I don’t think they’re smaller. If they’re smaller, then they’re really effective at maximizing electoral wins per member.
I think the % of Republicans who actually want government to work, and who are willing to govern, has shrunk.
Bullshit. He already did. Republicans are the free trade party. Trump is a protectionist. He has by himself started a trade war. These are complete opposite concepts. Republicans constantly talk of reducing the national deficit. Trump put a policy that balloons the deficit like never before. Republicans promote family values. Trump takes children away from their parents.
And yet the OP mentioned several, which I have reiterated.
The Bush/Hitler comparison is cherry picking. Everyone people hate is compared to Hitler at some point. But it was never a mainstream position that they were actually similar. However, you can directly point to the ways in which Trump is a fascist. We can point to his demonizing immigrants as the cause of all problems. We can point to his nationalism. We can point to him embracing the alt right, who are specifically racist.
But it’s not even all that relevant. The OP specifically cites how the Republican Party is different now. He cites policies that could not happen under current Republican positions. He points out the policies that Trump has that are opposed to what Republicans used to claim. He’s already proven that the current situation is different.
His only question is when did it change. When is the earliest point that someone like Trump could have won the presidency? At what point did the Republicans become the obstructionist party and the party that refuses to compromise?
And I definitely agree that the Tea Party is the most blatant demarcation point. That is the first time in my lifetime that what it meant to be a Republican changed. That is when obstructionism was embraced. That is when policy started becoming “what liberals hate” rather than “what would be best for the country.”
I do not see the GWBush-era Republicans acting at all like the modern ones. If they had, I would have never even been part of the Republican party. I can imagine the Obama-era Republicans acting this way.
Republicans talk of reducing the deficit and debt, but they’ve been increasing deficits since Reagan. On this issue, Trump is the ultimate Republican.
Do you guys ever get tired of the anti-Democrat hyperbole?
Which President was most often called The Antichrist ? Hint: He’s the one with an Islamist middle name who was born in Africa. Obama was often sarcastically called “the Messiah” or “Emperor Jesus” even on this message board. (FDR, JFK and Reagan were also called Antichrist.)
It is true that America’s progressives now regret “Crying Wolf” about GWB, but to suggest that the next GOP President, whoever he is, will be called a baby eater is just silly. For at least several decades now, it has consistently been Republican leaders who have, by far, the foulest mouths.
All of these simplify issues into an either/or dichotomy that isn’t accurate. Republicans may be in favor of free trade, but not in getting the short end of trade deals. Republicans may be in favor of reducing the deficit, but they are also in favor of lower taxes. Republicans may pay lip service to family values, but they also push law and order and being tough on crime. Resolving these competing interests isn’t a simple A/B test.
This is the point - there’s always going to be an escalation of criticism. You say Bush 43 was only lightly compared to Hitler, but Trump, yeah he’s super Hitler, and a fascist!
The party that embraced torture, got into stupid wars, also temporarily cut taxes, deficit spent like crazy with Medicare, appointed cronies to FEMA…yeah nothing like the current crop of Republicans.
Bringing up bill Clinton and saying he didn’t get a majority of the popular vote is kind of off-topic. He did, in fact, still get more votes than the other guy(s). And in that, well actually those considering '92 and '96, cases the Electoral college did what it usually does and that is magnifying the popular will. We are concerned here with that rarer case where it contradicts the popular will.
Actually, in the case that they do elect someone that eats a dozen babies for breakfast, we won’t be able to call him on that, because someone on the internets once called GWB a baby eater, and so any such accusation, no matter how accurate, is dismissed as hyperbole.
To be fair, GWB didn’t eat baby humans, just puppies.
The issue raised was a minority of voters overruling the majority. The majority of voters wanted someone other than Clinton, but a minority of voters overruled that and we got Clinton. Like I said, I don’t have a problem with that. But let’s not kid ourselves into thinking that whoever gets the most votes represents “the majority”. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t.
And, one would hope that if we were to switch to a popular vote for president, we’d require a majority to win (like we do with the EC). At least I would hope that, and I count as “one”. 
I’m a liberal, so I’m not an unbiased source of info. But I lay the blame for the dysfunction of the GOP on three factors.
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The southern strategy. Ever since the 60s the GOP has been appealing to white nationalism and white resentment against equality to win elections, and resentment over cultural changes. It started with appealing to white resentment over black civil rights in the south. Now it is resentment all over the US, for a wide range of reasons. Whites resentful towards non-whites. Christians resentful towards other faiths and secularism. Men resentful towards feminism. Native born resentful towards immigrants and foreigners. Rural resentment towards urban areas.
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The right has a media echo chamber now. They never have to look to legitimate news to get their news, all their news is slanted propaganda now. On the left we have our own propaganda, but it isn’t wholesale dishonest and lots of us still use unbiased sources for into.
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The congregation of white authoritarians into the GOP. White people who score high on authoritarianism used to be fairly split between the parties, but in 2016 Trump won 86% of this demographic. Authoritarians tend to be closed minded and hostile to western values. So now a huge chunk of the GOP is made up of whites who score high on the personality trait of authoritarianism. The kinds of people most likely to be ruled by fear and resentment and to value a dictatorship over democracy.
So what does the modern GOP stand for? Fear of the others, and resentment of the others. The others are anyone who isn’t a republican, white, male, christian, hetero, native born American. To them the world is a dangerous place and those ‘others’ will collapse society and turn things into anarchy. So even treasonous pedophiles like Trump are better than the scary others. Throw in the dishonest propaganda and the fact that authoritarians generally are dogmatic and closed minded, and a lot of these voters will never have to set foot in reality.
All the modern GOP is built on now is fear and resentment among in-groups about the rise of out-groups.
Well the voters at least. GOP politicians are plutocrats. Isn’t that what fascism at root is? Angry resentful in-groups upset and afraid about out-groups, allied with plutocrats?
IMHO, the first past the post system that we do have is a large source of our political woes. Getting rid of the electoral college, and requiring only a plurality to win office would be a better system.
The way the electoral college is set up, it is very unlikely to have a situation where one of the two major parties’ candidates does not get a majority of electoral votes, no matter the popular vote. This is actually a useful thing, otherwise, congress would be deciding our president in most elections.
Not requiring a majority, but only a plurality allows third parties to be taken seriously. With the current system, a third party can only be relevant if one of the two major parties is in the process of dissolving.
When presidents of the past have won the electoral college without winning a majority, they were able to see that their political position was not unassailable, that they did not have a mandate to govern, but that they only managed to win based on procedure. Having a plurality, as Bill Clinton did, at least indicates that he was the preferred candidate, but to lose the popular vote, and win the electoral, a president should be much more humble, knowing that they only got in based on procedure, not on the will of the people.
And well, that’s basically the difference that I see right now. Liberals are accused of wanting to change the system to get preferred results, and this is true. Liberals very much do want to use democratic processes to change the rules in order to get results that they believe are better for everyone. Conservatives, on the other hand, cynically use the rules in order to prevent the democratic processes from achieving the changes that are needed to continue to grow and prosper.
Easily misled conservatives? Your side buses homeless people to the polls. You have policies enacted into law that simply hands your voters in the inner city money. Just hands them money from the public coffers! That is your base.
Yet, you have the temerity to say that people who are the breadbasket of America who work on farms to feed the country are the ones that should be ignored.
This is true. The GOP may be a party devoted to nothing but white resentment and plutocracy, but that is enough to reliably pull together 40 million votes in midterms and 60-70 million votes in presidential years.
You can’t argue with success.
The ~500 counties won by Hillary clinton make up nearly 2/3 of America’s GDP. The ~2500 counties won by Trump make up the other 1/3. Also the blue states subsidize the red states on top of the urban areas subsidizing the rural areas.
The issue is that the people who work on farms aren’t being ignored. They never were. They just aren’t the center of the universe anymore and they don’t like it. White men have never been ignored. We just aren’t the center of the world and now have to share the power with brown people, women, atheists, muslims, etc. Some of us are fine with sharing the power and sharing the limelight. Others are not and are fighting tooth and nail to make sure only people like them (whites, men, christians, native born Americans, etc) hold positions of power and influence.
k9bfriender wrote: “When presidents of the past have won the electoral college without winning a majority, they were able to see that their political position was not unassailable, that they did not have a mandate to govern, but that they only managed to win based on procedure. Having a plurality, as Bill Clinton did, at least indicates that he was the preferred candidate, but to lose the popular vote, and win the electoral, a president should be much more humble, knowing that they only got in based on procedure, not on the will of the people.”
Well said, and spot on.
There should totally be a rule that requires humility. It could be, whenever the opposition party whines enough, the majority party shall invite them for a tea party and let them hold the conch.
How? You’re insinuating millions of voters, enough to make a difference. So, how? How many buses were rented, in how many different places? How many bus drivers hired? Were these people supplied with any kind of ID at all? At what cost?
Give us a rough guestimate, how many people directly involved in the conspiracy? And yet, you cannot prove so much as* one* incident, when there had to be thousands? Millions? If the Dems are such logistical and conspiratorial geniuses to pull something like this off, your best bet would be negotiating a surrender. But they aren’t and nobody is.
Was there a field trip to polling sites for homeless people in Podunk, sponsored by the League of Women Voters? And somebody told Hannity, and he told you?
Remember that speech GeeDubya gave after the 2000 election? About how knew that he clearly did not win any sort of mandate, and promised an administration of compromise and accommodation?
That’s OK, I don’t remember it either. I remember “The people have spoken!” Quite a few of those.
I haven’t been following the entirety of this debate but a few things here are just calling out for some commentary.
“Easily misled conservatives”. I believe this refers to the fact that conservatives are easily misled. Not really all that debatable, considering many of their policies and the bullshit that their followers believe. We could start with climate change denial and young earth creationism if you like. Or trickle-down economic theories.
“Busing the homeless”. What seems particularly relevant here is that Republicans are really keen on preventing blacks and the economically disadvantaged from voting, while you seem to be accusing Dems of the crime of facilitating universal voting, sort of like what’s constitutionally mandated.
Polices that “that simply hands your voters in the inner city money”. Like most citizens of first-world nations, I happen to live in a country that does this to an extent that would make an American conservative’s head asplode. Universal health care, relatively generous social programs, public housing, affordable higher education. We tend to like the beneficent and peaceful societies we live in. You seem to like the idea of rich people who hold an increasingly large proportion of the nation’s total wealth being entitled to keep every last dime they add to their billions.
“ignore the breadbasket of America”. I dunno about that. I like bread, and wouldn’t want to ignore breadbaskets. Thing is, nobody has actually said the thing that you’re imagining. The argument is that, while everyone absolutely has a right to participate in the determination of national public policy, perhaps isolated rural communities have a disproportionate share in that participation. That this happens at the expense of others, like the residents of populous urbanized states, can be very unfair and lead to skewed election results that don’t reflect the will of the people. That it tends to favor the “breadbasket” – code for “farmers and country dwellers” – over the more educated, informed, and world-aware residents of major urban centers is a bias that highly favors Republicans, so I guess that explains your sudden love of corn and wheat growers.