anti-war protests in 2002 and early 2003 were by contrast, completely astroturfed. They were sponsored by International ANSWER. You need a big fat cite for that as it was not the most important anti-war group then in the USA > **[Guide to anti-war websites | Special reports | guardian.co.uk](https://www.theguardian.com/antiwar/subsection/0,,884056,00.html)** [A.N.S.W.E.R. - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.N.S.W.E.R). > [@](#): > > ANSWER has faced criticism from other anti-war groups for its affiliations, tactics at demonstrations, and allegedly sectarian approach to joint anti-war work. Why it is more likely to be mentioned by your sorry sources of information? It is an example of nut picking, discredit the whole for what the few do. Unfortunately your nut pick was not the most important group and the sources reporting on the Tea Party are not easy to dismiss. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2013, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884/97 "2013-07-11T22:04:54Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > They are also becoming the same on privacy issues. The days of Democrats protesting Patriot Act-type surveillance is long gone. > > At least there’s Rand Paul. And where do you see **him** going? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2013, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884/98 "2013-07-11T22:08:57Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > I agree with BrainGlutton. From the perspective of economics, Democrats are actually less bad from a liberal perspective. I shake my head at Greens. > > However, I have to nitpick that recently the rise of the Tea Party has created a Republican faction inimical to many things on the corporate wish list. For example, the extra engine for the F-35 that existed purely to provide jobs in various districts, was rescinded by a coalition of Tea Partiers and liberals. The Tea Party is also not playing ball on immigration reform for the most part, which is something corporations want very badly. And liberals also want it, which is why they let the corporations write the bill. And yet, the TP’s rally-signs and slogans and the [Contract from America](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_party_movement#Contract_from_America) never seem to mention corporate cronyism. Or immigration. And I’ve seen multiple polls showing the majority of the members’ actual motivating concerns are neither small-gov nor good-gov but religious-conservative. Which if true would make the TP utterly irrelevant to any serious political discussion, as religious conservatism is. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2013, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884/99 "2013-07-11T22:10:34Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > They are. > > The difference is that the Dems are not **wholly** owned. (Having some elements in their voter-base deeply inimical to the 1% and the megacorps, which the GOP base lacks.) > > It really does matter. No, it doesn’t. Political campaigns at the Congressional level require money, a lot of it. Wall Street has the money. What the voters think is irrelevant. You take the money and tell whatever lies you need to, engage in whatever distractions, and ignore the wishes of the voters where they conflict with the wishes of the money guys. Goes for Dems and Pubs. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2013, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884/100 "2013-07-11T22:13:10Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > I agree with BrainGlutton. Of course you do. You’ve both bought into the notion that one of the major parties is going to Somehow fix our economic system. Just different parties, is all. You’re both wrong. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884.md?page=6)