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What does the Republican party stand for?
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Given your definition, is the President a Republican?
Pretty simple, but I’d just like the opinion of others. I’d also like this to not get into a snarky Bush Bash.
Of course the president is a Republican. He was elected after winning the party’s nomination both times.
As for what the party stands for, well, you could check out the platform, I guess, but for the most part that document is full of meaningless political mush.
The Republican Party is a mighty big thing, and doesn’t have a single coherent political philosophy running through it. Remember, this is a party that Giuliani and McCain and Bush and Powell and Ashcroft all belong to, and these individuals aren’t much alike, are they?
And the Democrats, right across the aisle, have a similar situation. Indeed, I’d say they have a far worse case of this.
The question really is whether Bush is a conservative, and what conservatism means. After all, Republicanism isn’t a political pholosophy, conservatism is, and Bush claims to be one.
That debate has been done to death around here.
Truth, justice and the American way. 
Ok, I’d say if you want a boiled down answer, the Republican party (painting with a broad brush which is probably unfair) stands for smaller government, lower taxes, less regulation (goes with the smaller government thing), strong military but a generally more isolationist stance (here we are starting to branch though as SOME republicans feel this way, while others don’t…and I doubt there is a true ‘party’ stance), and many of the quasi-religious issues would come in here as well.
Of course he IS a Republican…is that a trick question? Didn’t you see the (R) by his name when you voted in '04?? 
Now, if you asked ‘Does the President represent main stream Republican values’ or ‘Does the President act like a Republican’, then my first reaction would be ‘no’. If I were to look a bit deeper, I’d say that SOME of his stances are in line with SOME of the ‘Republican Party’…while others are more in line with the ‘Democrat Party’…and still other are completely off the wall and defy easy analysis. I think GW defies an easy fitting into either party…he’s a moon shaped peg that fits neither in the round Republican hole, nor the square Democrat one.
-XT
I don’t disagree with xtisme’s description of a general Republican position. I will add my own broad brush strokes. I previously have found Republicans to be generally supportive of large corporations and Democrats more likely to look out for smaller businesses. This distinction has become less and less apparent during my lifetime.
On a different level, I find that generally, Republicans are more likely to desire to contol the personal lives of others. Republicans are less compassionate. (It wasn’t the Democrats who had to adopt the slogan “compassionate conservative” to try to convince people. Liberals are chastized for being “bleeding hearts” – as if they are an easy touch. Republicans are more exclusive, more fearful, more punitive, more traditionally religious.
President Bush does seem to support big business. I don’t know if he is less compassionate. I just don’t think he is very familiar with “otherlings.” He is very controlling about the personal lives of others. He is exclusive. I don’t know if he is fearful, but he does use fear as a manipulative devise. I have read that he can be very punitive and holds a grudge personally. He certainly is punitive in his decisions about prisoners taken in the war on terror. (Easily lead, I think.) He appears to be traditionally religious, but I have no idea.
For my Republican friends here, none of this applies to you, of course, or I wouldn’t be so crazy about you. You know who you are.
If your definition of “Republican” is “one who calls himself a Republican” then of course the answer to #2 is yes. If your definition of Republican is “whatever George Bush says it is,” then again, the answer to #2 is yes.
But for every other defintion, that’s not what I asked. I asked you to define what YOU believed being a Republican is and then, given YOUR defintion of the party’s history, the party’s philosophy, the party’s ideals, does George Bush fit within those parameters?
Reublican covers a broad ideological swath of American conservativism. This ranges from Christian idealists (the much-afeared bugear known as the Religious Right to leftists) to anarcho-libertarians to a handful of unpleasant fascists. Most members, however, rest somewhere in the middle.
Republicans are often not marked by a particular high-concept ideology, but a practical approach to problems and a reliance on American tradition and Christian ethics. This tradition emphasizes personal independance. Despite strong isolationist tencencies, a suprising part of conservative and Republican sympathy comes across in foreign policy, which emphasizes Jacksonian tradition. According to this tradition, America should primaruly orient its foreign policy to adhere to a code of honor. There is a distinct acknowledgement that a number of states are simply bad apples, and should be treated as pariahs.
Most, in theory, want smaller government, but generally do not follow through in office, partly becaue of political considerations. In other words, while a comittment to small government appears to be a big part of the conservative platform, it isn’t as important as a numberof other programs and ideas.
The official platform of the Republican Party:
1 - Winning the War on Terror
2 - Ushering in an Ownership Era
3 - Building an Innovative Economy to Compete in the World
4 - Strengthening Our Communities
5 - Protecting Our Families
Granted this is a broad outline, but the whole document gives more details.
I think we can honestly say that the Republican party is the political arm of the Religious Right. Arnold has proven it this week. Even a so called Liberal Republican can’t risk alienating this group. They know that opposing same sex marriage and abortion are the most important issues to the Focus on the Family crowd.
The party proved it with their clumsy interferance in the Terri Schiavo debate. Despite the Republican claim of limited government and family values, the Republican party bowed to the wishes of the Religious Right.
Now I’m not quite sure I’d agree with that. Most of the people who actually make it into office are on the business side. But given that that agenda is a bit exclusive, they need to bring people on. Being seasoned bussinessmen, as they tend to be, they have experience in knowing how to reach the most people with the least amount of substance - which is where the religion comes in.
Whie republicans definitely use it to win campaigns, I think they’re also pretty good at seperating how to get to office and what to do once there.
Did it ocur to either of you that perhaps, most Republicans know both business and religion? I’m sure there are more than a few followers of Mammon, but business and religion are hardly exclusive.
And the unstated but very real program of the Republican Party is to:
- Use fear to retain political power by prolonging conflicts with external threats indefinitely.
- Transform the middle class and the poor into one huge subclass living from paycheck to paycheck and utterly at the mercy of the wealthy.
- Make the wealthy even wealthier. Use the poor in other countries to bludgeon the workers in the US into submission
- Destroy the social safety net leaving the poor and the middle class even more powerless. Destroy confidence in government by subverting it from within, hiring fools and screwups to run key federal agencies like, say … FEMA!
- Appeal to bigotry against gays even as you rob middle class parents of the ability to educate their children.
- Appeal to racism against blacks and Hispanics wherever possible.
I’d say the Bush Administration’s performance has been COMPLETELY in line with these unstated goals.
Well, at least Evil Captor is honest about his opinions. I must say, I love being part of a wicked conspiracy. We get a newletter (Evil Monthly; I love their scrolls of Summon City Bus) and everything!
Well of course, and most Democrats know religion as well. But in terms of agenda, that’s the only way I see to explain the confluence two things that don’t really have much to do with each other.
To whom is this comment addressed?
Don’t flatter yourself. The people who set the Republican Party’s actual agenda don’t share with the hoi polloi, especially not the hoi polloi of their own party. (I don’t know how polloi you actually are, but I am assuming you are in fact not part of the Bush Administration or the Senate leadership they work with.) If the average Republican were in on it, it would be their public agenda. The only way to know their real agenda is to look at their actions and compare it with their stated intents. Frex, if the Republicans really wanted to strengthen families, they wouldn’t be seeking to beggar middle class and poor families.
- The Republican Party stands for getting Republican candidates into office and keeping them there. Everything else is a kind of reverberating back-and-forth exchange between what various Factions Of The Day want from their elected officials and what the Party has discovered to be an effective and appealing platform for cobbling together enough of those Factions to get more votes than the nonRepublicans opposing them in the elections. In noncontrast, the Democratic Party stands for the same thing (except, of course, that it’s the election of Democratic candidates that it exists for). The differences between the parties is purely an artifact of the momentum of these reverberation patterns: the political positions that have worked for the Dem Party serves as a draw for candiates who like those positions as well as for voters who do likewise, while the adopting of those positions by candidates who happen to be Democrats serves as good votebait. Identically so (in every way but This Decade’s Content) for the Pubbies.
Nowhere is it carved in durable stone that any given principle or stance (or set of stances) is quintessentially Republican or fundamentally Democratic. There’s no party charter preventing positions that are contrary to either party’s current platform from becoming part of that party’s fervently espoused principles later on.
- By that definition, sure, GWB is Republican. He is mildly out “in front” with regards to some trends of change within the Republican party but not radically or anomalously so, and in other ways is fairly mainstream among Republican political perspectives. Insofar as what he does succeeds in appealing to a voting base, his politics play a role in defining what is Republican, what works for the Republican party, and other Republican candidates will emulate it. Reciprocally, to whatever extent his administration gives a political bad name to some portion of these politics, making them less appealing to the Factions, and/or to whatever extent the Factions shrink or other Factions become a bigger factor, the Republican Party may be pulled in another direction.
Generally, the parties change directions like a huge tanker at sea: slowly, and only gradually responding to forces acting upon them. The Republican Party of the current day has a momentum in the directions in which George W Bush could perhaps be said to be mildly to moderately “different” from the Republican mainstream, and even more so in the directions in which he could be said to differ from what might have been described as “Republican beliefs” in 1968 or 1986.
I notice that any thread started specifically asking not to Bush bash tends to get significantly less replies. I wonder why that is
There have been some good answers so far but let me just back the debate up a bit and expand out my thought process. There are numerous things that Bush does/has done that, had they been done by a Democratic politician, would have evoked the ire of every self-identified Republican talk show host across the land. But because they’re done by Bush they get explained, spun, forgiven, etc.
My point here is not to say how often it happens or to list specific examples of it happening. It happens. To deny it is pretty deluded. Likewise, I will concede that when a Democrat does something that draws the ire of Republicans, it is brushed aside with the same force by newscasters who have Democratic leanings.
But given that it happens, we must ask: is this behavior typical of a Republican? “This” being defined as whatever the politician did to evoke the maelstorm.
And here’s the key question one must ask. Do I side with the President because I agree with his decision or because I define myself as a Republican and he defines himself as a Republican and he is the leader of the Republican party?
Taking it a step back: does the President define what it means to be a Republican? Can one look at a situation objectively and say “this is not what a Republican would do and I, being a Republican, feel his decision or his opinion is outside the scope of the party”?
I’m not a Republican. But at the same time I can identify what one is. He or she values smaller government, states rights, individual freedom, a strong military, a strong defense, and conservative values.
To the mainstream Republican, the Religious Right should be nothing more than a fringe group.
Yet it’s not. And we have a larger government with an increase in debts, and the Religious Right has taken over the party and the President’s ideals.
In my mind the President isn’t a Republican. He may have that little “R” next to his name but that doesn’t make a difference to me. I think that any party that defines itself by what its leader decides is what the party stands for is doomed to fail.
I know I’m all over the place here but try to see the larger picture of my questions.
I think that you can’t just slap the label “Republican” or “Democrat” on a politician and it suddenly makes it so. I think if people truly stepped back and looked at what a politician is doing, rather than what they are doing AND what label they given themselves, the political arena would be a much better place.
I think you’re right about this. I’m a registered Independent who leans right, but I couldn’t bring myself to vote for Bush. 2000 pissed me off so much. Instead of McCain getting the nomination—or having a chance of getting the nomination—it was a fait acompli. It appeared to me that it was over before it started…that GWB was going to be annointed. In 2004, and this is the biggest problem I have with BOTH parties, not only was he doing nothing to control the borders, he was trying to open them more. This at a time when he was telling us that terrorists were trying to do us harm and people from the Middle East had been caught coming in from Mexico. Not a very “conservative” position if you ask me. And he’s been spending as if he’s a drunken Democrat. (If an image of Ted K. came to mind there, don’t blame me.)
I think the Republican party now has the same problem the Democrats have, just not as bad. Yet. Instead of being able to point to an ideology and having people be drawn to it, it’s about keepiing the other guys out of office. I think that was the biggest problem the Dems had in '04 and fear it will be the platform for both parties in '08: “Vote for us! Because if you don’t, they might win”.
As far as the religious right, I think it is an instance of confluence rather than causality. Both groups are (or used to be) rather conservative in their own right, so it’s not surprising that they agree on many of the issues. On the other hand, it is a huge voting bloc and they tend to vote as one. Kind of the same situation that the Dems have with Black America.
Sorry I’ve rambled. I’ll just summarize and say that to the degree that a Republican is thought to be conservative, he is a watered down Republican.
The thing is people are Republicans for different reasons and some of those reasons are contradictory (which is true of Democrats as well). For example, the Republicans generally stand for small government and lower taxes but they also stand for a strong military and homeland security. Libertarian Republicans are opposed to any government interference in private life; Family Values Republicans want the government to enforce community standards. In foreign policy, the Republicans have isolationists and neo-conservatives.