Reinventing the Republican Party

The Republican party faces a problem on two fronts now that the NRA has publicly joined the Tea Party faction in public intransigence.

I read some analysis indicating that the NRA is threatened by the same long-term trends that are threatening the GOP. From a political perspective, the NRA cause is now almost overwhelmingly the bailiwick of the Republican party; you've got comparatively few Democrats relative to the mid-nineties who feel answerable to them. A world where the GOP is marginalized is likely one where the NRA is marginalized as well.

Great line from that article illustrates exactly the problem with the old school faction of the GOP: "He spoke with an edge, his voice straining as if he were being shouted down by hippies."

Hippies, the greatest threat to America in our time. I expect to read the next war-on-women article to contain references to women's libbers. Their thinking literally has not yet aged past the conservative golden age of the Goldwater era, and everyone can see it.

There's going to be no reinventing the Republican asswipes so long as stuff like this takes place:

http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/04/opinion/murray-violence-against-women-act/index.html?hpt=hp_c1

There really are no words to describe how vile these motherfuckers are.

Looks like the Congressional body found a way to shut that down.

FWIW, it is going to be issues like this that cause a life-ending fracture in the GOP. Not sure why in this case it appears to have been more Senate vs House though rather than the party's internal mini-tribes.

The Senate GOP are not as infested with crazy as the House GOP are. In general the Senate is dysfunctional in a completely different manner than the outright crazy that shows up in the House.

There really are no words to describe how angry this makes me.

I'm sick of being told that I shouldn't demonize my political opponents. These are vile, evil, selfish, bigoted, misogynistic, hateful dumbasses.

Why are these idiots railing against one of their own (Chuck Hagel) being named defense secretary? Seems like a guy who is a former vet, can work across party lines and had the common sense to vote against the Iraqi war should be exactly what that office needs.

Because, by their logic, if Hagel would accept a position on Obama's team, then obviously he's secretly a socialist communist atheist half-breed muslin who hates America.

You answered your own question.

Anyway, remember how a lot of people thought that the Republicans lost due to the minority vote?

And remember how people said that the GOP would have to learn how to reach out to black and especially latino voters?

Hey, here's the lesson the GOP learned!

House Republicans introduce bill to repeal birthright citizenship amendment.

You don't have to appeal to latino voters if you can just choke their pesky population growth!

Welp, Millbank/Kurtz/whoever might have to push their "Rubio/Jindal and the New Republican Party" piece back a month or two to avoid actual guffaws.

In accidentally read some comments. Now I have the dumb. Thanks.

Or worse, Tea Party-Jewish Home 2016.

He also stated that the war in Iraq was about oil, and stated during the Iraq war that we had lost the war. Those also did not sit well with the GOP. His attack on a nominee for a job i forget at the moment for being "blatantly homosexual" also created enemies on another side.

Hopefully this does not give Jason M a brain hemorrhage: (smiley face tee hee)

Nixon at 100: A model for GOP?
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/01/09/opinion/stanley-nixon-at-100/index.html

None of the young conservative activists had a nice word to say about Nixon and many were quite hostile. To them, he was the archetypal Republican in Name Only -- a liberal in conservative clothing. While most Americans probably remember him only for Watergate or Vietnam -- and many liberals still revile him as a war-bating, divisive anti-communist -- from a conservative perspective his politics were disappointingly moderate.
[...]

He's a reminder of an older, more centrist kind of Republican, the kind you don't see very much these days. It feels today like the Republican Party is fighting a series of rear guard actions -- on the fiscal cliff, on guns and on Obama's nominations. That's partly a reflection of political reality; they lost the presidential election and only control the House. But a common theme running through each of these battles is "inflexibility." They seem unwilling to yield either to President Obama's post-election authority or to the popular mood. Of course, principle is an admirable quality. But it won't necessarily win the White House in 2016.

A lesson in the benefits of adapting to circumstances might be taken from the life of Richard Nixon.

In domestic policy, Nixon bowed to the liberal consensus of his era. He supported the Equal Rights Amendment, founded the Environmental Protection Agency and was a proponent of the poverty-fighting measure of guaranteed income. He also established the first federal affirmative action program - the Philadelphia Plan, which required government contractors in Philadelphia to hire minority construction workers.

As was so often the case with Nixon's public compassion, this served a private purpose of outflanking his opponents. His environmentalism was designed to deny the issue to liberals; his support of affirmative action divided them. The Philadelphia Plan was opposed by many Democrats, not just by Southern conservatives but also by labor leaders who saw it as a challenge to seniority programs. It set unions and civil rights activists against each other, while the president grabbed a little credit for being progressive.

Even on foreign policy, the record is a complex mix of hawk and dove. Nixon said he wanted "peace with honor" in Vietnam, which meant concluding the conflict in such a way that didn't undermine American military or political credibility. This translated into a perverse policy of extending the war to end it -- bombing Cambodia to a point of social anarchy that would lead, inexorably, to the genocide of the Khmer Rouge.

But Nixon won re-election in 1972 partly on a reputation as a peacemaker with whom the Democrats could not compete. His visit to China began the slow process of integrating the Forbidden Kingdom into the rest of the world, and it put pressure on the Soviets to go further on detente. In 1973, the administration helped Israel resist an Arab invasion by (belatedly) supplying arms. When that war was concluded, Nixon was widely regarded as having saved the world from a superpower confrontation in the Middle East and he was greeted by enthusiastic crowds in Egypt. But, by that point, his reputation at home had been so scarred by his involvement in the Watergate break-in that he couldn't capitalize on his image as a global problem solver. Nixon was his own worst enemy.

When Nixon is considered a RINO, you know the current party is pretty far out there.

*boom*

I'm kind of starting to like Christie.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/...ghters-reprehensible-230123003--politics.html

I doubt I'll ever like or vote for the guy, certainly not on a GOP ticket if he does end up running, but at least you can respect politicians who pass the extremely low bar (for actual human beings) of agreeing that stupid, insane, reprehensible shit is in fact stupid, insane, and/or reprehensible.

Yeah, this. I won't be swooning anytime soon over a guy who sees the teacher's union as an enemy to be destroyed, just as one example of his problems, but it is nice to see that he's at least willing to risk getting out of lockstep with the rest of his party.

I think they're afraid of him.
HULK SMASH!

So this speech is making the rounds among my right wing religious connections on Bookface. The interesting thing is that they are all really gung-ho about it. In it, the speaker makes the case for some currently conservative ideas (such as flat tax) but also for certain changes to the health care and educational systems. I guess some of them are realizing that when a vast majority of the electorate supports something, they should to if they want to retain political power; but so as not to look soft they of course have to propose their own version of it. Tea Party banners aren't going to win future elections I guess.

note: about 27 minutes long

Is there a tl;dr for those of us without the time or inclination to listen to a 27 minute video?

In broad strokes, he briefly advocates for flat taxes, health savings accounts (HSAs) from birth, fiscal responsibility, more non-lawyers in government, improving education for the poor, and so on. They are among the milder GOP (and centrist) talking points and so in my view helped to illustrate that the GOP could have the presidency if they weren't catering to the nutters.

Problem is that 99% of conservatives are seeing this as an IN YOUR FACE OBAMA moment by someone who made some brief comments that did not toe the line. So while cheering for a fellow conservative, they miss out that his views differ significantly from the Freepers side of the equation.

A flat tax isn't catering to crazy people?

A flat tax is a comical giveaway to rich people, raising taxes on something like the bottom 75% of the public, but the average Republicans thinks it will somehow reduce their taxes.

Former Republican Senator Alan Simpson slammed the Republican Party and the Tea Party refusal to compromise, their attempts to legislate the private lives of Americans in the name of religion, and the stupidity, racism, sexism, and homophobia running rampant in the party.

(Emphasis mine).

Oh hey, that Carson guy. Wonder what he's been up to oh god.

I appreciate bringing the story into the thread, but my god the site you linked is terrible. My eyes are rolling three sentences in (and let's not even get into the sidebars) -- I imagine that anyone politically to my right would be headdesking in seconds.

The LA Times interview it excerpts is a much, much better piece.

The Republican Party in the USA is not and has not been a political party for many years. They are a group of old white men that have their own agendas, PACs and followers. That's all. I'm not saying that the Democrats are much better. But what do you do? When I got my Florida Driver's License I was asked what my political party affiliation was. I said, Independent. I do not like what happened today. How can you have 90% of the people for a certain thing and yet because of a couple of assholes you lose? The USA is in serious trouble. The Senate is a bunch of scumbags and the House is no better. I am sad for my country cause I like it here. Most of the real people are cool. The governing persons are complete assholes. And, yeah, I trust the Pres. But what can he do? Poor fucker.

Michele Bachmann announces that she's not seeking re-election next year

crap. US politics just got a lot less fun

My sister's going to be so disappointed. She loves Bachmann.

The question is, can that district in Minnesota find someone even crazier to take her spot.

My question is, will she try to go for President again, or will she be the next Palin, or both?

My guess: the ethics investigation will reveal enough to cook her in 2014. She's going to go cash in on Fox or something while she has a strong brand.

I can only hope the 2016 GOP primary field will be full of lunatics stacked up against some Romneyesque milquetoast who will blow the election again.

Seems more like Christie will run and everyone else will get out of his way, though. I admit I anticipate huge entertainment from a Christie candidacy. He's so insanely liberal by Republican standards, it will be fun to see how his own party and Republican voters respond.

I say that as someone who doesn't like Christie very much, but we could certainly do a whole lot worse.

I don't think Christie could make it out of the primaries.

There's no way. The party is still convinced that the reason they lost in 2012 was that they weren't hard-right enough and that Romney was too liberal. All of whichis hilarious because 1: Romney isn't at all liberal (and neither is Obama to be fair) and 2: If voters picked Obama over the more conservative Romney then why would they suddenly switch to someone who was more conservative still? If what they wanted was more conservatism then Romney should have won by virtue of being the most right-wing.

So no, 2016 will be full of the sort of third-rate hacks, chancers, Newt Gigriches and assorted rodent-fondlers that we saw filling the backfield in the 2012 campaign. Santorum will run again. Trump will run again. This is the calibre of the GOPers that can get through primaries.