Now that Obama has won, and I am resting after doing many happy dances, I figure maybe it is time to calculate what the smart Republican would do to increase their chances to win next time.
I think it is time they got on the bandwagon and worked for some real immigration reform, instead of talking about building big walls and deporting half of the southwest.
It is perhaps time they opened a science book and spoke to a few people who actually teach the subject and start to look at climate change as perhaps more than just a theory. For extra credit homework, read the chapter on evolution.
Practice what they preach as they claim their fervent religious beliefs - that bigotry and hate are not family values. This will be hard to swallow, but racist, sexist and homophobic platforms are not going to work anymore.
It might be true (as Fox News suggested last night several times) that baby boomers are still mostly white and getting older - but that does not mean we baby boomers are also blithering idiots who will fall into the Republican fold just because we might soon be in the market for a Hoveround. Don’t think a larger base of old farts like myself is going to automatically translate into more votes for you.
Every group has their fringe element, but paying heed to your Tea Party was a really dumb idea. Remember that.
So, it is not like I want the Republicans to win next time, but just thought I would throw this out there in case they wanted to try to create a platform, and find a candidate, who might give them a choice for the true independents and maybe even give us an election where many could say, “even if the other candidate wins, it would not be the worst thing to happen.” We haven’t had an election like that in a very, very long time.
After the memory of Bush II has faded (which will probably take a few more years), I think they might actually have a winning move with a hard-core civil liberties message. They would have to be serious about it, and recognize that there’s more to the Bill of Rights than the Second Amendment, but some of the few things I’m hearing from right-wing bloggers that I actually agree with concern the stupidity and intrusiveness of security theater measures and such, and this is one area where the Democrats currently in power really have betrayed their promises.
There’s lots of talk about how the Republicans are going to have to start supporting immigration reform if they want to remain relevant in the future. It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen. They don’t really have a choice. Most hispanics are socially conservative, so conceeding immigration reform could help the Republicans make inroads.
stop exagerating everything and thus losing all credibility.
They actually scared me most this cycle when they started saying, essentially, “Obama is a good guy and tried, but failed. Give us a shot, and here’s what we can do to make things better faster…”
Instead, mostly we heard “Obama has been a disaster, things are terrible, the take over of health care, destroying our military, bowing for foreign leaders, etc, etc,”
Pretty much half of the country still voted for the GOP, you know. The stuff in the OP that the Republican do that we find so stupid is what half the country actually believes.
I really think there is a desire in this country for a conservative who behaves like an adult. One who holds standard right wing positions but is realistic, reasonable, and is willing to compromise if it the general effect is to advance his agenda. Basically a Sam Stone or Bricker type figure. I don’t agree with their politics or view points but I do respect them.
The problem is the conservative media. Ever since Rush Limbaugh discovered that rabble rousing makes for much more interesting radio and television then does reasoned discussion. This format has been a gold mine for the media business owners on the right. As a result much of the rights base base has been led off the deep end. This wouldn’t be too much of a problem except for the fact that its the base who turns out in the primaries. Thus in order to even get a chance at a race you have to be a moonbat or at least pretend to be a moonbat for the primary leaving a trail of embarrassing sound bites that will haunt them in the general.
They need to mount a concerted effort to quash the Tea Party and all the nuttery that comes along with it. Buying into extremism is not what anybody wants for the future of the country. The nutters won’t go away, but there is zero reason to legitimize them.
I agree. It’s always been the case that Republicans had to campaign to the right in the primaries and then pivot back to the center for the General. However, the base has moved so very far to the right now, that the pivot moves in order to get back to the center for the general must be so huge that it is painfully obvious what is going on.
Plus in the past, it was a little easier to have the crap you said during the primaries go down the memory hole for the public. (Didn’t he say something completely opposite during the primaries? I don’t know,lets head on down to the public library and go over the old newspapers in the microfishe room)
I also agree with the problem of theright wing media pundits, who have discovered a vast well of profits that they can tap by making people angry by telling them outrageously untrue bullshit. They have helped shaped the electorate by feeding them lies and pushing them further to the right.
In effect, you could say that indirectly, the Limbaugh’s Beck’s and Hannity’s helped Obama win this election. It’s the law of unintended consequences.
And they lost twice to a black guy by holding onto those beliefs! Don’t get me wrong, I like the POTUS but I know people and I know it irks them to hell and back to know that they lost to a minority candidate twice. Imagine what goes thru their pea brains when they think what a white democrat like Clinton could have done to them. The Republicans in the office are painfully quite today, perhaps when they go home tonight and have Fox News tell them how they feel and how they should react to the questions concerning the loss they will feel better.
Article in The Atlantic covering some of the same ground.
I think the ultimate problem - if this is true - may be liberal dominance of the MSM. This drove conservatives to create their own alternatives, but the overtly conservative media is more conservative than the MSM is liberal.
But I’m not sure if the premise if true. (I.e. it’s definitely true that there are a lot of kool-aid drinking conservatives, but ISTM that there are as many on the other side as well.)
Right, this. I don’t see much sign that the base is going to be in a mood to moderate. Some people thought they would have learned from Angle and O’Donnell last time not to throw away easily winnable Senate seats by nominating extremists, but nope: this time they threw away two more by nominating the most extreme possible candidates in MO and IN (in the latter case dumping a perfectly conservative incumbent because he wasn’t rabid enough).
Ha, so true. I remember having late night bull sessions in college where my friends and I would disagree over some point of fact, and we would vow to remember the point of contention and go look it up when the library opened. (Never happened.)
The best thing they could do is get off the highway they are on and take the next LEFT, into the wilderness.
They need to start looking at their current positions on things that affect people’s lives every day: health care, gay rights, education, the environment, women’s health issues, immigration, banking regulations, local government funding, safety and security, regulations, etc. On those issues and others, the current Republican positions are opposite what many people want. They need to be more open to the needs of the changing demographics of the nation.
Sure, the national issues of debt and deficits are there, but for most people they just do not hit close to home. Tell someone the debt is a gazillion dollars, and it does not mean much, no matter who is responsible for it. Tell them there may be some new restrictions on your birth control if the guy with the ® next to his name is elected, and people take notice.
I think there is room for disagreement on all issues, but the current Republican strategy of opposition to everything the other side proposes is backfiring. People want to see their elected officials doing their job and governing responsibly, and often by compromise, working with one another, and putting aside ideology to come up with real solutions. The Democrats seem more willing to do that.
We will see if they are willing to learn anything in the next couple of years.
It’s not a matter of how left wing or right wing any media is, it’s that the right wing is just lying to their viewers. The alternative to liberal media is not made up bullshit. Saying Romney is going to win in a landslide is not being more conservative, it’s just trying to attract viewers by making shit up.
Honestly, there’s no point asking what the Republicans should do. IT’s a political party that will represent the wishes of a shifting membership, and which will be successful or unsuccessful based on issues and events we cannot foresee.
If you think things look bad for the GOP now, consider how it looked for them in 1964, or 1996. Or for that matter 1976. Works both ways, too. In early 1991, less than two years before Bill Clinton was elected, the Democratic Party was hopelessly lost at sea and the idea of Bush losing the next election was treated as a hilarious joke.
The Republicans control the House of Representatives and a lot of state houses; they are not a party in terminal decline. They simply had the inferior candidate for President.
The GOP is, however, in a tailspin as regards credibility, engagement with political realities, and responsiveness to voters’ needs (as opposed to their urges, prejudices, and fears).
The response ought to be a slow, steady, and determined campaign against “the crazy” - the tribal, cocooned, politics-as-faith movement that has a stranglehold on the roots of conservatism, yet showed its vulnerability this election with the likes of Akin and Mourdock going down to defeat. They hung themselves, true, but what’s to stop principled conservatives from making analogies to the mealy-mouth panderings of a Bachmann or a Steve King?
This over-a-year-old blog and commentary from FrumForum (a somewhat ecumenical conservative site) seems to be oddly prophetic in the wake of last night’s results.
Well that’s where we disagree. I think the right wing media people are not lying. For example, I think they genuinely believed their election predictions, for the most part. (Interestingly, I actually thought Karl Rove in particular hedged more than most - he predicted Romney getting 285 EV but noted that some of his Romney states were really tossups.)
People have a tendency to believe what they want to believe. This is human nature, and not unique to Republicans. In this particular election this came to the fore in a much more blatant way for Republicans, simply because they had the polls against them. But you see it in every election, for every underdog party (& in sporting events as well).
This very board is witness, for elections in which Democrats have been underdogs.
What compounds the problem is the cocoon that people surround themselves with, in that other people sharing a common belief has a reinforcing effect, and this is where the conservative media has a share in the problem. And here I’m suggesting a possible rationale for the phenomenon to be more acute for conservatives, because their cocoon is more tightly wound. So it’s possible. But ISTM that everyone shares the same issue.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the POTUS but I know people and I know it irks them to hell and back to know that they lost to a minority candidate twice. Imagine what goes thru their pea brains when they think what a white democrat like Clinton could have done to them. The Republicans in the office are painfully quite today, perhaps when they go home tonight and have Fox News tell them how they feel and how they should react to the questions concerning the loss they will feel better.