What's Next for the Republican Party?

[Queens Guy]

It won't be that long I suspect. Perhaps a Republican if they wake up to reality.
The Republicans for the short term are likely to continue to be opposed to anything and everything that President obama proposes. The tea party in Congress really didn't suffer any reverses.

I would suspect that on a longer term basis there will be a battle for the soul of the party. Will the economy improve? if it does then the tea party will begin to wither. if not then it will fight to gain greater control of the Republicans. The religious right on the other hand seem to have been fired a warning shot or two. Those fools with their remarks about rape have been ushered into the darkness. The social conservatives are not the wave of the future and I think that this election might be the point at which the Republicans realise a need to embrace a wider America.

But for the next election? Hilary? But she'll be 69. Biden. He has hinted he might run. Cuomo?

Ryan? Or Jeb Bush? Rubio?

Off the cuff remarks.

Biden? He really is a stupid man. I think I've owned furniture that is smarter than he is. This really akes some doing, but I think he's even dumber than Dan Quayle. Biden miscounted the number of letters in the word 'Jobs'. Chris Rock used to joke that if he was the first Black President he would appoint a Black Vice President to avoid a racist assassinating him, because they'd still wind up with a Black President. Obama has Biden.

I sincerely hope that Obama can handle the financial problems I think face America, with our deficits and debt. Europe, especially Germany, can bail out Greece, but nobody can bail out America. I think we will need some reforms that won't be popular.

If the economy continues to do poorly, I think the Democrats will not run somebody who promises to be Obama's 3rd term. It will have to be somebody that has no connection to Obama. So Hillary and Biden will be out. Cuomo has connections to Bill Clinton's Administration, and many Americans would like to return to the economic climate of the Clinton years.

[broncofan]

Broncofan wrote: "Republicans often have to morph their values to win over segments of the population.

Do you think that the first element of this is to do rather simply with short term electoral politics rather than any deeper issues?

I had written a long post on what makes a policy conservative, but I had difficulty settling on an ideological underpinning for their ideology. But perhaps they are a big tent party not because they are ideologically unprincipled and they make overtures to these various single issue voters but rather because very few people are conservative across the board. If the guidepost for conservatism is maintaining status quo in legal and institutional structures regardless of any pressing needs for reform, they will always have constituents who think this should not be the measuring stick for certain policies. When someone wants to hold onto an antiquated practice for traditional reasons, it may be specific to that practice. Let's say the immigration policy is driven by an unstated concern about a shifting demographic balance. Such a concern may be both very pressing for an individual (they vote on the basis of it) and not define their other views. That's the only reason I can think of other than ideological inconsistency in the GOP platform that they have attracted such a culturally and politically diverse group of characters.

But I'm curious to hear everyone else's view on this as well because it is mind-boggling. First, what are their principles? How are their policy choices tied to these principles? And is their mix of constituents the result of them having an inconsistent mix of policy initiatives or these constituents not being wholly "conservative"?

[robertlouis]

Some of the Repubtards are unspeakably stupid. An improvement in basic world knowledge would make a good start.

Exhibit #1

[Ben]

Hey, Rush Limbaugh: 'Starting an Abortion Industry' Won't Win You Female Voters:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...oters-20121108

[robertlouis]

Hey, Rush Limbaugh: 'Starting an Abortion Industry' Won't Win You Female Voters:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...oters-20121108

Fabulous article, Ben. Well-spotted.

Essentially, where there's no regret nor introspection, there's neither learning nor redemption. Asshole.

[danthepoetman]

A Republican?

[robertlouis]

A Republican?

Probably a member of the Tee Partay....

[Prospero]

This is what veteran right winger pat Buchanan had to say in an article posted today.
A rather obvioulsy racist proposal.

http://www.eurasiareview.com/0911201...asia+Review%29

Is The GOP Headed For The Boneyard?
By: Patrick J Buchanan

November 9, 2012


After its second defeat at the hands of Barack Obama, under whom unemployment has never been lower than the day George W. Bush left office, the Republican Party has at last awakened to its existential crisis.

Eighteen states have voted Democratic in six straight elections. Among the six are four of our most populous: New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois and California. And Obama has now won two of the three remaining mega-states, Ohio and Florida, twice.

Only Texas remains secure–for now.

At the presidential level, the Republican Party is at death’s door.

Yet one already sees the same physicians writing prescriptions for the same drugs that have been killing the GOP since W’s dad got the smallest share of the vote by a Republican candidate since William Howard Taft in 1912.

In ascertaining the cause of the GOP’s critical condition, let us use Occam’s razor–the principle that the simplest explanation is often the right one.

Would the GOP wipeout in those heavily Catholic, ethnic, socially conservative, blue-collar bastions of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio and Illinois, which Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan swept, have anything to do with the fact that the United States since 2000 has lost 6 million manufacturing jobs and 55,000 factories?

Where did all those jobs and factories go? We know where.

They were outsourced. And in the deindustrialization of America, the Republican Party has been a culpable co-conspirator.

Unlike family patriarch Sen. Prescott Bush, who voted with Barry Goldwater and Strom Thurmond against JFK’s free-trade deal, Bush I and II pumped for NAFTA, GATT, the WTO and opening America’s borders to all goods made by our new friends in the People’s Republic of China.

Swiftly, U.S. multinationals shut factories here, laid off workers, outsourced production to Asia and China, and brought their finished goods back, tax-free, to sell in the U.S.A.

Profits soared, as did the salaries of the outsourcing executives.

And their former workers? They headed for the service sector, along with their wives, to keep up on the mortgage payment, keep the kids in Catholic school and pay for the health insurance the family had lost.

Tuesday, these ex-Reagan Democrats came out to vote against some guy from Bain Capital they had been told in ads all summer was a big-time outsourcer who wrote in 2008, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt!”

Yes, the simplest explanation is often the right one.

Republicans are also falling all over one another to express a love of Hispanics, after Mitt won only 27 percent of a Hispanic vote that is now 10 percent of the national vote.

We face demographic disaster, they are wailing. We must win a larger share of the Hispanic vote or we are doomed.

And what is the proposed solution to the GOP’s Hispanic problem, coming even from those supposedly on the realistic right?

Amnesty for the illegals! Stop talking about a border fence and self-deportation. Drop the employer sanctions. Make the GOP a welcoming party.

And what might be problematic about following this advice?

First, it will enrage populist conservatives who supported the GOP because they believed the party’s pledges to oppose amnesty, secure the border and stop illegals from taking jobs from Americans.

And in return for double-crossing these folks and losing their votes, what would be gained by amnesty for, say, 10 million illegal aliens?

Assume in a decade all 10 million became citizens and voted like the Hispanics, black folks and Asians already here. The best the GOP could expect–the Bush share in 2004–would be 40 percent, or 4 million of those votes.

But if Tuesday’s percentages held, Democrats would get not just 6 million, but 7 million new votes to the GOP’s less than 3 million.

Thus, if we assume the percentages of the last three elections hold, the Democratic Party would eventually gain from an amnesty a net of between 2 and 4 million new voters.

Easy to understand why Democrats are for this. But why would a Republican Party that is not suicidally inclined favor it?

Still, the GOP crisis is not so much illegal as legal immigration. Forty million legal immigrants have arrived in recent decades. Some 85 percent come from Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. Most arrived lacking the academic, language and labor skills to compete for high-paying jobs.

What does government do for them?

Subsidizes their housing and provides free education for their kids from Head Start through K-12, plus food stamps and school lunches, Pell Grants and student loans for college, Medicaid if they are sick, earned income tax credits if they work and 99 weeks of unemployment checks if they lose their job.

These are people who depend upon government.

Why would they vote for a party that is going to cut taxes they do not pay, but take away government benefits they do receive?

Again it needs be said. When the country looks like California demographically, it will look like California politically. Republicans are not whistling past the graveyard. They are right at the entrance.

[Prospero]

And this from Robert Reich, professor of public policy in California.

What now for the tea party?

Why John Boehner May Have More Leverage Over Tea Partiers In Congess
By: Robert Reich

November 9, 2012


“If there’s a mandate in yesterday’s results,” said House Speaker John Boehner on Wednesday, “it’s a mandate to find a way for us to work together.” Republicans, he said, were willing to accept “new revenue under the right conditions,” to get a bipartisan agreement over the budget.

We’ve heard this before. The Speaker came close to agreeing to an increase in tax revenues in his talks with the President in the summer of 2011, but relented when Tea Partiers in the House made a ruckus.


But Tea Partiers may be more amenable to an agreement now that the electorate has signaled it doesn’t especially like what the Tea Party has been up to.

Consider Indiana, where the Tea Party had pushed out veteran GOP Senator Richard Lugar in favor of Richard (rape is “something God intended”) Mourdock. Mourdouk was soundly defeated Tuesday by Rep. Joe Donnelly.

In Missouri, the Tea Party was responsible for Todd (some rapes are “legitimate”) Akin winning the Republican Senate nomination – which gave Sen. Claire McCaskill a landslide victory.

And in Montana, Tea Party nominee Denny Rehberg was no match for Senator Jon Tester.

Of the sixty incumbent members of the House’s Tea Party Caucus, 47 were reelected, while 6 lost big, two ended up in races far too close for comfort, and one is still hanging by a thread (the rest either retired or sought higher office). Overall, those are bad odds for House incumbents.

As of Thursday morning, Tea Party icon Florida’s Rep. Allen West — who made a name for himself calling several of his Democratic colleagues communists — was still trailing his Democratic opponent Patrick Murphy by more than the 0.5 percent margin that would trigger an automatic recount. Nonetheless, West is charging “disturbing irregularities” in the balloting process, and his lawyers have asked that ballots and voting equipment be impounded in St. Lucie and Palm Beach counties in expectation of a recount.

Another Tea Party icon, Minnesota’s Rep. Michele Bachmann, beat challenger Jim Graves by just over 3,000 votes out of nearly 350,000 votes cast — even though she outspent Graves by more than 12-to-one. Not a good omen for Bachmann in 2014.

Tuesday wasn’t exactly a repudiation of the Tea Party, and the public’s rejection of Tea Party extremism on social issues doesn’t automatically translate into rejection of its doctrinaire economics. But the election may have been enough of a slap in the face to cause Tea Partiers to rethink their overall strategy of intransigence. And to give Boehner and whatever moderate voices are left in the GOP some leverage over the crazies in their midst.


About the author:
Robert Reich



Robert Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written thirteen books, including The Work of Nations, Locked in the Cabinet, Supercapitalism, and his most recent book, Aftershock. His "Marketplace" commentaries can be found on publicradio.com and iTunes. He is also Common Cause's board chairman. His website is: http://robertreich.org

[broncofan]

It is quite unbelievable that Patrick Buchanan has been a mainstream commentator in American politics for as long as he has. His focus on the right kind of Americans and his obvious consideration of blacks, hispanics, jews et al over the years as the wrong kind has lost all of its subtlety.

I think Buchanan does not really take into account the potential for Hispanics not to vote in their existing patterns if Republicans stopped taking such a persecutory tone with them. I recall very well Proposition 187 in California during the 1990's when Republicans were trying to turn Hispanics into suspects for deportation. If I remember this I can only imagine that Mexican-American voters in the Southwest will take a while to forgive them.

I also think Robert Reich has it right. If the Republicans play to their base any more, they will not provide enough cover for those who want to present themselves as respectable Republicans.