Republicans should move... to the left of the democrats

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Z

Zaptruder

Banned
Think about it.

Most republicans only vote republican because they vote republicans!

Fox news will continue shilling for republicans because that's what they do.

While a large proportion of democratic voters are more pragmatic - they'll actually get confused if Republicans become more progressive, and might even vote for them enmasse.

What's the alternative here? Republicans continue to push harder right, even while the demographics of America continue to shift towards the left?

Of course, I guess they could continue winning the war by proxy - not actually winning power themselves, but simply continuing to drag the entire country to the right by way of falsely equivocating media.

But that really doesn't seem to make them happier. So... they can either have their politics, or they can have their wins. Can't have both!

What say you GAF? Genius plan, or most genius plan?
 
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That would mean they would have to piss off their corporate overlords.

This isn't about winning elections, it's about pushing a specific corporate friendly criteria.
 
Yeah, the establishment itself can't really chose to move like that. The alignment of the party comes from the primaries. If the politicians in now move drastically to the left they would get ousted, because right wing people vote in their primaries, for the most part. And now it's really nutty right wing people pushing things further along.

I mean someone like Paul Ryan can't suddenly decide not to be a turd. Well, he could, but he'd only have a few years to do it.

And then there's the donors and lobbyists, too, who push certain policies onto the candidates.
 
Eight Diagram Bat Fighter said:
Yeah, Republicans should just switch everything they believe and value so they can get a dude in office. Makes sense.
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Well, that's the thing... republicans don't *actually* believe or value anything. They only give a shit as long as it has the republican branding.

You can see this in the way that they continued to reject all their old proposals and positions simply because the democrats had to adopt them out of pragmatism (trying to get anything done).
 
Zaptruder said:
Of course, I guess they could continue winning the war by proxy - not actually winning power themselves, but simply continuing to drag the entire country to the right by way of falsely equivocating media.
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In conjunction with a democratic party that is eager to move rightward.

And that's exactly what they'll do. Winning the war by proxy is good enough. It satisfies the ideologues, and it satisfies the corporate backers of both parties.
 
Well it would mean a more left country, although that's real fantasyland talk. I would feel kind of uncomfortable with one of the two relevant political parties doing a 180 on all its core values just to scoop up some votes. Is American politics not enough of a joke as is?
 
Zaptruder said:
Well, that's the thing... republicans don't *actually* believe or value anything. They only give a shit as long as it has the republican branding.

You can see this in the way that they continued to reject all their old proposals and positions simply because the democrats had to adopt them out of pragmatism (trying to get anything done).
Click to expand...

No, abandoning their older ideas like the healthcare mandate or the carbon tax just meant that they were able to move further to the right - closer to their ideological core. The democrats' move towards the center - which is an ever rightward moving target - enables the republicans to get what they want.
 
It's the easiest thing in the world to attack the Democrats from the left.

It's an entirely different matter to govern from the left once you're in power. Neither of the two major parties have any interest or incentive to govern progressively.
 
demon said:
Well it would mean a more left country, although that's real fantasyland talk. I would feel kind of uncomfortable with one of the two relevant political parties doing a 180 on all its core values just to scoop up some votes. Is American politics not enough of a joke as is?
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Despite the absurdity of the proposition, American politics would be much less of a joke if the country as a whole could rebalance to the left, preferably at the complete rejection and repudiation of Republican values (rather than at increased polarity which causes a gridlock of government).
 
Eight Diagram Bat Fighter said:
Yeah, Republicans should just switch everything they believe and value so they can get a dude in office. Makes sense.
Click to expand...

Playing devil's advocate, how is this any different from how Democrats already get elected?

Zaptruder said:
Yeah, this guy gets it. Of course this strategy will really only work once if it does work... but hey, better than continue to move in the opposite direction of trending forces!
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It worked for Obama this year and it'll work again for Clinton in 2016.
 
lincoln was a republican.
kennedy was a democrat.
some say reagan would be a "liberal" today.

the president in 2052 will probably a pro-choice, openly gay, republican.
 
Zaptruder said:
Despite the absurdity of the proposition, American politics would be much less of a joke if the country as a whole could rebalance to the left, preferably at the complete rejection and repudiation of Republican values (rather than at increased polarity which causes a gridlock of government).
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Well I guess that's true. But like I said, fantasyland. If the Republicans did this, 99% chance it's only a gimmick to get asses in congress seats and move back to the right.
 
Deified Data said:
Playing devil's advocate, how is this any different from how Democrats already get elected?


It worked for Obama this year and it'll work again for Clinton in 2016.
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That's only because he's still got republicans on the right.

Bait and switch - going from advertising as left of democrats, back to the right of them when in power will quickly disenfranchise any democratic supporters that they manage to snag.

Meanwhile, democrats keep sliding to the right, but can keep appearing left because they've got a bat shit insane group to counterbalance their slide.
 
Zaptruder said:
Well, that's the thing... republicans don't *actually* believe or value anything. They only give a shit as long as it has the republican branding.

You can see this in the way that they continued to reject all their old proposals and positions simply because the democrats had to adopt them out of pragmatism (trying to get anything done).
Click to expand...

Actually they have fairly clear positions on a variety of issues. They are generally against regulation of the economy and the environment, against abortion, against public welfare benefits, against labor unions, against restrictions on an individual's ability to own and carry firearms, and against affirmative action. Your post is a bit bizarre to anyone who follows American politics.
 
Back in the late 1800s we had anti-slavery Republicans and pro-slavery Democrats. Republicans were populated in the Northeast and Democrats in the south. When the hell did the two parties switch sides?
 
Zaptruder said:
That's only because he's still got republicans on the right.

Bait and switch - going from advertising as left of democrats, back to the right of them when in power will quickly disenfranchise any democratic supporters that they manage to snag.

Meanwhile, democrats keep sliding to the right, but can keep appearing left because they've got a bat shit insane group to counterbalance their slide.
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True. But could these would-be tricksters count on their former conservative supporters to be "in" on the joke? If Republicans are known for anything other than blind faith in their ideology, it's tearing apart their own when they sense the slightest bit of leftist sympathy. This "strategy" paying off would hinge on 50% of the country somehow being in the know while simultaneously keeping it secret from the other half.
 
Dude Abides said:
Actually they have fairly clear positions on a variety of issues. They are generally against regulation of the economy and the environment, against abortion, against public welfare benefits, against labor unions, against restrictions on an individual's ability to own and carry firearms, and against affirmative action. Your post is a bit bizarre to anyone who follows American politics.
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Yeah, I think the "Republicans don't believe in anything" meme first really became a thing with Mitt Romney's etch-a-sketching. Of course they've always had their hypocrisies...
 
kame-sennin said:
No, abandoning their older ideas like the healthcare mandate or the carbon tax just meant that they were able to move further to the right - closer to their ideological core. The democrats' move towards the center - which is an ever rightward moving target - enables the republicans to get what they want.
Click to expand...

You say that like the party has been some monolithic entity that has only changed on the outside. It is a vastly different party than it was even 20 years ago.
 
I agree with James Carville. Let the Republicans keep moving right. They'll keep losing elections, and the country will be better off for it.

AnathemicOne said:
Back in the late 1800s we had anti-slavery Republicans and pro-slavery Democrats. Republicans were populated in the Northeast and Democrats in the south. When the hell did the two parties switch sides?
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The Progressive Movement of the early 20th Century. Before that, the Dems were the conservative party and the Republicans were more progressive. In the 1910's they seemed to come together and agree on a lot of things. They passed a few amendments with bipartisan support and then went their separate ways, only the Republicans were the small government conservatives now (Coolidge, Hoover) and the Dems became the progressives (FDR). Wonder if something like that will ever happen again...
 
q_q said:
I agree with James Carville. Let the Republicans keep moving right. They'll keep losing elections, and the country will be better off for it.
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I kind of agree with this. The Republican party can continue moving to the right, while the country seems to be slowly moving to the left. You don't win elections that way.
 
It isn't exactly an unheard of thing. Flips like this have happened continuously in American politics. It really is the case that every several decades, there is a major re-alignment of politics in the country. Remember, when the Republican party was originally formed, it was the radical left-leaning party based in the New England states. By the time of FDR, the Democratic Party's main constituency was still rural voters located in the south. The entire political framework we are all used to evolved after World War 2.

Shifts like this don't happen overnight, but they do happen, and fairly regularly. They also tend to involve political parties either splitting apart, been absorbed into other parties, or simply disappearing.

It is not only possible, but likely that within the next ten to thirty years, we could see a pretty major shift in the US's political spectrum. I doubt it will happen in time for the next presidential election, however.

Edit: Also, the "most republicans only vote republicans because of name branding" is pretty shaky logic. You would need some mighty big evidence to justify that. It is much safer to assume that people just have different experiences and values that you. After all, a good chunk of the republican base grew up in the Cold War era, when the world and this country was a very different place. It is natural for older people to have a very different worldview than young people growing up in the 21st century.
 
This may sound crazy, but I think the general populous could possibly identify with conservatives more if they dropped God from their platform.

Abortion? "Unborn babies are a gift from God!"

Gay marriage? "God hates 'em!"

Sex Education? "The power of Christ compels you!"

Every time I hear a candidate, Democrat and Republican alike, mentioning their religion I see it as petty pandering. I don't give a crap what you believe. I want to hear about policy not, "Well, I'm a lifelong Catholic. And with that..." Uuuuuuggggghhhh...

I wouldn't give a flaming crap if a president practiced Voodoo. Just keep it private, make shit happen and we're straight.
 
q_q said:
I agree with James Carville. Let the Republicans keep moving right. They'll keep losing elections, and the country will be better off for it.
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So funny that the demographics have clearly changed against their favor (and only continue to), yet some republicans still think they lost because they just didn't go conservative enough.
 
Zaptruder said:
Think about it.

Most republicans only vote republican because they vote republicans!

Fox news will continue shilling for republicans because that's what they do.

While a large proportion of democratic voters are more pragmatic - they'll actually get confused if Republicans become more progressive, and might even vote for them enmasse.

What's the alternative here? Republicans continue to push harder right, even while the demographics of America continue to shift towards the left?

Of course, I guess they could continue winning the war by proxy - not actually winning power themselves, but simply continuing to drag the entire country to the right by way of falsely equivocating media.

But that really doesn't seem to make them happier. So... they can either have their politics, or they can have their wins. Can't have both!

What say you GAF? Genius plan, or most genius plan?
Click to expand...

Actually it is more like the left moved toward the right as the public moved to right and Republicans went to the far right as a result. They don't need to move to the left of Democrats, they need to move back toward the middle. aka. Take the party back from the extremists that somehow became the leaders of the party.
 
AnathemicOne said:
Back in the late 1800s we had anti-slavery Republicans and pro-slavery Democrats. Republicans were populated in the Northeast and Democrats in the south. When the hell did the two parties switch sides?
Click to expand...

The 1930s, when the long-poorer South started to converge with the rest of America in earnings [and hence favoured limited government policies], and the Northeast and Pacific ceased to be the bastion of old Yankee Protestants and absorbed ever higher numbers of immigrants. The beliefs of Calvin Coolidge, the Yankee conservative in Massachusetts in the 1920s, are nearly identical to modern day Republicans [other than the tariff]; he and his allies didn't change, but their electorates did. Immigrants have always voted for the Democratic Party [cf: the Irish machines in the Civil War] until their ethnic identity ceased being relevant and they became assimilated into "whiteness". (Even today, white Protestants vote overwhelmingly Republican even in California: if you confined the California electorate to their votes, CA would look like Arizona.) Once FDR remade the New Deal Party system to be about welfare state politics, the cleavages became rich and poor; as the regions changed on that front, they changed their alignments. (Note that parts of the South started voting Republican in the 1950s, well before most of civil rights politics took place, and indeed, when Republicans were still clearly the more supportive party on that front.)

As to race: Republicans were always for formal legal equality, but bristled against anything smacking of economic redistribution or compensation for historical wrongs beyond whatever was done to compensate specific individuals. (Ever wonder why the Republicans who fought the Civil War gutted the Freedmen's Bureau so quickly?) Republicans have stayed more or less frozen in time with their views, believing them to be timeless classical liberal and/or divinely ordained Christian principles- compare Frederick Douglass's beliefs to Clarence Thomas's, and you'll see they're the same. Democrats pivoted around from being anti-black to believing government needed to play a more proactive force in righting structural wrongs.

It's fun and easy--especially here on a left-leaning site like GAF-- to say "THE RACISTS ALL BECAME REPUBLICANS, LOL," but it's actually a result of economics instead and long preceded the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

EDIT: I should note, this is a stylized, general story, and does not include a few outlier places like Oregon, Vermont, or New Hampshire, which remain overwhelmingly homogeneous, but any attempt to explain such a broad change as national realignment will include some gaps. I could elaborate in more detail on such idiosyncratic cases, but it's not really relevant to the question asked.
 
The GOP is now pro-choice, pro-immigration reform, all about universal health care, and they just increased funding for the EPA by 200%? Either they all just get hit in the head.... or this is just the introduction to the opposites.
 
demon said:
I kind of agree with this. The Republican party can continue moving to the right, while the country seems to be slowly moving to the left. You don't win elections that way.
Click to expand...

The country is moving left on social issues but right on economics.
 
Zaptruder said:
Think about it.

Most republicans only vote republican because they vote republicans!

Fox news will continue shilling for republicans because that's what they do.
Click to expand...
Moderate Republicans were shown the door. They were not voted in just for being Republican; they were labelled as RINOs and thrown out.

But even if you did manage to get an unpopular Republican on the ballot, a huge part of electioneering is motivating your own base to actually take the time to vote. It may even be more important than convincing undecided voters.
 
They just have to start courting minorties and they should be fine.

Demo's are changing but if republicans market to latino's and other minorities they should be good in the coming years, as these people are having families and lean more to the right.

It's not been an inherently racist party but they do just need to be proactive.

Also yeah, be more moderate. Like, Bush moderate even. They just can't be so reactive to whatever the tea party is doing or spamming "no" at the democrats on ever vote or proposition.
 
Slavik81 said:
Moderate Republicans were shown the door. They were not voted in just for being Republican; they were labelled as RINOs and thrown out.

But even if you did manage to get an unpopular Republican on the ballot, a huge part of electioneering is motivating your own base to actually take the time to vote. It may even be more important than convincing undecided voters.
Click to expand...

I like that people are kinda responding seriously, even when I wasn't exactly been serious in making this topic.

Political strategy and tactics are quite an interesting area; why things are the way they are is important information!
 
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