Yeah. Without those kinds of mean-spirited policies, the GOP has to fall back on Reaganomics and hawk foreign policy, both of which are popular with small groups but not broadly popular since the 2008 crash and the Iraq war.
Note how both Brexit and Trump happened in countries with large financial sectors and who were the main participants in the Iraq war. When limited government and hawkish foreign policy are no longer popular, conservatives have to fall back on xenophobia.
As I understand it, Republicans’ denial of climate change is entirely in line with “conservative” values, because combating climate change requires regulation that conservatives reflexively loathe. They realize it makes no sense to acknowledge the reality of human-caused climate change while fighting regulations that would stop it, so the only logical course is to deny reality.
I think Republicans believe in minimally necessary regulation, not no regulation. The brand of rapacious capitalism we’re drifting towards right now is an abomination even for them. This thread is asking what the GOP can do to head off the demographic time bomb heading its way and I think I’ve suggested something that they can do.
Failure to do anything will marginalize them for decades to come.
Have any conservatives chipped in to this conversation?
Your distinction between “minimally necessary regulation” and “no regulation” is technically accurate, but I haven’t seen much evidence that rapacious capitalism has become abominable to true conservatives. Name one environmental protection the current GOP hasn’t tried to cripple.
That said, in the spirit of the OP, I would say the GOP could win many environmentally minded younger voters by championing market-based initiatives to generate cleaner energy instead of denying that they’re even necessary.
It’s an abomination they’re willing to vote for when push comes to shove.
Many Republicans may not be bigots & kooks but when they have to choose between siding with bigots & kooks or people who’ll raise taxes, they side with bigots & kooks the vast majority of the time.
Sorry for double post; Brain didn’t brain right
Emphasis mine.
You use the word “drifting” like we’re at sea and going towards rapacious capitalism thru no human agency. We’re not drifting towards it, we’re being driven towards it. And who’s doing the driving in that direction? Republicans.
I’ve said before that there’s two tiers in the modern Republican party. At the top you have businessmen; they want a program of government support, tax cuts, and deregulation - not in general but for themselves. And these guys insist on results not promises.
But they’re not numerous to win elections. They needs a separate base of supporters to pump up the vote counts. So they find groups that can be manipulated with fear or resentment and make them promises. These promises are pretty meaningless. The Republican leadership wants to keep these people voting and actually addressing their problems might interfere with that.
So the Republicans aren’t going to address climate change. It’s not an issue that can be used to scare the base and it is an issue that might cost the leadership some profits.
If I were the GOP, I would look to courting the fast growing Asian American population. The overt and covert racism coming from the right has traditionally targeted Blacks, and Hispanic groups, and more recently Middle Easterners. There hasn’t really been a big push to target Asians generally (although the recent COVID-19 stuff seems headed that direction).
Consequently, I would surmise that the average Asian American isn’t predisposed to reflexively reject the GOP on racist terms. Demographically, they are frequently socially conservative, business owners, and value family values and education - most of these are all smack dab in the GOP wheelhouse.
So, I would invest a lot in courting this group as it is growing, younger, and not already tainted.
Texas Republicans do a better than average Republican job at courting Hispanic voters, who are generally a conservative group and who Texas pubbies will absolutely need in elections to come. This is of course relative.
You folks disparaging the idea of Republicans continuing to run away from climate change might be forgetting that they’re at odds with their own younger voters on this issue. Whatever small percentage of young voters who gravitate to the right will continue to grow the number of Republicans who are willing to face climate change realistically. It’s either that for the GOP or risk losing two generations of voters – which will soon become the two largest generations of voters – by the same margins they currently lose black voters. At which point they become the Irrelevant Party.
From what I’ve read, that’s similar to how large plantations owners motivated foot soldiers to fight for slavery, “to defend our traditional way of life”. They’re still saying that today, whether it’s idolizing the pre-civil rights '50s or making America great again.
They tend to be educated in live in large cities. The trend has been for college graduates to increasingly vote Democrat*.
Asians tilt Democrat more than the religiously unaffiliated, post-graduate women and Jews**. I really hope they try to turn secular Jewish women with masters & PhDs though.
But they don’t just not address climate change – they actually turn their denial of it into a rallying cry for the base! They’ve managed to create a narrative in which regulatory bodies are nothing more than bureaucrats out to hurt business and stifle job creation. So the people most likely to be directly impacted by environmental deregulation – not just from long-term climate change but also by immediate damage to the ecosystems where they live – are the ones on social media calling climate change a hoax.
So to attract a younger, more environmentally conscious demographic, they’d have to not only address climate change but admit to their base that they’ve been bullshitting them all along.
To paraphrase David Frum, once conservatives realize that they can’t win with their ideas democratically, they will not abandon their ideas, they will abandon democracy.
This is how ridiculous the OP is; utter nonsense.