Would I actually advocate for mass murder if hired on?
Well, anything else I would say would be ignored, so what difference does it make?
I grew up in the GOP. The leadership is basically Charles Koch & his sycophants. They’re not going to become environmentalist, ever; they’re not going to support workers’ rights; they’re not going to advocate for a humane society even for white people let alone for anyone else. There are versions of conservatism that are sane; Mr. Koch’s money won’t support those; he wants to burn the world.
If I advocated for mass murder, I’d at least be an agent provocateur & have a very small chance of provoking a counter-assault from believers in democracy & human rights.
Both parties have been in constant flux since their inception. To say that one party is now set in stone is…short sighted? Wishful thinking? Political parties are always one lost election from change.
Currently both parties are moving too far into the extremes coupled with some unwritten mandate that a “true blue” or “true red” American voter must support his party and 100% of their ideals.
I think many voters like myself find this very unappealing but in a two party system we choose the lesser evil, which for the last two decades plus has been the dems.
You are right about the GOP problem and as their core elderly supporters pass on, they must appeal to more moderate voters.
I do not hate all GOP policies as some here do, but when you have a POTUS who both has the IQ of and acts like a 10 year old, cannot stop lying on an epic scale and the whole party thinks global warming is a a hoax, it is both hard to take the party seriously and i often question the intelligence of those that not only support but believe the same.
Now I understand there are republicans that maybe acknowledge global warming and that Trump is a scumbag but believe more strongly in lower taxes, the religious right or the rights of an unborn fetus/life. And to those people we can agree to disagree without me thinking they are - literally - stupid AF.
All that said… put a Romney type candidate up against a Bernie? That would bring many centrists into the GOP fold.
Romney probably decided he is not running again in 2024 when he’s 77 so he can do and say whatever he wants. And if he does run again in deep red Utah he will likely win again. He could have a primary fight.
The GOP could slow its decline over the next decades by running candidates with 21st century solutions to 21st century problems. Gen Xers and minority voters can be won over by dropping the racist dog whistling and advancing reasonable, science-based programs that address the country’s needs in an intelligent manner. However, they won’t be able to bring themselves to do this for a while, at least until the Silents and the Stupids are of an insignificant number, and will hope to maintain a hold on the Senate (with the help of some Trump judges) to prevent any meaningful progress. After they lose a couple of elections, a new Republican Party will regenerate out of necessity. They will never be completely out of the picture as long as the Democratic Party is as poor at politics as it currently is.
Oh, and I completely forgot the voter suppression strategy. For decades to come, they’ll have a court more supportive of their efforts than they ever could have reasonably hoped for. Vote by mail? Ha ha. Need to take away a couple of thousand voting machines in urban areas? Sounds good to us! Gerrymandering? Oh, we can’t do anything about that. Shame.
I agree about Romney. I also feel that John McCain and George W. Bush weren’t personally racist. But they were all willing to appeal to racist voters in order to get elected.
I disagree. The Democrats have been seeking the moderate vote ever since the Republicans abandoned it. They have been moving away from the extreme.
Now, I’ll grant we’ve started to see a counter-movement in the Democratic party with Bernie Sanders being its most visible leader. But the fact that Biden beat Sanders shows that the moderates are still in control.
The core of their party is focused on demographic change – in the reverse. They’re going to focus on more restrictive immigration policies. They will restrict voting so that it disenfranchises more and more people of color. Their goal is to turn back the clock to 1924. They’ve already radically changed the dynamics of immigration. Imagine what this situation will look like 4-8 years in the future.
This is exactly what they will do, and they’ll do it in places that disproportionately impact people of color because it’s the easiest way to distinguish voters most likely to vote against them. They can’t predict which white men and women will vote against them, even in left-leaning districts. But they know that Latinos outside of Florida and Blacks generally are very likely to vote against them because of their political positions in the past. So those are the voters they will try to disenfranchise first and foremost.
You have to understand that the more things change in this country, the more they stay the same. Anytime the oligarchs in this country have ever been threatened with reform, they’ve repeatedly gone to a tried and true strategy: create a sense of whiteness; create a white middle class that sees itself as separate and distinct from others. Because that way, lower class whites have a special role in society, which is to police and pin down (and more importantly divide) the rest of the working class. A divided working class is weak and ineffectual against the oligarchs.
When wealthy white colonists were confronted with protests and ethical questions about indentured servitude, they adapted to this problem by creating positions of hierarchy within the slave system: the overseers.
After the civil war, farm owners and industrial plant owners broke the labor movement by negotiating with white unions and essentially turning white laborers against black laborers. And in places where industrialists wanted cheaper labor, they threatened to hire black “scab” workers, which white laborers then went out and slaughtered.
The strategy is long-term. It’s to turn the races against each other, but the most likely way to make that happen is to give white working class voters a place in society over everyone else.
That is a fair point, but as a moderate I have to say that it certainly does not feel - even remotely - like that is the case (despite Biden’s lock on the nomination). That crazy, ultra progressive arm seems to be gaining traction not losing it.
I’ve mentioned before how we can look back at American history and see the counter-argument for this. For around a hundred years, there were several states in which one party ran things. Once they had established themselves in power, they used that power to make sure they were not challenged. They could even allow a token opposition to exist as long as it remained irrelevant.
As you note, a political party is motivated to change as a result of losing elections. If a political party has achieved a system where it doesn’t lose any elections, it has no motivation to change. Indeed, it is highly motivated to prevent any changes less those changes inadvertently ruin the system that keeps it in power.
To get back to our historical example, the one party that was in power never sought to reform itself. It only did so when the federal government intervened and imposed change upon it. If a one party system controlled the federal government, then there would be no higher authority to impose change. At that point, you’re looking at a static regime that stay in power and avoids all change until it’s overthrown by a revolution.
I visited the Gerald Ford Library in 2018 and if he was around now he would not be a republican. He was talking about the threat of a shift too far to the right in the 1980s and 1990s.
I’m not sure about “distinctly different,” but in my formative years, Republicanism stood for (at least purported) fiscal responsibility, strong military, limited social programs, smaller government, less multinationalism … Sure, the details were often problematic on a case-by-case basis, but there was a perceived distinction.
I think they could stake out that end of the continuum without relying as much on their appeal to bigots and religious fundies. Would the GOP remain the GOP if they backed purple candidates? What if they actually supported limited spending and smaller government, rather than simply claiming to?
The age thing tends to normalize. As the society moves to the left the AOC’s of the world will pull the Democrats even further left and the Republicans will chase the middle and vice versa.
Immigrants are not liberal. Most of the world is WAAAAAYYYYYYY more conservative than the USA. If the Republicans weren’t so racist, almost all the “American Dream” immigrants would be at least open to them. But right now they can’t turn their backs on the racists because that is what is winning them elections right now. They will shift when the cost of racism outweighs the benefits.
I would try to figure out how to placate the racists (who don’t actually believe they are racist) without doing things that will offend most fair minded minorities. For example, they could replace race based affirmative action with socio-economic based affirmative action.
They could expand on their current populist momentum.
Realistic? There’s realism and then there’s likelihood. A “realistic” GOP solution is mass deportations and executions to rid the nation of bothersome opponents. A “likely” move is just more and more suppression and disenfranchisement. As is, 80% of US senators represent ~50% of the population, and 50% of senators represent ~20% of the population. GOP will do all possible to retain control with minimal popular backing.
IOW the GOP can’t and won’t escape its death spiral. Will it take the nation down with it?
To be fair, he was not disinterested. Ronald Reagan, who was the leader of the Republican party’s conservative wing, had challenged Ford for the 1976 nomination.
That would be before a standing army, with the nation still reliant on a “well-regulated militia” for security. I doubt the military-industrial complex will go for that.