Well, if one of them thinks we can get $21 trillion out of the military budget and spend all of it without addressing the deficit at all, it’s not an easy question to answer.
Regards,
Shodan
Is there anything the Republican Party can do to attract Democrats that you would find reasonable?
I guess its a really good thing that nobody on your side has ever said anything not quite accurate. Like for instance about airports during the revolutionary war.
Given that we’re still hearing about how Obama said there were 57 states, we’ll probably still be hearing about AOC’s rookie mistake after civilization collapses due to global warming.
Basically, what it comes down to is if the GOP stopped being racist, anti-democratic and anti-science, it wouldn’t be the GOP.
Regards,
MM28
I don’t think there is anything a Republican could do to win my vote for the rest of my lifetime.
This is a perfect example of why reconciliation isn’t going to be possible. Voter ID support isn’t really all that widespread among Democrats, but in any case, its support in both party exists entirely because of GOP lies about voter fraud.
If the actual facts were presented (that in-person voter fraud is vanishingly rare, and that “voter ID” laws disenfranchise tens of thousands of times more legitimate voters than fraudulent ones, usually along racial and economic lines), it would lose nearly all of it’s support among Democrats and Independents, but still be very popular with the GOP, to whom the racism and disenfranchisement is the whole point.
What a great non sequitur! Let’s ask a question that is easy to answer –
If a bill magically appeared before the current congress that would balance the budget by cutting military spending and simultaneously raising taxes on the wealthy…
a) Would this bill make it to the President’s desk?
b) Would the president sign it?
Republicans have lost total credibility on the deficit - that tends to happen when you cut taxes for the wealthy despite increased military commitments and spending.
They’ve also lost all credibility on patriotism, what with outing a CIA operative for political payback on her husband and supporting a Russian intelligence asset for president.
I addressed this point. I said it wouldn’t be enough for the Republicans to stop doing bad things. I agree with Shodan; people would still vote for the Democrats (who have a history of not doing bad things) over the Republicans (who would be recent converts). To win over new voters, the Republicans need to go beyond imitating the Democrats and offer something that the Democrats aren’t offering.
And it’s got to be something real. Not just something like “We’ll protect you from the imaginary threat of socialists taking your house.”
In 1965 the Republicans of my childhood joined Democrats to vote313-115 in the House and 68-21 in the Senate to pass Medicare.
Looking at my own life, I’ve pretty much voted for the Dems down the line. So it might help answer Velocity’s question for me to analyze the times that I didn’t. In 1980 I voted for Congressman Anderson (A moderate Republican running as an independent. I voted for my states (moderate-to-liberal) Republican Governor in the 70’s and 80’s (Bill Miliken), more times than I can remember in those pre-term-limited days. (I also voted for a couple of Republicans that I knew personally for local office.)
So I guess the answer would be “GET BETTER CANDIDATES”.
This.
We don’t need a better Republican Party, we need better citizens.
What’s imaginary about a wealth tax or the other nutty far left ideas being floated by nutty far left democrats running for president? Should we not believe their pandering?
I don’t know that a wealth tax would qualify as a “nutty idea”. Most of the middle class pays a tax on the main repository of their wealth. It’s called the property tax. So what’s wrong with requiring the wealthy to pay a tax on the main repository of their wealth?
If you’re old enough to clearly remember things from 1965, the “Republicans of your childhood” would be called Democrats today. (The Republicans of today would have been called “Disney Villains” then. The sort of stuff they’ve done in the last ten years would have been inconceivable for a political party that still called itself “American.”)
Just two examples of how far right the GOP has gone. Obamacare was originally a Republican proposal. Not just Romneycare in MA, but a very similar proposal was made in response to Hillary’s proposals in 1993. Obama clearly expected the GOP to go along and tried hard to make it bipartisan. But the Newtered Republicans turned against it.
Second, carbon tax was originally a conservative proposal–a market-based solution to avoid the government having to set quotas for each company and the complications of selling quotas. Instead the Republicans decided that climate change was a fiction.
What?! A decrease in the military budget under the guise of cutting spending; does this woman’s perfidy know no bounds?
Don’t forget Medicare Part D (for prescription drugs); a whole new entitlement and not a peep about how to pay for it.