Problem is, Republicans don’t actually favor restrictions anymore, except on abortion. Almost all of their rhetoric on social issues today is just rhetoric. That’s because the social ills caused by a lot of what liberals supported are ripe for political haymaking.
That raises an interesting question: why is it that the Democrats are able to produce leaders with the guts to trigger a “Sister Souljah” moment but the Republicans aren’t?
An irrelevant and frankly pathetic attempt to whitewash them of responsibility for their stated positions.
No, because they find it easier to court votes by staging a Two Minutes’ Hate rather than by offering actual persuasion and leadership.
“hippie punching” is easy for Democrats because only 20% of the population is liberal and they’ve got nowhere to go. It increases their appeal among moderates, who actually make up the majority of the Democratic party, plus gets them swing voters and moderate Republicans.
If Republicans attack their own, they risk pissing off the 40% of the country who are conservatives in pursuit of a small number of moderates.
Just ask John McCain and Lindsey Graham. Or John Huntsman. Plenty of GOP leaders with the courage to attack conservatives, it’s just not as smart a campaign strategy as it is for Democrats.
Besides, the Sister Souljah moment was a demonstration that Bill Clinton was a different kind of Democrat. A liberal Democrat is less likely to go that route. And as we saw with Obama, he tried to have it both ways as a candidate, criticizing straw man lefty arguments without attacking any actual liberals in the process.
Twenty years ago assisted suicide was legal in zero states.
Today it is legal in three - two of them being blue states where the measure was passed by referendum and supported by the Democratic party.
You were saying?
Ummm, first you have to prove it. You know, with science.
That is quite true. Although the Democrats will be cozied right next to the median voter on his left, the Republicans will be about three area codes over to the right.
Ehem:
This statement is pure fantasy.
That’s your problem. You think that moderates constitute a “small number of voters”. According to Gallup 36% of Americans define themselves as “moderate”. That’s not a small number. And it doesn’t include people who are just sort of conservative who might be turned off by some of the recent craziness and idiocy. And yet the Republicans continue to focus on the 11% who self-identify as “very conservative”.
You know, the studies that Republicans usually cite to support the “children need a mother and a father” actually say something quite different: That children do better with two married parents, regardless of the sex of those parents. So, the Republicans being the ones in favor of marriage? Yeah, um, about that…
And add race relations to the list of social issues where the Republicans are still trogolodytic, compared with the Democrats of decades ago.
Let’s take this apart. You’re attempting to justify the statement that “the REpublican party today is more liberal on ***all ***social issues except abortion than the Democratic party was in 1990”. Your response is to name ***one *** issue and say that it is equal.
That’s pathetic, but here’s the kicker. It’s not remotely true. There is no evidence that Republicans merely oppose just gay marriage and gays in the military and evidence almost every day that their core belief is opposition to the fact of gays existing publicly in their communities.
In the world the rest of us inhabit, the correct statement is that “Almost none of their rhetoric on social issues today is just rhetoric.”
But never mind that your statement is opposite to reality. Think about what you apparently believe. You’re saying straightforwardly that the hate and bile spewed by Republican politicians and candidates and talking heads toward dozens of different social groups and issues are mere words pandering to their base of voters than they themselves know better than.
That may be the single most astounding statement about Republicans ever posted on this site.
And Lincoln was pretty damn racist by modern standards. So what? My point was that the Republican Party can and has been socially liberal while advocating their economic policies. Just because they’ve kicked out all the former and would be Rockefeller Republicans and Progressives doesn’t mean the have to stay kicked out.
And by the way, both parties ran on anti-trust and an end to government corruption in 1904. Things were getting bad back then. The Democratic candidate also ran on reduced military spending and an end to American Imperialism, especially in regards to the Philippines, making him much more of a direct ancestor to the modern Democratic party. And Roosevelt as one of the greatest presidents isn’t just my opinion. I’ve never seen a list that didn’t include him in the top 5, often number 3 behind Washington and Lincoln.
False. If this were true you could point to a Democratic version of Mourdock, someone who led the entire time until they talked about about abortion. Mourdock wasn’t even out of line with the the RNC party platform. That calls for a blanket ban on abortion just like his comments. The idea that it’s a losing topic for every politician is wrong. It’s only a losing topic for Republicans.
So married women agree that the downfall of education is women entering the workplace?
So married women are okay with the Republicans dragging their heels on the Violence Against Women Act?
So married women are okay with earning $0.77 for every $1 a man makes and don’t need the Lilly Ledbetter Act or the Paycheck Fairness Act?
So married women never get breast cancer and thus weren’t supporting the Susan G. Komen Foundation? The massive drop off in funding is entirely due to single women withdrawing their support?
So the former president of the Virginia Federation of Republican Women left the party to support the Democrats because she’s single?
Republicans did win the married women vote, I don’t know what you are trying to argue.
Children have better outcomes with two parents as opposed to one, but the gender of the two parents is not statistically relevant to positive outcomes. Kids with 2 moms or 2 dads have just as positive outcomes statistically as kids with a mom and a dad.
That rather than knowing why they lost the Republicans have moved to further alienate women of regardless of marital status? Sure Romney won married women, but he lost among women voters overall. In fact he was never winning to begin with. Even Fox recognized the problem back in August of last year.
Rather than learning why they lost the Republicans have doubled down on getting women to hate them. It’s only June 10th, yet already this month they have argued against fair pay for women and commented that they shouldn’t even be in the workplace. Fox’s Megan Kelly has been in on-air arguments with her coworkers about working women, and she’s otherwise a complete GOP mouthpiece. They’ve had people like Jan Schar who worked to get more women to vote for them switch sides and back Democrats because of perceived hostility towards them within the Republican Party.
They aren’t working to gain the single women voters. They aren’t working to retain married women voters. In fact they seem to be working to chase away as many as possible.
My point is that not only have they learned nothing, but they simply won’t be able to talk about the things they want. Despite adaher’s claim that you really only need to win on the economy, no woman is going to listen long enough to even hear what they’re saying. Until the Republican party gets over it’s social issues it simply does not matter what else they have to say.
Mourdock didn’t nosedive because of his views on abortion; he nosedived because of his views on rape. Which you would think would be a pretty easy one to figure out.
Pick One (and only one):
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A political party can attack extremists on its side of the aisle because they have nowhere else to go.
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A political party cannot attack extremists on its side of the aisle because they have nowhere else to go.
Indeed. It’s one thing to think that Republicans are contemptible evil bastards, but adaher’s stated position that they are the contemptible spineless cowards takes it to a whole new level.
It might have some fine moral distinction to make as regards an individual candidate, whether or not he truly believes the vile garbage he is spewing. Doesn’t do anything at all for someone who votes for said candidate.
And the two aren’t intrinsically linked? Here’s a hint: the question Mourdock was responding to was about abortion. And so was the question that led to Akin’s comments. And failed 2012 Republican Connecticut senatorial candidate McMahon’s comments. And failed 2012 Republican North Dakota senatorial candidate Berg.
Now failed 2012 Republican Pennsylvania senatorial candidate Smith was actually asked about rape. More specifically he was asked about Akin’s comments. So I guess that would ultimately fall to being asked about the Republican position on abortion.
It’s abortion, not rape itself, that Republicans can’t talk about without seeing a loss of support, if only because they keep bringing rape up when talking about it. There is no comparable Democratic issue with the discussion of abortion. It’s not a topic that necessarily wins them votes, but there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that it causes otherwise would be supporters to drop them. The smart thing then would be for the Republicans to move to a more solid position, not the blanket ban that’s part of their platform.