What's Next for the Republican Party?

[Prospero]

"More terrible than anything suffered by any minority in history."
Pt Robertson.

I had NO idea.

So President Obama is just pretending he is a Christian? There we were thinking he was called Barack Hussein Obama when - really - the H stood for Hitler.

Gosh. So c'mon America where are the extermination camps? Utah?Somewhere in Nevada? Maybe in rural maryland? We should be told.

And all those Christians being forced to wear yellow crosses on their coats.

[Willie Escalade]

He's gotta be shitting us, right?

[Prospero]

Not to mention the slave trade...

Reason and Robertson parted company long ago.

[trish]

Extermination camps? I know nothing...

[martin48]

one view

[broncofan]

I think you are right, Bronocfan, if there is a debate to be had about the Hispanic communities, Buchanan isn't contibuting anything positive to it; it seems hard to believe that you attract voters through attacks on other Americans. If there has to be a debate about immigration policy, it should be about what it means rather than who it selects to be 'afraid' of. It also reinforces a belied that 'white America' is being eclipsed by 'the others' as if the whole concept of America could only be understood in terms of colour.
If the demographic trends are right, then the opportunity to develop a strong voter base in Hispanic communities must be tempting, and it is odd that as we are told many of them are 'natural conservatives' it is even more important for the GOP to act on it, if it gets its act together at all. What do you think are the key issues over the next 4 years-would a rapprochement with Cuba mark an important boost for the Democrats if Obama can find a way to achieve it?

About a rapprochment with Cuba you identified a blind spot for me. I know Florida has a large Cuban American population but I'm not exactly sure that's what they want. Our government for some time has had a very radical position on Cuba, and perhaps any departure from that is politically risky, because people have gotten used to the status quo. It has become one of those issues where politicans are afraid to act simply because they are not sure what the response will be. BTW, I think a rapprochment would be reasonable, absent politics, and perhaps politics notwithstanding.

I think you're right that thinking in terms of the effect of immigration policy on Republican candidacy (or voting patterns) is the wrong way to think about immigration to begin with. The Republican's approach to immigration is imo wrong regardless of the effect it has on how Hispanics vote. With millions of undocumented immigrants, it is simply impossible to mount an effective law enforcement effort to expel even a fraction of the "illegals". The result is an ineffective policy that results in harassment of Hispanics here legally, and the pushing to the margins of people who are here illegally who have no opportunity for provisional citizenship and will then be encouraged to engage in underground, criminal activity. Nobody wants to reward illegal behavior, but it is unhelpful to call any efforts to provide a provisional path to citizenship as an incentive to come forward and be part of the system "amnesty", which is what the Republican base has done.

But as for Buchanan's calculus, I think he has applied his cynical math incorrectly. That there are any Hispanics in border states who vote Republican speaks loudly to the fact that they have a minority culture that might be amenable to some of their policy choices. Their approach to our illegal immigration problem has encouraged active harassment of Hispanics on a local level. That they can expect Hispanic-Americans to ignore the fact that they are presented by Republicans as undesirables is unreasonable.

[danthepoetman]

The Republican Party?

(Don't worry: no actual elephant was hurt in the making of that post; they saved the little guy)

[trish]

This piece by Ross Douthat is in today's NYT.

"But Republicans are also losing because today’s economic landscape is very different than in the days of Ronald Reagan’s landslides. The problems that middle-class Americans faced in the late 1970s are not the problems of today. Health care now takes a bigger bite than income taxes out of many paychecks. Wage stagnation is a bigger threat to blue-collar workers than inflation. Middle-income parents worry more about the cost of college than the crime rate. Americans are more likely to fret about Washington’s coziness with big business than about big government alone."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/op...?smid=pl-share

Why did he wait until after the election to write that? Did he only come to this understanding as a result of Tuesday's trouncing? Or was he shilling lies up to election day?

[Ben]

Marco Rubio Drops Some Science About the Age of the Earth:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/20...the_earth.html

[robertlouis]

Marco Rubio Drops Some Science About the Age of the Earth:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/20...the_earth.html

Oh well, at least that's something to dust off when he runs for the GOP in 2016.

Err, Ben, please change that avatar. It's obscene. Dicks are fine, but that's steroids gone mad.