Denying people equal access to marriage, driving homosexuals back into the closet are ‘Traditional American Values’? If that’s true then it’s time for those values to shift, in my opinion. (AND the majority who demanded, with their votes, that those laws be changed!)
What’s wrong with it is, you can’t turn back time. No matter how much you wish it. It’s bordering on delusional to believe it’s possible. Reimposing a de facto religion of state is a HUGE step backwards!
This isn’t an opinion, but perhaps a common trait of conservatives - they often appear to lack empathy for others. Bill Maher talked about this last week, although I recall reading almost exactly what he said elsewhere: Conservatives only seem to change their thinking when it happens to them or someone they personally care about.
Nancy Reagan broke with the typical Republican position by being pro stem cell research. Why? Very possibly because her husband suffered from Alzheimer’s.
Dick Cheney has a softer stance on same-sex marriage. Why? Perhaps because his daughter is a lesbian. I seem to recall a candidate in the off year election (maybe someone can recall exactly who) a while back who changed his stance on the issue when his son came out to him as gay.
I can think of a few shadier examples, such as the rep (I think in Louisiana) who was talking his mistress into getting an abortion. In any case, I think there’s something to this idea.
So I guess “Hang all the Negroes from lamp posts!” would be right out?
I think so. My list is much more honest and not drawn up by a committee of the clueless.
<checks forum> IMHO, Republicans seem to live in a world of absolutes, where one makes decisions about how to live their life based on the word of God (the bible) and the word of the Founding Fathers (the Constitution). Other interpretations of the rules of living are not valid, and anyone not living by the Bible and Constitution are immoral.
As a group, they seem to gravitate toward authoritarian figures and eschew free-thinking - they want to be told what to believe, what to accept, and who to trust without investing the time in doing the work of forming their own opinions - they don’t want to hear opinions from anyone they may disagree with. The media is more than happy to serve-up everything they want to hear, in absolutes.
IMHO, the Democratic party seems more open to opposing views - there are diverse views on a lot of topics, like gun control, immigration, finances, etc. The GOP has the purity test (per what BobLibDem lists), and anyone not shouting those points from the rooftops is not really a Republican and not welcome.
Democrats haven’t had anything to unite them other than hatred for Republicans for decades now. The difference between Democrats and Republicans at this point is that Democrats are willing to let someone drive, even if it’s not someone they agree with. The Republican party has ten different groups fighting over the wheel.
That doesn’t seem to be what’s going on anymore though. Trump fails a ton of purity tests.
Nm
This is the ultimate strawman thread that is exposing other people’s ignorance and biases. I don’t agree with the vast majority of the posts so far.
I am an Independent but self-styled moderate libertarian that tends to lean with the libertarian minority side of the Republican party but I am open to anyone that most closely represents my beliefs. Most of my family is as well.
I have already made up my mind as has much of my family that we are supporting Hillary Clinton for President. It has nothing to do with the fact that she is a woman or her character. She is just the best moderate Republican candidate there is this cycle. Before you call me ignorant, I am fully aware that she is officially a Democrat but that just shows how stupid the whole idea is. She represents the ideas of old-school Republicans much better than any of the other candidates.
The Republican party has been hijacked, gone off the rails and imploded for now at least at the national level. That doesn’t mean that it is gone for good however. It will reform in some fashion just like both major parties have many times before. Two party systems aren’t coherent especially at the extremes but they are somewhat stable once they establish coalitions.
You can turn this question around even more easily. What does it mean if someone tells you that they are a Democrat? It is the ‘Big Tent’ party so it gives you almost no information.
YOu must be referring to what she REALLY thinks on the issues, rather than her stated positions, which are further to the left than any Democrat has gone since McGovern.
I happen to also think that she’s closer to a moderate REpublican than a Democrat, but I don’t cotton to liars, so thank God for Gary Johnson.
I take it you’re talking of the party at the highest levels and not the voters. The republican party–again, not the voters–has been replaced over the last 20 years in a scheme advanced mainly by Grover Norquist. The media foolishly refer to him as “anti-tax fanatic” or “anti-tax guru” but his anti-tax pledge has been the “glue” which has created today’s 100% obstructionist “Gang GOP” which shuts down the progress of the country and uses partisan media to blame the governmnent for its singular part in undermining it. Norquist’s anti-tax pledge may have been conceived by him at age 12 as he claims, but as the first “republican revolution” in the mid 1990’s coincided with the debut of GOP TV, otherwise known as Fox “News”, Norquist’s pledge became a powerful “purity” test which made or broke careers. This is how and why the GOP no longer has “moderates” in it who could be petitioned, be reasoned with and take action which would break ranks with the rest of the party. Since partisan media is not just used by the parties gainst each other but by the republican party against its own people to weed out and disqualify moderates using Norquist’s pledge as a defining condition, the result is the republican totality of conservative extremism we see today.
It is a very convenient coincidence that the first Democrat to hold the White House since Bill Clinton is also the first African American. Far too much has been played off as Obama hate and racism which should be being vigorously investigated by the DOJ to find out who really runs the GOP and how exactly and why does its factions all drop their in-fighting and become a solid block of absolute contrarianism against the Democrats’ agenda. Read the first chapter of Jane Mayer’s book “Dark Money” and you will get a taste for the real disdain the highest echelons of the donor class has for governmnent period. The Kochs want to rip it out by its roots–all except the part needed to guard their wealth. And Norquist himself has admitted wanting to starve the governmnent of funding until it’s weak enough “to be drowned in a bath tub”. These people are not characters in a fiction. To me the are domestic enemies, and Obama and the media need to knock off the narrative that this is just about Obama. It is about we the people who put him in office and our economy–our futures. Obama will be plenty well off after he leaves office. Will you be? How 'bout your kids?
Well, you have to work with what you have in front of you rather than what you wish you had. She is the best moderate Republican available. She is a professional politician. Lying goes with the territory. I can’t say I like her as a person much but she is probably the best administrator out of the choices. I am one of the Republican leaning people that will absolutely not support Trump under any circumstances and there are lots of others like me.
I’m with you, but assuming Trump can’t win, there’s no penalty for just voting for Gary Johnson, an actual libertarian/Republican moderate.
Besides, if Trump wins the nomination, we have no home. First stop might as well be the LP, see how much we can grow it.
Oh, you mean the time that the highest marginal tax rate was 91%, when company presidents made maybe 50 times what their lowest paid workers did and the Gini coefficient (List of countries by income equality - Wikipedia) was considerably lower? When a man could get a factory job and get paid enough to raise a family? You think that Republicans could agree on that?