US Elections 2020

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Originally Posted by filghy2

Would it be correct to describe the differences between these factions as follows?

Neoconservatives - those whose primary concern is hawkish foreign/defence policy
Tea Party/Libertarians - those whose primary concern is hostility to government
Trumpers - those whose primary concern is nationalism/nativism, including white nationalism (this seems to be the main thing that distinguishes Trump from a more conventional Republican)

Another possible category is evangelicals - those whose primary concern is a conservative vision of the US as a Christian nation.

I'm not sure whether Reaganites are really a separate category, given that small government was also his main focus. The Tea Party seems like a more extreme outgrowth of Reaganism.

One issue is how much these different strands are actually in conflict. The Tea Party, Trumpists and evangelicals have been united in their strong support for Trump, so it seems that their views do generally overlap. In theory, small-government believers should be against trade restrictions, but they seem to have been prepared to accept them as long as they get their way on tax cuts and deregulation.

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I think the Christian/Evangelicals category could apply to if not some, but all the rest of the other categories. Especially Neoconservatives who have been known to carry a small version of the Bible with them. That's why I didn't list them as separate group.

The reason why I put Reaganism as a separate category is because along with small government, his other major concern was defeating what he considered to be biggest threat to national security at the time, the Soviet Union. He spent a lot of money to do it to. I also would like to think that if he were alive today, he wouldn't look to kindly on who has been in office for the past 4 years.

What's interesting is that Neo-Conservatives caused some of the most recent and obvious harm of these groups and are probably the most represented among Never Trumpers. The Iraq war was a humanitarian, moral, tactical, and financial disaster and their status was weakened within the party by the end of Bush's second term. I'm not sure if we would consider McCain a Neo-Conservative but he was the last influential Republican I can think of who was absolutely nuts when it came to foreign policy but would reach across the aisle on social and economic issues from time to time.

The only thing I can think of with Neo-Conservatives is that they wanted to use whatever tactics that could help them achieve the world they wanted outside our borders, but have gotten squeamish now that our own fragile democracy is in peril. I appreciate that some of them understand how our government is supposed to work though it's a shame they didn't take the same interest in international legal norms.

Anyhow, I'm not sure I'm right about the trends within their party but Evangelicals didn't defect from Trump and Tea Party types were very inconsistent in their antagonism to big government. The white nationalist scum are Trump's own nurtured base and won't defect.

I think ultimately there are some people who are Republican by default because they've been taught that Liberals look down on them or they believe some racist myths but aren't as committed to racism as the alt-right for instance. Some of these votes can probably be won by appealing to their personal financial interests and to their interest in steady employment. The problem is getting them to see the threat the Republican party poses to both. Maybe this last group would be "cultural Republicans" whose support of the Republican party is really based on a hodge-podge of myths about what Liberals want to achieve and what Republicans actually do when placed in positions of power.

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Originally Posted by blackchubby38

While I wouldn't be able to break down into percentages, I believe these are the factions of the Republican party:

Neoconservatives
Tea Party/Libertarians
Trumpers
Other- I'm guessing that includes any Republicans who could lay claim to Reagan's legacy.

While I don't even want to start thinking about 2024 yet, there are two names that have been mentioned as viable candidates for the Presidential nomination. Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley. From what I can tell, Pompeo is a Neoconservative, while Haley has been a bit difficult to categorize.

Now taking into consideration that the party is able to remove Trump from the equation, but not the effect he has had on the party, I can see it being tough for Neoconservatives from gaining control. While it didn't appear that way at times, Trump's talk about ending the endless wars that the country has been involved in was one of the reasons why he was popular with some Republican voters. So I think the last thing they're going to want to do is hand the party over to someone who sounds like they still want to go to war with Iran.

So I think the future of the Republican party is going to come down to a fight between the Libertarian wing and the Trumpers/Others. Whoever it is going to be has to find a way to harness the energy and the enthusiasm of the Trump voter/supporter minus the fear/hatred of the other to become leader of the party.

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Your post illustrates what to me are the confusions of a party that has lost its identity. In general, macro-historical terms, the problem that I have with American Conservatism is that, as I understand it, they seek to Conserve the Orginal intent of the Constitution, but the American Revolution was a Liberal Revolution and the Constitution is a Liberal document-

-First, because it is opposed to to Monarchical rule, expressed in the separation of powers of government;

-Second, because in its language, the Constitutional rights conferred on citizens are universal, power is devolved from the centre and resides with the People, which means all of them, regardless of creed, colour and sexual orientation or gender identity.

To me this explains why Conservatives have had to resort to sophistry in language, and the brute force of Congressional, Presidential and Supreme Court powers to deny American citizens their Constitutional rights, and why they have so often lost the argument.

At a more micro-historical level, I see contemporary Conservatves defining theselves in relation to the New Deal Consensus that dominated US policy making from 1933 to 1980, on the basis that in spite of the revival of Conservative ideas in the 1950s and 1960s, spearheaded by William Buckley and Irving Kristol, in actuality Nixon failed to reduce State intervention in society and the economy, but crucially, neither did Ronald Reagan, even though he became the champion of Markets over the State, whether or not those markets were Global or Local (and Global triumphed).

Reagan was supposed to end the idea FDR is associated with -'government is the solution'- and offer markets instead. Taxes were to be as low as possible, and blue collar workers would lose their rights to collective bargaining for better wages and conditions as Unions were smashed- but there was no overhaul let alone the abolition of welfare or Medicare or Medicaid; immigration did not become the toxic issue it is today; and in spite of the cultural hostility to sexual orientation, when Reagan reconciled with Rock Hudson, being queer didn't seem to be an evil. Throw in the first term hostlity to the USSR, and the second term accommodation of the USSR with the nuclear arms deal, and you can see why Reagan's supporters were so outraged they decided they needed to refine Conservatism anew, even if Neo was neither from the Matrix nor the Lion King.

But, and I think this is crucial, if Republicans have never been able to reconcle their so-called Conservatism with the Liberal origins of the political system the US has had since 1787, their belief in individual liberty and fiscal responsibility ought to translate into a welfare free economy with minimal public spending, whereas welfare was not tackled seriously by Reagan and when he left office the country had the highest public debt in its history- what was Conservative about that?

Moreover, the Neo-Cons also failed to tackle welfare, they committed to spend record levels on defence, while using the 'Originalist' arguments in law to shred as many Liberal laws as they could, targeting the Voter Registration Act of 1965, but it seems to me that on a wide range of issues, there was nothing really Conservative about them, they were just repeating the mistakes of the past, and that this is why Trump was able to storm into the party and kick it into the long grass.

Because, right on time, Obama in the introduction to the first volume of his Presidential book that is about to appear, has offered a new definition of the Republican voter-

"Those Americans, Obama writes, were prey to “the dark spirits that had long been lurking on the edges of the modern Republican party – xenophobia, anti-intellectualism, paranoid conspiracy theories, an antipathy toward black and brown folks”."
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...r-donald-trump

Gone is any mention of Fiscal Responsibiity; no mention made of Markets working better than Goverrnment, indeed, I believe Trump has said he doesn't believe in free, but in Fair Markets, fair as defined by him. Race remains, but in any scenario is the ineradicable score of the country; but enter now the anti-immgrant feeling, and perhaps most of all the paranoia and anti-intellectualism, for historically Americans might vote one way or another, but whichever side they were on, the achievements in science and engineering, from space travel to computing was not party based, just as a wide selection of fine actors, writers, film directors and others in the arts could be red or blue and still be admired.

Maybe my personal affection for clear intellectual statements, of a lineage of political intent based on sound philosophical premises is too remote from everyday life, and maybe we don't know what political parties stand for anymore, because they have lost touch with their core base, have tried to please or appeal to so many constituencies, or too few they have satisfied none.

But look again at Obama's list, and ask yourself what in practical terms are the policies derived from what are mostly emotions, rather than reasons? The result, if not chaos, is a mish-mash of bad policy making, policies that fail when implemented, or when implemented are sloppy, even cruel -an immigration policy that separates children from their parents, and appears not to care about the consequences in the short term, regarding the condition in which those children are kept, or the long term damage separation from parents at such a young age may cause. The incompetent handliing of Covid-19, based on a scepticism bordering on contempt for science- what this shows is the fundemantal practical probem I now see with the US Republican Party and the Conservative and Unionist Party of the UK, albeit in different contexts: they don't work.

They have failed since the 2008 crash to restore the economy to good health, they have failed to deliver on a wide range of policy issues in relation to housing, education, health, transport and welfare, while austerity in the UK, and in the US the wholesale shredding of jobs in the bureaucracy has left many departments, criticially the EPA and State bereft of qualified and talented people where appointments are made on the basis of loyaly to one man, rather than expertise in a chosen policy area. During the Obama years I recall a Republican on the radio calling for an end to welfare on this basis: 'If you take away their welfare, those people will get jobs' -in the last four years the war on welfare never happened. Indeed, Kansas is a model of incompetence here -the slashing of state taxes that left it unabe to meet its public spending commitments, the result: bankuptcy, or a reverse of policy. And all at a cost of wasted money.

It means to me that party politics is at a critical point, and that the Democrats have an uphill struggle to get their agenda started, while in the UK I think we live in a broken country and that Covid-19 + Brexit from January may lead to the break-up of the UK.

As for Trump, I think he wants a movement rather than a party, a movement that in effect disregards the Constitution as a dead letter, refusing to recognize that all Americans are equal just as they refuse to recognize the validity of a free and fair election process. It means the next four years may decide if the Republican Party survives as a Party with a distinct identity and political platform, or just becomes a personality cult.

Perhaps I am being melodramatic, but if so many Americans have lost faith in their Constitutional Republic, what is it that they want to replace it? And what about 'the others', who do want it? I am just pleased I don't live in the US, even though its domestic politics tends to have international consequences.

We certainly live in interesting times, but without the certainty.

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Originally Posted by blackchubby38

The reason why I put Reaganism as a separate category is because along with small government, his other major concern was defeating what he considered to be biggest threat to national security at the time, the Soviet Union. He spent a lot of money to do it to. I also would like to think that if he were alive today, he wouldn't look to kindly on who has been in office for the past 4 years.

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Yes, Reagan was a mixture of foreign policy hawk and small government believer, and I think he was less interested in the "culture wars" than most of today's Republicans. He was also more pragmatic. The people who put him on a pedestal seem to have forgotten that he supported some tax increases after his initial tax cuts blew out the deficit, even though they pillory Bush Senior as a RINO for doing the same thing.

Today's Republican Party seems to be mainly a marriage of small government and cultural conservatives, with foreign policy taking a back seat. But I'm not sure there's going to be a struggle between these two strands because they seem to be well-accommodated. I think the small government people understand that their agenda isn't sufficiently popular in isolation (because it favours the rich), so they need the culture wars to attract working class votes.

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Originally Posted by broncofan

I think ultimately there are some people who are Republican by default because they've been taught that Liberals look down on them or they believe some racist myths but aren't as committed to racism as the alt-right for instance. Some of these votes can probably be won by appealing to their personal financial interests and to their interest in steady employment. The problem is getting them to see the threat the Republican party poses to both. Maybe this last group would be "cultural Republicans" whose support of the Republican party is really based on a hodge-podge of myths about what Liberals want to achieve and what Republicans actually do when placed in positions of power.

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After the 2016 election there was a lot of discussion about whether Trump's support among the working class was explained by economic or by cultural factors. If it's economic then, as you suggest, the Democrats may be able to win them back over time with the right policies. If it's cultural then it will be much harder without selling out their principles and splitting the party.

I suspect it's mainly the latter, but I'm sure there are some who voted for Trump again because they gave him credit for the pre-COVID economy and see the virus as something outside of his control. The problem for the Dems is that they've inherited a difficult economic situation and their opponents are bound to block any efforts to address it, as they did under Obama.

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Originally Posted by KnightHawk 2.0

Donald Trump's niece Mary Trump warned that her uncle would be proned to "meltdowns" in the period between his electoral defeat and president-elect Joe Biden's inauguration next year. "This is what Donald's going to do: he's not going to concede,although who cares. What's worse he's not going to engage in normal activities that guarantee a peaceful transition", Mary Trump told the Guardian. In the interim,she said, he'll be having meltdowns upon meltdowns right now. He has never been in a situation like this before''. " All he's got right now is breaking stuff,and he's going to do that with a vengeance she added.. And Donald Trump already begun the meltdown by firing Defense Secretary Mark Esper. https://thehill.com/homenews/adminis...ext-few-months

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And the meltdown continues with Donald Trump firing via tweet Christopher Krebs the former director of the Cybersecuriy and Infastructure Administration in the United States Department of Homeland Security, and Trump's explanation for the firing was that Christopher Krebs statement about the 2020 Presidential Election being one of the most secured was false. and this latest firing shows that Donald Trump can't accept the reality that he lost the presidential election by 74 electoral votes {306-232},and doesn't understand how elections work and being labeled a sore loser and will fire anybody who disagrees with him, meanwhile the republicans in Congress and the US Senate have silent by letting him do what he wants,whenever he wants and is enabling Trump by echoing his baseless accusations about widespread voter fraud and irregularities,which has been disproving by Democratic and Republican Secretaries of States. And Mary Trump was absolutely right when she said her uncle would be proned to meltdowns in the period between his electoral defeat and president-elect Joe Biden's inauguration next year. and it's on full display for the world to see.

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Originally Posted by KnightHawk 2.0

And the meltdown continues with Donald Trump firing via tweet Christopher Krebs the former director of the Cybersecuriy and Infastructure Administration in the United States Department of Homeland Security, and Trump's explanation for the firing was that Christopher Krebs statement about the 2020 Presidential Election being one of the most secured was false. and this latest firing shows that Donald Trump can't accept the reality that he lost the presidential election by 74 electoral votes {306-232},and doesn't understand how elections work and being labeled a sore loser and will fire anybody who disagrees with him, meanwhile the republicans in Congress and the US Senate have silent by letting him do what he wants,whenever he wants and is enabling Trump by echoing his baseless accusations about widespread voter fraud and irregularities,which has been disproving by Democratic and Republican Secretaries of States. And Mary Trump was absolutely right when she said her uncle would be proned to meltdowns in the period between his electoral defeat and president-elect Joe Biden's inauguration next year. and it's on full display for the world to see.

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CONT: The firing of former director of the Cybersecurity and Infastructure Administration Christopher Krebs yesterday who rejected Donald Trump's claims about widespread voter fraud,shows how petty and vindictive really he is and can't accept reality that he lost and his time in power will be coming to an end whether he likes it or not. https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/17/polit...ump/index.html

The Guardian has published an intriguing account of how the President can remain in office. What I think is important about it, is that is seems to me to be part of the attitude to law that Trump learned from Roy Cohn, where the proposition seems to be that if a course of action is not explicitly illegal, then do it and take the consequences. In the case of this election, it means that a 'norm' that means election results are not challenged unless there is blatant evidence of something illegal or procedurally incorrect, is reversed, and the election is challenged whether or not irregularities have taken place.

Where it becomes sinister, is the claim that the language of the Constitution does not give officials in a State the right to determine its electors, but the State Legislators. Here, for example, is Newton Gingrich as cited in the account-

"Usually, the secretary of state or governor certifies the vote. State legislators generally have no role in the process. But Trump supporters have seized on language in the US Constitution that says each state shall appoint electors “in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.”
“Everyone should remember the central role of state legislatures in picking a president,” Newt Gingrich, a former speaker of the US House of Representatives, said on Twitter on Saturday. “The Legislature, not the Secretary of State, Governor or court.”
The Trump campaign took this argument a step further on Wednesday, claiming in a lawsuit that the administration of Pennsylvania’s election was so flawed that state officials had usurped the power of the legislature to set election rules.
The campaign’s proposed fix: let the state’s Republican-controlled legislature appoint electors and declare Trump the victor of the state, even though Biden won the popular vote."
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...log-navigation (this segment appears at 11.47)

And this at 11.45-
"Sidney Powell, one of Trump’s lawyers, told Fox Business television on Thursday “The entire election, frankly, in all the swing states should be overturned, and the legislatures should make sure that the electors are selected for Trump,” .

Athough I don't think this would get through the Courts owing to a lack of proof-?- it is the aggressive way in which the vote is being undermined by these challenges that I think is feeding a belief among some voters that their democracy is now a sham, indeed one voter in Texas claims he is prepared to take up arms against the Biden Presidency-

"Brett Fryar, a 50-year-old chiropractor, owns a small business in Texas. He has two undergraduate degrees and a master*s degree, in organic chemistry. He told Reuters “If President Trump comes out and says: ‘Guys, I have irrefutable proof of fraud, the courts won’t listen, and I’m now calling on Americans to take up arms,’ we would go.”
(same link as above at 13.10).

The Biden transition team is resisting attempts to deal with these challenges with litigation of their own, standing back perhaps to let this theatrical nonsense play itself out -yet surely, as a matter of both law and principle, if the Administrator of the GSA, Emily Murphy, took an Oath to defend and protect the Constitution, does this not mean she must adhere to the job she is supposed to do, rather than take any notice of what the President says and wants? Can she be legally forced to do her job, or is it yet another parsing of the language that she cannot do it until the election has been finally certified in December? Not sure how this works.

Sue Trump for frivolous lawsuits.

if he can scrape up any evidence, considering many states have thrown him out, fine.
if not, make a law to punish him once he's out.
Since many GOPers have said to throw in the towel - including Bush Jr. and Romney, there may even be some GOP Congresspeople and Senators who would vote on a bill, even if the Dems have a minority in both houses.

Rudolph Giuliani and his 'legal team' have committed so basic an error in their affidavits claiming electoral fraud, it makes you wonder what has happened to a man who has boasted about being a member of the Bar for 50 years -

"In its wild news conference Thursday, President Trump’s legal team promoted a very simple-sounding theory that seems likely to be central to its voter fraud allegations: that many precincts in the key states had more votes than actual voters, particularly in Michigan and Wisconsin.
“Well, in Michigan and Wisconsin, we have over-votes in numerous precincts of 150 percent, 200 percent and 300 percent,” Giuliani said.
Sidney Powell alleged that it was “up to 350 percent in some places.”
Within hours, the evidence for that claim began to crumble."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...glaring-error/

-Because the team can't tell the difference betwen Michigan (MI) and Minnesota (MN) -neither can I, but I not a lawyer be. The affidavit has listed precincts from one state inflating the voter turnout in another

Maybe Mr Giuliani should engage in some due diligence, it's what interns do, innit?