What's Next for the Republican Party?

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Originally Posted by Stavros

Does this mean that if there is a 'backlash' against Republicans on these issues it will motivate women to vote for Hillary Clinton if she becomes the Democrat nominee?

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Another thing to consider is that some of the dislike of Hillary is based on misogyny. She is mocked for what she wears, for wanting power, and generally not behaving as some traditionalists expect women to behave. The problem is that a lot of this sexism is so ingrained that even someone fleeing from the excesses of the Republican party might have some aversion to her and not know why...for the same reason some women on juries in rape cases engage in victim blaming. So it's quite possible that a woman is repulsed by the Republican stance on many women's rights issues but in some way carries around prejudices they are unaware of.

None of this is to say they aren't other reasons not to support Hillary Clinton.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer...gyn-kelly.html

Thought this was an interesting article about how Fox is trying to bring Trump back into the fold. Despite the lack of integrity it shows by Fox when it leaves its own reporter out to dry, at least it's acting more like a news station than an arm of the republican party. What I mean is, I think the truce with Roger Ailes means it is choosing ratings over the party agenda.

As I said, I think Trump is bad for the Republican party. But Fox has decided that as long as he's around and getting attention they might as well get the ratings from it.

Often Trump supporters, when interviewed, say they like the fact that he doesn't need to be financed by billionaires because he has his own money. That's amusing on two counts: 1) It's like saying it's better to have an oligarch in White House than have wannabe oligarchs vying to influence the White House. 2) Trump is not nearly wealthy enough to finance a presidential campaign on his own. Indeed, yesterday he announced he'll be accepting money from big donors.

I'm wondering, should he get the nomination, will he divest himself and will he be making his tax records available? And what about that animal precariously perched on his head?...it doesn't look like any American animal I ever saw...where's it's birth certificate?

Trump is the loosest of the loose canons. He is dead-set on building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico that would cost billions of dollars. Who knows what his foreign policy will be like but it has to be dangerous.

I agree about his net worth. Whatever the exact figure is I don't expect that a lot of it is liquid, but tied up in real estate with a lot of debt. As you say, I don't see how it's an advantage to be a wealthy person in a position of power (as you say, he may not be influenced by the wealthy but he will naturally identify with that interest group as a class member).

I don't see his wealth as a demerit but he has shown a flare for self-promotion rather than skill in investing or even economic forecasting. So I don't see how his hugely leveraged real estate empire, which was built from a substantial inheritance says anything about how efficiently he'll run the economy. I don't see what he offers other than divisive rhetoric, scapegoating, and bluster.

I spent over an hour watching the Republican candidates debate from the Ronald Reagan library on Wednesday, and I must admit I have rarely come across people seeking the highest office in the USA and one of the most influential in world politics who come across as unintelligent, uninformed, and threatening to a frightening degree. While all or most of them paid great praise to what Reagan had achieved for the USA none of them said they wanted to follow Regan's example and ship millions of jobs overseas, and none of them implied that at the end of their term in office they would have borrowed so much money it would leave the USA with the largest budget deficit in its history.

That aside, Donald Trump comes across as a man who is, quite simply, rude. I suspect his rude remarks are a cover for an absence of policy detail, but Trump is not the only nutter on the list, because I was incredulous at the hysterical reactions to the negotiations with Iran, the public declaration 'I won't talk to Putin' and the fact that people can talk about building a wall across America to keep illegal immigrants out without once thinking in simple, practical terms what that would mean in practice.

It is true that after Friday prayers in Tehran a crowd gathers to shout 'Death to America' when the Ayatollah Khamene'i appears to greet them; it is also also true that the crowd has been smaller year on year, that it was never a spontaneous demonstration of loathing but a stage-managed event, and that across Iran mosque attendance has been falling, and that the UK recently re-opened its embassy n Tehran -because if anything the situation in Iran is calmer than it was, and less aggressive toward the USA than many might think. Iran is of course involved in the wars in Iraq, Syria and to a lesser extent in the Yemen, but so is the USA, but at no time did any of the candidates express any serious thought about the closest allies of the USA in the Middle East, where in Saudi Arabia people have their heads chopped off in public week in week out, are flogged to within an inch of their lives, week in week out, and where the long-established raising of money to attack the USA across the Middle East and inside the USA has been going since the days when Ronald Reagan was President. Supporting Saudi Arabia for the second time fighting the Yemen (as it did in the 1960s) and killing innocent civilians ought to be near the top of the agenda on foreign affairs, but like Cambodia in the 1970s, nobody seems to know or to care about the destruction or the deaths.

Candidates railed at the Iran's nuclear weapons as if they were rolling off the production line but none asked the obvious question -if Iran does produce a nuclear bomb will it use it, and if it uses it, what will be the response? Think it through and the candidates appear so out of touch with reality you wonder why men in white coats did not storm the stage.

Walls, wars and insults. Given the issues that the USA like other advanced capitalist economies has to deal with over the next 25 years, this line-up looked as if it should have taken place in a police station, not on prime time tv. And to think the Democrats are not that much more intelligent either.

Scary stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WwzXkJd8aY

When the People of the United States decided that we should elect our own Representatives to lead us, most of the World had Kings and Queens. Abraham Lincoln is considered to be a great President now, but when he was elected, half the Country left!!! Nixon was elected by a landslide his second term! And while Reagan is considered a God amongst Republicans, he had Alzheimers while he was President!
I think the reason you see a bunch of clowns running on the Republican side is everybody knows Hillary is going to be in the White House next, so who cares? The Republicans are picking who they want to lose to Clinton. (don't tell the voters that)
The problem isn't the Republican Slate, it's the American voters who only get serious about politicians when they're being indicted on TV. Cheney shot a guy when he was drunk. That woke people up.
From the HUNG ANGELS perspective, it's probably a good thing Trump is the Dynamic Presence in the Republican field, because if they had somebody with a real shot that would mean Gay Rights might grind to a screeching halt along with all the other Liberal concerns.
Carly Fiorina does have a face that would break a mirror. Jeez!

Can we hope for this?

Is it not a paradox of contemporary American politics that the Republican Party does not look as if it can win a Presidential election but does look capable of maintaining a majority in Congress? If the Party is so weak, so divided, can its enduring success in Congress merely be the result of stale districts with majorities guaranteed by secure boundaries? Would boundary changes make a real difference?

For those of you interested, The Times of London in an editorial today has voiced its support for Marco Rubio as the Republican candidate for President; highlighting its belief that Rubio can win back the 'Latino' vote for the GOP.

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Originally Posted by Stavros

Is it not a paradox of contemporary American politics that the Republican Party does not look as if it can win a Presidential election but does look capable of maintaining a majority in Congress? If the Party is so weak, so divided, can its enduring success in Congress merely be the result of stale districts with majorities guaranteed by secure boundaries? Would boundary changes make a real difference?

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Here's my theory: I think the political makeup of Congress and largely be explained by gerrymandering. So in that sense "borders" make all the difference. By and large, in most States the population is concentrated in a few urban cities. The population of these urban centers lean democratic. There are fewer people living in the rural areas, towns and small cities. This largely conservative population (being spread out over a larger area) is partitioned into many more districts. So the representatives from these areas outnumber the urban representatives; i.e. instead of favoring the majority of people, the system favors the majority of districts. With gerrymandering one can secure a given representative's seat for a long time. Unfortunately, in a relatively recent decision, the Supreme Court bestowed its imprimatur upon the practice.


The Senate is elected differently, since there are exactly two senators per State. Besides the popular vote a Senator usually needs name recognition and of course she always needs monied backers.

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Originally Posted by trish

Here's my theory: I think the political makeup of Congress and largely be explained by gerrymandering. So in that sense "borders" make all the difference. By and large, in most States the population is concentrated in a few urban cities. The population of these urban centers lean democratic. There are fewer people living in the rural areas, towns and small cities. This largely conservative population (being spread out over a larger area) is partitioned into many more districts. So the representatives from these areas outnumber the urban representatives; i.e. instead of favoring the majority of people, the system favors the majority of districts. With gerrymandering one can secure a given representative's seat for a long time. Unfortunately, in a relatively recent decision, the Supreme Court bestowed its imprimatur upon the practice.


The Senate is elected differently, since there are exactly two senators per State. Besides the popular vote a Senator usually needs name recognition and of course she always needs monied backers.

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Gerrymandering was certainly true here in Ohio. The Republican led state legislators, in 2012, made a long snake-like congressional district that covered nearly half the state, linking two of the top four urban areas. So that two progressive Democrat incumbent have to run against each other. Thus insuring one less democratic US Congressman. The two Congressional members were Marcy Kaptur and Dennis Kucinich. If you are not familiar with either of them, look them up. I only became aware of Kaptur, when made a strong scathing speech against the Wall Street bail-out in 2008. She is Ohio longest serving Congressperson. the district was not even continuously connect by land. But it made legal requirements, because of connecting bridge between. two areas. Here are two maps of Ohio's 9th Congressional district. One additional thing, Oberlin, Ohio is a very progressive college town and that makes the longest north-south area. If this isn't gerrymandering, they should remove the term fromthe dictionary.

Thanks to Trish and Yodajazz for clarifying boundary issues in Congressional Districts (which obviously does not apply to the Senate). Surely there must be a way to challenge that daft boundary in Ohio-?
I wonder why there are fewer Congressional districts in the USA than there are House of Commons constituencies in the UK, does a smaller pool of voters improve their access to legislators?

I wonder if the departure of Mr Boehner (I am tempted to call him The Grim Weeper) will fracture the Republican Party and lead to a loss of votes?

Most other States are just a bad as Ohio. Iowa on the other hand is not gerrymandered; it, for the most part, nice rectangular districts. But it suffers other defects, the their caucus system for nominating presidential candidates. I'm not even sure how it works (or doesn't).

In most State district borders are redrawn every ten years (to the benefit of the party that happens to be in power). There are always State specific petitions going around to dispense with the gerrymandering system. The backers of such movements don't always have the purest of motivations. As far as I know, none of the efforts ever came close to changing any particular State's gerrymandering policies.

"Grim Weeper" I love it! Hope you don't mind if I use it on occasion. The fact that Boehner's gone, is evidence that the party is already fractured. His absence may give the anti-U.S.Government obstructionists in the party a tad more say. On the other hand, Boehner's replacement ('Who?' is the question) may be someone who can control those nuts and steer the party through the reef of dysfunction in which it currently finds itself. Naw...never mind.

John Boehner makes one of the funniest goofy faces when he cries...but I can't make fun of him for that because, I too, have a tendency to 'well up' at the drop of a hat (...please don't tell anyone...lol).
Judging by some of the hate directed at the man from a large portion of any 'comments' section, in any conservative news portion of a site devoted to his stepping down, he was probably a lot more rational than than some folks give him credit for.
Regardless of what the intent for the Tea Party was originally, it is now just a group of people filled with hate, that think they are right because they can scream the loudest. They are absolutely destroying a political party that they are not really a part of, but truly believe that every Republican that doesn't think like them is a RINO...when, in fact, they are the RINOs.

[QUOTE=trish;1638095]

In most State district borders are redrawn every ten years (to the benefit of the party that happens to be in power). There are always State specific petitions going around to dispense with the gerrymandering system. The backers of such movements don't always have the purest of motivations. As far as I know, none of the efforts ever came close to changing any particular State's gerrymandering policies.
--I think this is the kind of decision-making that should be taken out of state and given to what in the UK we call a 'Boundary Commission', perhaps established by the Supreme Court? One that would make decisions on the basis of geography, population density, income differentiation to take three. If it is a decision made by local politicians I don't know that anyone would be satisfied with that.

"Grim Weeper" I love it! Hope you don't mind if I use it on occasion.
-A 5% return on capital would be sufficient to meet my needs...

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Originally Posted by fred41

John Boehner makes one of the funniest goofy faces when he cries...but I can't make fun of him for that because, I too, have a tendency to 'well up' at the drop of a hat (...please don't tell anyone...lol).
Judging by some of the hate directed at the man from a large portion of any 'comments' section, in any conservative news portion of a site devoted to his stepping down, he was probably a lot more rational than than some folks give him credit for.
Regardless of what the intent for the Tea Party was originally, it is now just a group of people filled with hate, that think they are right because they can scream the loudest. They are absolutely destroying a political party that they are not really a part of, but truly believe that every Republican that doesn't think like them is a RINO...when, in fact, they are the RINOs.

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It would be easy from the UK to ridicule the GOP, particularly the current group of Presidential candidates, but that is mainly because the theatre and the language of politics is different from what it is in the UK. I wonder, without knowing where the GOP is headed over the next 18 months, why there seems to be no hope for a 'third force' in US politics. It used to be Labour and the Conservatives in the UK with the Liberal Party (these days Liberal Democrats) hovering in the shadows and only in 2010 winning enough seats to become part of the Coalition although it collapsed (again) in 2015.

But the ascendancy of the Scottish National Party, and the United Kingdom Independence Party (more successful in elections to the European Parliament then the one in London) has challenged the duopoly and created a major problem for Labour in Scotland, yet the same diversion of voter loyalty doesn't seem to exist in the USA where, I imagine, there could be an independence party in California, if only because they bang on about it so much.

How do you Americans see the 'third force' party argument, and would it be more likely to challenge the Republican than the Democrat Parties? It appears to be more of a problem for the Republican Party, but I cannot be sure. And there may be regional variations -?

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Originally Posted by Stavros

How do you Americans see the 'third force' party argument, and would it be more likely to challenge the Republican than the Democrat Parties? It appears to be more of a problem for the Republican Party, but I cannot be sure. And there may be regional variations -?

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I believe neither party would like a third candidate, because either party could potentially be hurt...although it doesn't always turn out that way...When Ralph Nader ran with the Green Party in 2000, some Democrats never forgave him because they believe that it was his fault that Gore lost to Bush. Nader himself claimed that exit polls show that it was fairly evenly split among his voters: 25% would've voted Bush, 38% would've voted Gore and the rest wouldn't have voted at all. When Ross Perot ran in '92, his votes would've been evenly split between Bush Sr. and Clinton.

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I think this is the kind of decision-making that should be taken out of state and given to what in the UK we call a 'Boundary Commission', perhaps established by the Supreme Court? One that would make decisions on the basis of geography, population density, income differentiation to take three. If it is a decision made by local politicians I don't know that anyone would be satisfied with that.

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A few years ago there was a petition in Illinois, a Democratic State, to have the lines drawn by an independent commission. The petition (of course) was sponsored by the Republicans and it was never very clear who would be seated on the commission. Having the party by happenstance in charge redraw the lines every ten years, might be better than to have the lines always drawn by a board headed up by CEOs and other assorted men with finely tailored suits. But I agree - if set up properly-the lines should be drawn by truly independent commission. I'm fairly naive when it comes to politics, but it's always been a puzzle to me why we periodically draw up districts when the States are already partitioned permanently into counties?

Sporadically we've had third party candidates in the past. Andersen, Perot, Nader. Rather than drawing evenly from both parties, they have been candidates that draw their support largely from one of the existing parties. Nader, for example, appealed basically to environmentalists and drew them away from the Democratic Party. He is probably the reason Bush got close enough to steal the election from Gore. It's the reason the Republican's wanted Trump to take a pledge of loyalty to their party and promise not to run as a third party candidate.

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Nader himself claimed that exit polls show that it was fairly evenly split among his voters: 25% would've voted Bush, 38% would've voted Gore and the rest wouldn't have voted at all. When Ross Perot ran in '92, his votes would've been evenly split between Bush Sr. and Clinton.

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I did not know that. Still, the fear exists.

Rupert Murdoch, that great American, has been issuing tweets in praise of Ben Carson. Is this an awakening moment for the the GOP?

Rupert Murdoch ✔ @rupertmurdoch Ben and Candy Carson terrific. What about a real black President who can properly address the racial divide? And much else.
1:59 AM - 8 Oct 2015

http://www.theguardian.com/media/201...didate-twitter

Wow that quotation by Murdoch is in really poor taste. Ben Carson has made more idiotic public statements than anyone on record. What would he do to address the racial divide? Would love to hear it. He would be an absolute disaster as a candidate for the Republicans. Am I wrong?

What's next, indeed. Kevin McCarthy out as House Speaker candidate, that job is a hot potato. Nobody wants the headache....

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Originally Posted by broncofan

Wow that quotation by Murdoch is in really poor taste. Ben Carson has made more idiotic public statements than anyone on record. What would he do to address the racial divide? Would love to hear it. He would be an absolute disaster as a candidate for the Republicans. Am I wrong?

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Murdoch has now retracted his comment;

Rupert Murdoch ✔ @rupertmurdoch Apologies! No offence meant. Personally find both men charming.
1:14 PM - 8 Oct 2015

Ben Carson, however, has not been able to make an advance in the promotion of his campaign unless you agree with this kind of comment, relating to an argument in his book A More Perfect Union:
Carson was quizzed on CNN over comments in his new book, A More Perfect Union: What We the People Can Do to Reclaim Our Constitutional Liberties, which cites Nazi Germany to argue that the right to bear arms should not be curtailed.

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked him: “Just clarify, if there had been no gun control laws in Europe at that time, would six million Jews have been slaughtered?”
Carson replied: “I think the likelihood of Hitler being able to accomplish his goals would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed … I’m telling you that there is a reason that these dictatorial people take the guns first.”
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...-they-had-guns

-Hmmm, what happens if an armed school-teacher gets fed up with a student who refuses to shut up and shoots him (or her). Will that set a trend? As for the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943...

That was a question designed to make a pro-gun advocate slip up even though it's a fair question given their claims. I've heard this argument about the nazis from the pro-gun lobby for over ten years I think.

This pre-supposes that every single person who could arm himself does and becomes a resistance fighter. This ignores the collective action problems. The same reason a room full of people don't charge a shooter....people who are used to civilized life aren't ready to run headlong onto a gunman. They would not organize a militia against their government unless they were certain that failure to do so would result in extermination. When is one ever certain of that? The Warsaw Ghetto uprising is a great example for two reasons; 1) action was not initiated until the resistance fighters were fairly certain they were not being relocated to labor camps but marked for extermination and 2) its lack of success.


Ben Carson also said that prison rape was proof that homosexuality is a choice because straight men enter prison and decide to have sex with men. He made a slippery slope argument that he retracted about gay marriage, bestiality, and pedophilia. His polling numbers are pretty good now.

Edit: It would be unfair not to include his comments about a Muslim President which were in the article you linked. Even Ted Cruz and other Republicans did not go along with this.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/...-and-guns.html

This is the defense of Ben Carson...written by a Jewish man, and I think somewhat offensive to common sense and human decency. Could go in the gun thread, but I thought it relevant to Carson specifically. Seems Keith Ablow is like Ben Carson, super courageous in the face of danger.

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Originally Posted by broncofan

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/...-and-guns.html

This is the defense of Ben Carson...written by a Jewish man, and I think somewhat offensive to common sense and human decency. Could go in the gun thread, but I thought it relevant to Carson specifically. Seems Keith Ablow is like Ben Carson, super courageous in the face of danger.

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A poor argument on any level and one that is designed not to explain what happened in the Third Reich but to justify gun ownership in the USA today. And don't forget that Carson's argument was premised on the claim that dictatorships first take guns away from the citizens -as if no other government, particularly after a war did not become worried about the volume of weapons in the homes of individuals. The first laws on gun control in the USA were initiated after the Civil War because of the fear that freed slaves might be armed; gun crime was rampant in Britain after the Napoleonic Wars as soldiers returning from the wars held on to their weapons.

The image of the 'weak Jew' which permeates the article is offensive in itself, but prefers to skip over the irony that some of the most vocal opponents to the Nazis were not just Jewish but Communists, given that the Nazis extended the Russian 'fascists' claim that the Jews had organised the Bolshevik Revolution. The Black Hundreds, many of whom left Russia after the revolution to settle in Munich were an influence on Nazi thinking on this level. (Walter Laqueur wrote a book on The Black Hundreds).

On yet another level, the Turks have dismissed claims of genocide against the Armenians by claiming that armed groups of Armenians fought the nascent Turkish state and that any Armenians killed were a consequence of an internal war not genocide. As I think someone mentions in the comments to the article linked, had Jews fought the Nazis with guns this would merely have given the Reich an excuse to kill Jews on the spot.

It would be better for those who want to defend the right of Americas to own guns did so in the contemporary American context in which it makes most sense.

I thought this article in today's Independent made a key point-

At the 2014 midterm elections, the Republicans achieved their largest majority in the House of Representatives since the 1920s. This resounding victory, party leaders boasted, would showcase their ability to govern. Instead, the debacle over the election of a new Speaker has demonstrated that Republicans are unable to govern themselves, let alone the country.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a6688566.html

In addition to pointing out that three of the leading contenders for the GOP -Trump, Carson and Fiorina- have never held political office. Presumably at some point in the next three months the people who run the Republican Party will have to sort out this mess by the time the primary season starts in the New Year? One wonders...

It's certainly not a buttslinger rule, but there's a rule in politics and debate you never ever mention Hitler or Nazi. The top three Republican potential Presidentis aren't politicians, they don't understand the concept of the "gotcha" sound clip yet. Except Trump, who bases his whole campaign on it.
On the broader view, the TEABAGGERS are almost a third party, and while they showed up strong last year, they're apt to be pissed off next year. So,.....we are deep into buttslinger territory here, senseless, but here just the same...
The Vegas odds have Hilary as the shoe-in.
Say what you want but put your cash on Clinton.
I'm sick of my savings acct earning 0.6%

The Republicans are like Hitler saying everything is great, even though the Russians are 20 miles outside Berlin. Ordinarily people would be lined up to be Speaker of the House.

Is this sensational news, or just an example of how they do things their own way in California?
The Republicans in California have failed to get a candidate onto the ballot to challenge for Senator Barbara Boxer's seat in November. I read about the Senate race in California in this morning's New York Times, a story that has not made it to the UK -but while it is of local significance, it does seem to underline the long-term crisis that the Republican Party in California appears to be in, and as the article below suggests even in the case of Schwarzenegger he is both an immigrant and a moderate on many policies that have alienated people from the GOP. The Nation has a good overview and I think is the key paragraph:

Under California’s nonpartisan “blanket primary” law, which was enacted by the voters in 2010, Tuesday’s Senate primary ballot featured all the candidates on one list. Democrats, Republicans, and several dozen third-party and independent candidates competed against one another in a race where only the top two finishers could earn a place on the November ballot.
http://www.thenation.com/article/the...in-california/

There is an interesting article in today's New York Times which looks at the Republican Party in Congress, mostly the Senate where sitting Senators are either likely to stand down or possibly die (due to ill-health) or be challenged, and how a vigorous process is being mounted by Steven Bannon and the 'alt-right', and Mike Pence's team to 'purge disloyal Republicans' (the phrase used by Pence's Chief of Staff, Nick Ayers).
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/u...T.nav=top-news

What intrigues me about this is that the definition of loyalty is presented, not as loyalty to an idea or a party, but to an individual, the .45 sitting in the White House on the basis that he represents whatever it is the Conservatives and alt-right define as their cause. But I cannot recall when American politics was a matter of loyalty to one person rather than to a party, the Constitution or perhaps a movement. Unless...unless one casts one's mind back to the late 1770s when there was an issue of loyalty, and it was loyalty to King George III...maybe that's why Ivanka is referred to as the Princess Royal...