Why are Republicans so partisan?

Great Debates
1

When asked in 2013 on whether the US should strike Syria with missiles in response to Bashar al-Assad using chemical weapons against civilians, a Washington Post/ABC poll found that 22% of Republicans and 38% of Democrats supported Obama in this action. Today, in 2017, a new poll by the same organizations finds that 37% of Democrats support Trump launching missiles compared to 86% of Republicans. From this swing, it seems to me that Republicans have a very strong attitude that party comes before country. Or something. Here is my source.

Were Republican opposed then because they hated President Obama and would support nothing he did even if it was the right thing morally or right for the country? Or do they now support President Trump because he is their man and you must support a Republican President even when or if he is wrong. Or is there something different now that was not true in 2013 about Assad using chemical weapons besides the fact that it is Trump instead of Obama? I mean the military is pretty much the same; it is not like the entire establishment at the pentagon switched out in January.

For myself, I believe Republicans did not want a Democratic President, especially because that President was Obama, to have a victory and this is why they opposed action. I believe that Democratic voters are more consistent with their principles while Republicans will bend their morals if it is needed to win (see the ignoring of infidelity by Republicans who espouse family values for another example).

2

Fake comparison going on here. Americans tend to support military action that has just taken place. They support future or proposed military action rather less. I suspect had Obama just went ahead and struck at Assad he would have seen a temporary jump in Republican support.

3

can they really be compared apples to apples? the poll in 2013 was responding to a hypothetical, and the 2017 poll was in response to actual bombs.

mc

eta: yea, what fuzzy said

4

Republicans supported Obama’s intervention in Libya in slightly higher numbers than Democrats did. Nevermind though, let’s just cherrypick one poll on Syria and jump to a bigly conclusion that Republicans are so much more partisan than Dems.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/146738/americans-approve-military-action-against-libya.aspx

5

So you are saying that if Assad had actually gassed his people back in 2013, polled Republicans would have flipped by 60% and supported Obama launching a strike? Do you think it is interesting that the Democrats polled that supported a strike did so in the same percentage both before and after the gassing? Why do you think that is?

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6

Would the jump be 60%? Do you think if the gassing had not occured and Trump just used a stupid red line statement like Obama did, the polled Republicans would have only given him 22% support? Is that your stance in this Great Debate?

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7

Or perhaps it’s the fact that Syria used Sarin, a WMD? I think you’re jumping to a conclusion. I also think that you’re a Democrat voter and this could be wishful thinking on your part.

8

I have no idea what the jump would have been. I simply believe there would have been a sizeable jump. What the precise increase in Republican support for an Obama strike would have been should be of no real interest to anyone. It’s the sizeable increase itself that refutes your claim that it’s all intense Republican partisanship.

Obama looked for Congressional approval at the time of his proposed Syrian strike. This approval would have given him a green light for upto 60 days(plus an additional 30 days) of military action. This was just two years after the clusterfuck that was the Libyan intervention. I suspect some of the Republican opposition to Obama’s Syrian strike was a reaction to the relative incompetence of Libya. Just as I suspect Democrats would be wary of supporting another proposed intervention by the George W Bush administration after the Iraq debacle.

I suppose what im saying is that there are far too many variables going on for you to be so adamant that the poll differential is all the result of Republican partisanship. I already linked you a poll which showed Obama had Republican support for the Libyan intervention. This poll alone suggests it’s not all Republican partisanship going on here, but I suspect there is an element of partisanship going on in the numbers.

9

Obama never launched missiles, while Trump did. So on one hand a poll asked about the potential to do so while the other poll, years later, asks about approval of the fact they were launched.

Additionally some respondents to the poll could be thinking the fact that Obama **did not **launch missiles lead to a lot of the problems in Syria now. Therefore the polls results are skewed by a response to that.

I would say that your drawing an inaccurate conclusion to two different polls on 2 different issues, years apart with vastly different political concerns at the time the polls were taken.

10

Yes, they were. Want another example? The ACA

Yes, they do.

No, there isn’t. It’s party first and foremost, followed closely by bigotry.

11

The answer to this is actually fairly simple. How the Republicans came to BE so head-s-up-their-own petards is a little more complex, though.

Basically, it all started with their concluding some very long time ago now, that they are always destined to be the MINORITY party. They came to THAT conclusion, because of another collection of wrong headed ideas before, including the assumption that all POOR PEOPLE will always decide things based on immediate gratification, while inherently superior RICH PEOPLE will always decide things more wisely.

Ironically and amusingly enough, THAT bit of idiocy was based on simple prejudice, which they actually half-recognized, but decided to ignore, for the exact reasons that they attributed to those abysmal POOR PEOPLE: simple short term greed.

Anyway. Once they were sure that poorer people would ALWAYS vote the wrong way, and that there would always be more poor people than rich people (they’d see to that directly), the only rational thing for them to do as a Party who wanted to be in power,was to LIE LIKE A CAT ON A WARM RADIATOR, non-stop (and cheat at the polls in various ways).

This was necessary in order to get elected into public office in sufficient numbers that they could finally install their REAL agenda, which involves essentially arranging that most people will remain permanently poor and desperate enough to work very cheaply, and thus insure that the rich remain insanely rich forever.

And why put Party loyalty above Country, even as they use an extremely crude version of blind patriotism to hide half of their true agenda from their own suckers? I mean supporters? Because that is imperative, in order to make sure that none of their leaders wake up to the reality that their main programs will actually DESTROY the economy.

And at the top of it all, is the absolute conviction in the core of their beings, that they don’t ever have to open their eyes or minds and look at the actual and logical consequences of their actions, because they are supremely certain that they are RIGHT.

So again, it’s sort of simple: the Republicans are trying to destroy the United States as a viable independent nation, because they are absolutely certain that despite the majority of Americans wanting the opposite, that they are inherently right about all of their delusions.

It’s in the nature of all truly insane people, that they will protect themselves, by obeying the logic of their insane delusions, and never trust any sane people who say otherwise.

12

You believe that “your” guys are better than the “other” guys that you don’t like. What do you really believe that is worth on the open market??

I could get a bunch of Republicans that think Dems bend their morals as well, and could find examples of it.

I “believe” that we all, from all parties, tend look for the good in that which we support and bad in that we don’t. It’s human nature.

13

There is some evidence to suggest that conservatives tend to be more Manichean in their thinking than liberals, and that the right value adherence to party and party line more than the left do (which is partly why the Democrats are such a mess).

But that evidence has nothing to do with a poll on bombing Syria.

14

If you look at the polling in the run-up to the Iraq war, most Americans were against it. But once the invasion took place, support jumped to above 75%. Until we started “losing”, and then it fell precipitously. People like a winner.

(I don’t know if “losing” is the right word, but let’s just say when things started not going as planned.)

15

At least until we win so much we get tired of winning.

16

I’ll let you know when I get to that point. :wink:

17

Polls schmolls, as a lifelong Democrat* there’s surely no disputing that Republicans are the most partisan party ever, while Democrats are only out for the good of the nation.

*strictly speaking, before my mid-teens I did not have a well-defined political affiliation.

18

I was raised in a very conservative household.

I was pretty young for the carter years, so I don’t remember them, but when mondale was running against reagan, it was clear which side my parents were on. I received quite the lecture when I voted in my weekly reader for mondale, almost randomly, as I was 6 at the time. All I remember of the reason for my choice was that reagan had gotten to be president, and now it was someone else turn. But, I received one hell of a lecture about ow if mondale won, then they’d let all the prisoners loose, take away our house, fir my dad, and I think there was something about a hellmouth in there.

The 1988 election was not all that exciting, or at least I don’t remember too much about it, but come 1992, you would think that the democrats had nominated satan himself. And when clinton won, it was miserable to be in my household. I know that my parents got in a massive fight with my friend’s parents, as they were democrats (and had a clinton sign in their yard) to the point where I was no longer allowed to play with him.

Clinton years were fun. They killed vince foster and raped half the interns, tried to restart the iraq war to distract from the scandals, and were just in general terrible, evil people. My parents were very much against “killarycare” as they called it.

In my adulthood, I once described bigotry to my parents, defining it as “someone who treats the members of a group with intolerance.” My father responded by saying, “I don’t tolerate homosexuals, does that make me a bigot?” And then was severely offended when I said, “Yes.”

When I asked my father, “If I give you $20, on the condition that someone else also gets $20, would you take it?” His response was “Who gets it?” I assured him that it would not be a terrorist or drug dealer or any other sort of criminal, but he still wouldn’t agree to the idea of taking a 20 without knowing that the other person getting a 20 deserved it.

My brother and one of my sisters followed them on this ideological path. My younger sister and I went a different way.

I see it as a matter of survival. Conservatives tend to see the world in more stark terms, of what will help them, and what will harm them. They tend to see interactions with others as zero or even negative sum games. When you are coming from this mindset, you cannot afford to be flexible. You cannot afford to tolerate things that do not help, if they are not helping, then they may be causing harm. You cannot afford to allow others to win, even if it is not at a cost of yourself, because in a negative sum game, anyone winning means you are losing.

So, in the end, it’s also tribalism. Us vs them mentality. Where “we” are all that is good and just and motivated and trustworthy, and “them” is everyone else, who by definition of not being “us” are not good and just and motivated and trustworthy.

19

I think that you’re a Republican voter and this could be wishful thinking on your part. He used sarin in 2013 too, and killed fourteen times as many people as the sarin attack last week.

20

This seems to explain things (the bolded part especially) like defunding the NEA and Amtrak and creating universal healthcare that works are things to be avoided, because other people might be getting that $20.