# Maybe this election is great for the GOP? Evolution. **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [March 23, 2016, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-this-election-is-great-for-the-gop-evolution/749902 "2016-03-23T00:18:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2016, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-this-election-is-great-for-the-gop-evolution/749902/21 "2016-03-23T14:10:21Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > Nope. The GOP control both houses of congress, as well as the majority of state houses. They have no motivation to change. How long can this last? Much of their power stems from their happening to win big in a census year thanks to constant lies about the ACA that Democrats didn’t bother to refute. So they rode that false horse to victory and took gerrymandering to a new level as their spoils of war. They’re going to be hurt big time downballot with Trump at the top of it and much of their built in majority is going to fade. Then in 2020 another presidential disaster in a census year will be their final downfall. ---
**Author:** ![Anny\_Middon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/bc79bd/32.png) [@Anny\_Middon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anny_Middon)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2016, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-this-election-is-great-for-the-gop-evolution/749902/22 "2016-03-23T14:57:03Z")
Will they evolve or fracture? It has long seemed to me that there’s an inconsistency at the core of GOP tenets. On the one hand there’s the strong belief in small federal government and restricting the power of the government to interfere in the private lives of its citizens; on the other hand there’s the religious base that jolly well wants the government to interfere in private lives in such areas as gay marriage and reproductive rights. I have read (no cite, I’m sorry to say) that younger Evangelical Republicans are becoming more in favor of federal government-sponsored social programs. Some of them seem to feel that their religious beliefs extend beyond no abortion/no gay marriage to helping the poor. "Therefore I command you, ‘You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.’ " Should the party actually end up splitting, I have no idea how viable in the long-term either faction would be. According to Pew, 32% of Americans identify as Democrats, 23% as Republicans, and 39% as Independent. (I’m curious about the other 6%.) If sufficient Independents moved to one GOP faction or the other, we could end up with a three-party system. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2016, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-this-election-is-great-for-the-gop-evolution/749902/23 "2016-03-23T15:03:11Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > The GOP has been boxed in, trapped, married to a brand that at the presidential level has less hope each cycle. Try to change the brand with greater outreach to Hispanics and the socially moderate and you lose some of that White base. Drive hard for the White base and you double down on the shrinking demographic and doubtfully have enough to win, not now, and even less so later. > > Organically evolving out of that box gradually is … hard. > > But a complete disruption offers an opportunity to build something completely new. > > It’s sort of like punctuated equilibrium in evolutionary theory. The party was in stasis traveling down what at the presidential level at least was increasingly becoming a dead end. This campaign is an asteroid strike and something new possibly more “fit” for the current political ecosystem will perhaps emerge over the next cycle or so. You mean Rahm’s Rule? “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” The phrase the conservatives have been loudly mocking for Obama’s whole presidency? There isn’t enough irony in the world for this to happen. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2016, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-this-election-is-great-for-the-gop-evolution/749902/24 "2016-03-23T15:03:55Z")
Not for long. Any fracture that led to that would see two of the parties bidding for the holdings of the third. Eventually and equilibrium would be found with two major parties again. Where that ends up in anyone’s guess…but it’ll be two. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2016, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-this-election-is-great-for-the-gop-evolution/749902/25 "2016-03-23T15:04:19Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > In that context where then do the GOP big money players and lobbies place their bets? How do the no-compromise elements respond? Do they leave? If they do does the remaining element of the GOP, which subsequently loses their majority House status, actually become a place not anathema to elements which the Democratic side must have the overwhelming support of (Blacks, Hispanics, suburban White women …)? I can **imagine** a cycle or so leading to a Democratic party becoming increasingly beholden to its most “progressive” elements and a GOP with the populist authoritarian wing having split off (to wither over a cycle or so) now increasingly centrist … but I can imagine many other paths too. It is at least as likely that the populists will take over the GOP – they’re at least halfway there already. And **then** where do the big money players place their bets? If the Dems also go progressive, no party exactly representing their interest will remain. > [@DSeid](#): > > I just doubt that the current species of dinosaurs will be dominant after the asteroid, even as I do not know if we should bet more on birds or on those mammals scurrying underfoot. Ach. Always bet on the bacteria! What, the Libertarians?! ---
**Author:** ![Claverhouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/13edae/32.png) [@Claverhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Claverhouse)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2016, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-this-election-is-great-for-the-gop-evolution/749902/26 "2016-03-23T15:05:23Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > …their happening to win big in a census year thanks to constant lies about the ACA that Democrats didn’t bother to refute. Perhaps this says as much about Democrats as it does about Republicans… ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2016, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-this-election-is-great-for-the-gop-evolution/749902/27 "2016-03-23T15:05:30Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > If this campaign is as disruptive to the party as it has been popularly made out to be then there will be no cohesively functional GOP party remaining, if there in fact has been one this cycle with what Congress, especially the House, has been like. Some predict down ticket impacts of the cycle such that not only the Senate is lost but that the GOP loses much of their House majority as well. > > The question is what emerges from that, not as an immediate or even rational response, but over a few cycles as that which survives and gains strength. I don’t get it. If the GOP emerges from the 2016 election still controlling the House, albeit by a thinner margin, and has lost the Senate but is in good shape to retake it in 2018 with a wildly GOP-favorable landscape that year, and still controls a substantial majority of state legislatures and governorships across the country…then _ **why in God’s name would they see themselves as a failing party??** _ Totally bonkers, sure, but still in control in most states (where they’re passing all sorts of crazy shit), and able to stymie anything the Dems try to do at the Federal level. Exactly where the Party of No wants to be. There is no existential crisis for the GOP here, no force necessitating change, unless they lose the House and a decent number of state legislatures to boot. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2016, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-this-election-is-great-for-the-gop-evolution/749902/28 "2016-03-23T15:12:40Z")
> [@Anny\_Middon](#): > > It has long seemed to me that there’s an inconsistency at the core of GOP tenets. On the one hand there’s the strong belief in small federal government and restricting the power of the government to interfere in the private lives of its citizens; on the other hand there’s the religious base that jolly well wants the government to interfere in private lives in such areas as gay marriage and reproductive rights. There is also, and has been since 1980, a more important dissonance between low-spending fiscal conservatism and big-spending militarism. That’s why Reagan couldn’t balance the budget. > [@Anny\_Middon](#): > > Should the party actually end up splitting, I have no idea how viable in the long-term either faction would be. According to Pew, 32% of Americans identify as Democrats, 23% as Republicans, and 39% as Independent. (I’m curious about the other 6%.) If sufficient Independents moved to one GOP faction or the other, we could end up with a three-party system. Better to look at a different Pew study, the [Pew Political Typology.](http://www.people-press.org/2014/06/26/the-political-typology-beyond-red-vs-blue/) Instead of self-ID as Dem or Pub or conservative or liberal, it classifies Americans’ political views based on answers to a range of polling questions. They do it over again every few years. The latest version, from 2014, shows eight typology groups. Those groups are the building-blocks of any future successful coalition. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2016, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-this-election-is-great-for-the-gop-evolution/749902/29 "2016-03-23T15:57:46Z")
The other thing is, Trump and Cruz very much represent the direction of any near-term GOP evolution. They’re racking up the votes because they’re what the base wants. But the GOP elites, which have been using the GOP base as ground troops in their war against Democrats and the left, can’t just become Democrats, nor do they have an agenda that could form the core of a meaningful party of the middle. They’re for tax cuts for the rich, deregulation, and militarism. There really isn’t a voting base for what they’re selling. So they’re really stuck with trying to make the best of their tenuous relationship with the base. I guess if there are enough ‘reasonable Republican’ voters left to make a difference by drifting over to voting Dem if a Trump/Cruz base repels them, then you’d have a modest realignment. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2016, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-this-election-is-great-for-the-gop-evolution/749902/30 "2016-03-23T16:35:39Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Better to look at a different Pew study, the [Pew Political Typology.](http://www.people-press.org/2014/06/26/the-political-typology-beyond-red-vs-blue/) Instead of self-ID as Dem or Pub or conservative or liberal, it classifies Americans’ political views based on answers to a range of polling questions. They do it over again every few years. The latest version, from 2014, shows eight typology groups. Those groups are the building-blocks of any future successful coalition. I looked at it just now, and it struck me that it’s a very white view of the world. It classifies people, in part, by their _views_ on race, but barely mentions people _being_ of different races. Black people don’t have views about race so much as simply having to cope with it. Also, in terms of the simple mechanics of coalition-building, you’d want to know how the types broke down differently among blacks, Hispanics, and non-Hispanic whites. Given that the GOP [has long since driven blacks](https://twitter.com/alexcampbell/status/711877315194712065/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) into the arms of the Democratic Party, and is now following suit with Hispanics, looking at the world through a color-blind voter typology makes less than no sense. ---
**Author:** ![Claverhouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/13edae/32.png) [@Claverhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Claverhouse)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2016, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-this-election-is-great-for-the-gop-evolution/749902/31 "2016-03-23T16:55:25Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > They’re for tax cuts for the rich, deregulation, and militarism. There really isn’t a voting base for what they’re selling. Many thoughtful constitutional policy wonks in bow ties are wrestling with this problem, and are vocally supporting extending the franchise not merely to the position it holds at the beginning of all bourgeois revolutions with property qualifications for the honoured few who orchestrated the revolutions to this end, but to change the vote to be no longer a simplistic headcount of the uninformed with no stake in the country, through allocating a greater weight in votes by income and personal worth. Therefore people would get one vote for every $10,000 they own unencumbered, regardless of sex, race or personal sanity. It is possible that a voting base for the propositions you mention would then exist. Plus rickstraws. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2016, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-this-election-is-great-for-the-gop-evolution/749902/32 "2016-03-23T16:59:01Z")
Bah. Mark Twain came up with that one first. [“The Curious Republic of Gondour”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gondour). ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2016, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-this-election-is-great-for-the-gop-evolution/749902/33 "2016-03-23T17:04:03Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > Bah. Mark Twain came up with that one first. [“The Curious Republic of Gondour”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gondour). What’s the point of plural voting? We **now** live in a republic where persons with money and/or education wield political power far out of proportion to their numbers. ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2016, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-this-election-is-great-for-the-gop-evolution/749902/34 "2016-03-23T17:08:57Z")
> [@Claverhouse](#): > > Perhaps this says as much about Democrats as it does about Republicans… Absolutely. The Democrats should have countered the Death Panel and Socialism bullshit starting in 2009 and not run away from the ACA in the 2010 elections. Nor should they have run away from Obama in 2014. That silly woman in Kentucky couldn’t even bring herself to answer whether or not she voted for him. ---
**Author:** ![Claverhouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/13edae/32.png) [@Claverhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Claverhouse)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2016, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-this-election-is-great-for-the-gop-evolution/749902/35 "2016-03-23T17:18:22Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > What’s the point of plural voting? We **now** live in a republic where persons with money and/or education wield political power far out of proportion to their numbers. But then Charles Koch could kick back and relax instead of wearing himself to a thread ‘educating’ people on personal responsibility and social and economic prosperity. He worries about ‘vast sums of money going to the state’ under the Obama administration. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2016, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-this-election-is-great-for-the-gop-evolution/749902/36 "2016-03-23T17:34:53Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > I looked at it just now, and it struck me that it’s a very white view of the world. It classifies people, in part, by their _views_ on race, but barely mentions people _being_ of different races. Black people don’t have views about race so much as simply having to cope with it. So what? For voters of any color, their views are what determine their voting behavior and party loyalty. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2016, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-this-election-is-great-for-the-gop-evolution/749902/37 "2016-03-23T17:36:18Z")
> [@Claverhouse](#): > > But then Charles Koch could kick back and relax instead of wearing himself to a thread ‘educating’ people on personal responsibility and social and economic prosperity. > He worries about ‘vast sums of money going to the state’ under the Obama administration. No, he doesn’t, he **says** he does. That’s just playing the game. And where elections are concerned, he is concerned only with tilting the field as against his colleagues-in-wealth who also happen to be Dems or liberals. They may have partisan differences – but as a single group they always get their way anyway, whenever they can agree on it, and whenever it conflicts with the 90%'s way. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2016, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-this-election-is-great-for-the-gop-evolution/749902/38 "2016-03-23T17:38:03Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > I don’t get it. If the GOP emerges from the 2016 election still controlling the House, albeit by a thinner margin, and has lost the Senate but is in good shape to retake it in 2018 with a wildly GOP-favorable landscape that year, and still controls a substantial majority of state legislatures and governorships across the country…then _ **why in God’s name would they see themselves as a failing party??** _ … Once again, this has nothing at all to do with how “the party” sees itself, or any intent. It is a speculation based on assuming what many are prediciting will result: fractured factions with greater resentment to each other. Viewing themselves as a failed party in that context is not a matter of how they choose to see themselves: it is the simple reality that they would _be_ a failed party, unable to do anything more than obstruct each other and only together able to obstruct any business being done at all. If you do not have control over yourselves you do not in fact have control over Congress. It is the point of irreconciable differences; adult sibs who only share deceased parents and contempt of each other. Play out what happens if that occurs and neither Ryan or any other Represntative is able to emerge as able to maintain enough membership support or ability to function in the Speaker position. Play it out several steps and share what you see results. Not by intent to change but because change inevitably happens and often happens suddenly at crisis points. ---
**Author:** ![Claverhouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/13edae/32.png) [@Claverhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Claverhouse)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2016, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-this-election-is-great-for-the-gop-evolution/749902/39 "2016-03-23T17:51:32Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > No, he doesn’t, he **says** he does… It’s the fact that some chump with $43 alleged billion worries about vast sums going anywhere else that is amusing. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2016, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-this-election-is-great-for-the-gop-evolution/749902/40 "2016-03-23T18:02:00Z")
> [@Claverhouse](#): > > Many thoughtful constitutional policy wonks in bow ties are wrestling with this problem . . . Who, exactly? I have not heard of any Republic-of-Gondour reform being seriously proposed since [H.L. Hunt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._L._Hunt), who was no thoughtful policy wonk. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-this-election-is-great-for-the-gop-evolution/749902.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-this-election-is-great-for-the-gop-evolution/749902.md?page=3)