Not what you think they SHOULD do, but what you think they WILL do.
How do you predict they will act going forward? What do you predict for the 2016 election and beyond? Any other predictions?
Four years isn’t enough time to rid themselves of the Crazies. Especially when it is not at all clear the Crazies aren’t already in control.
The Right Wing Echo Chamber makes too much money from exploiting the gullible Crazies to stop.
The Crazies really are crazy. They will find it hard to rein that in.
My bet is the party will triple down on the crazy for one last push on the assumption that without Obama the turnout among the coalition of democratic support will fall and the Angry Old White Men can sweep back in.
And then Hillary will bush-wack them and like now they’ll stagger out of their Alternate Reality bubble blinking in shock. And only then will the sane sensible right of centre party the USA needs begin to take shape.
They come back strong in the midterms and kick our asses in Congress.
Don’t you people have memories?
Of course they will. And they will mistake the impact of lower turnout and enthusiasm of the democratic coalition as a sign that One Last Crazy Push will do it for them.
Yeah, I agree. I don’t see any impulse toward the sort of self-reflection or critical analysis that would allow them to respond to the demographic tide that’s moving against them. I predict they will respond to this loss by moving even further right and being even more concerned with ideological purity, which will lead to an epic shellacking in 2016. At that point the money men will start shifting their cash to conservative Democrats because there’s no point in trying to buy influence with a candidate that has no chance of winning. And if that happens, they’re in a death spiral.
I think this takes the wind out of the sails of enough of the crazies that some less crazy can attempt to stake out some less extreme positions.
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There will be a deal that avoids the fiscal cliff. It will make no one happy which is how you will know it is a good compromise. Those on the GOP side who have to make their part of those compromises will be forced to characterize the “no compromise” crowd as extremist. That starts giving them the practice doing that.
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Enough will recognize that all they need is an additional small sliver of the emerging Hispanic vote joining up with them and they become the winning side again. A compromise on immigration reform will be in the cards despite how much it pisses off the craziest. Sure a few more crazies stop answering “Republican” to those party ID questions and instead answer “Independent” but they will still vote what they see as the lesser of two evils and against the Democrats. And there are enough Hispanic Conservatives who would vote GOP if they were not so vilified as a group by them to make for a winning coalition.
Just those small amounts of moderation will be enough and will be the hallmarks of the next few years. Presidential primary next time? Harder to say. The crazies are motivated and it is hard to get past that process without pandering. Even with years of organizing and oodles of money (his and others) Romney would not have made it past without the pandering. (Not that he needed to be convinced, saying whatever he thinks a crowd wants to hear comes easy to him.) Someone without that level of organization and amount of cash? Don’t know.
Romney himself is flying the “Sandy blocked my momentum” flag.
The GOP will have a couple days of “soul searching” and then decide they don’t really bear any responsibility for the loss and they just need to “get their message out”.
So they think ‘An Act of God’ lost them the Presidency? Maybe they need to think on what that might imply.
But I’d rather they did not and instead banged on a bit more about rape, self-deportation and how great everything would be if stuff were taken from the poor and middle classes and given to Rich White Guys.
You go girls!
Perhaps they will recognize the changing demographics and attempt to appeal to African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans and other minority groups?
They will start a new policy of saying they won’t force their moral views on the country, then do it anyway when they regain power. They’ll moderate their fiscal policy of welfare for the rich, then give away the treasury again when they get in power. They’ll speak more moderately about immigration, then at every opportunity blame immigrants for all problems and make sure they can’t vote. In other words, they’ll do what they always do, lie.
I think we won’t see any fundamental change in the GOP in the next 4 years.
What we will see is a bump in the GOP wins in 2 years, and after that it will all really depend on who is running.
I personally would like to see a repeat of sorts of this last 4 years. The GOP gains some ground in 2 years, thus putting them back where they were 2 years ago. Then in 4 years, under a strong presidential candidate (I’m wondering if Hillary will run, honestly.) the Dem’s gain a lot of ground.
Repeat cycle, with the crazies in the GOP getting less and less relevant as socially aware and non-racist kids move into the voting demographic.
Eventually the GOP will reform itself as a primarily economic group, and the Moral “Majority” will seek out some other group to leech the life out of.
Ha! Good one.
Today’s editorial in the National Review has some relevance to this thread:
Here’s the problem with just trying to polish “small-government principles”; those principles include voucherizing Medicare, eliminating Social Security, privatizing education, reducing government assistance programs, rolling back environmental regulation, lowering taxes on the “job-creators”, and about a dozen other things that this changing electorate does not want.
The changing electorate sees an essential role for government. Most of them have felt unequal treatment firsthand and grown up under the conservative economic principles of the past 30 years, when a decrease in government oversight has led to the obscene wealth imbalance. Telling them that “big government” is the problem is an utter waste of time; you can’t polish a turd.
The thing is, that shellacking needs to happen downticket to really have any effect. Presidents come and go but Congress makes the laws. If they start losing races in both Houses in significant numbers, then you’ll see some soul searching.
Until then, more crazy.
Why does Romney say that God hates him?
If I were the Dems, I’d find some way to invest in money in the Tea Party, Fox News, and that ilk. Let’s keep the crazies in charge, and let them dig the party into the ground. Indeed, I can’t help but think that may be what we are seeing right now.
I’m looking forward to some ham-handed pandering to minority votes, which is immediately counteracted by embarrassing comments and legislation.
Is there a chance that there will be a real splintering of the GOP into Tea Partyists which will circle up the crazy, and “moderates” who will pull in the conservatives now calling themselves Independents? In that case the Dems could lose their right wing and maybe even start acting liberal again.
I mean, after a few more cycles of this. The abandonment of the monied backers for candidates which actually win might force something of this nature.
Free stuff for all!
This post is probably a joke, but I wonder if you actually think the GOP needs to change. How do you think the GOP could attract more single women, young people, minorities, and (one of my favorite demographics) the growing population of non-religious Americans?
Sadly, it was a serious post.
We’ve become a “what will you give me if I vote for you?” society.