I expected this to be sarcasm, but it wasn’t. The Republicans are at the beginning stages of having a conversation with themselves about why they lost the election. You have one group who will argue that the only problem was the candidate at the top of the ticket. You have another group who will argue that the problem was the influence of the Tea Party. Then we’ll have little subgroups who think they could have won with Romney if only he was more conservative, or if he had moved aggressively to the middle. Some will blame the Establishment for forcing a squishy flip-flopping idiot on the party. But I really doubt that there will ever be any real consensus about what caused the problem. Mitt Romney will be a punching bag, but that won’t sufficiently explain why the GOP blew chances to win Senate seats in Indiana and Wisconsin and Massachusetts and Missouri and North Dakota and Nevada. It won’t help them explain why they lost the House of Representatives (if that happens).
I don’t think anyone can seriously argue that Rick Perry or Herman Cain or Michele Bachmann were going to do a lot better than Mitt Romney. The candidate is badly flawed, but so were all the other Republicans who ran for the nomination this year. And even if the GOP had a more telegenic and skilled politician, they’d still have to deal with the incredibly unpopular ideas that have become mainstream within the party.
That’s the real problem. People don’t want to change how our government operates in any fundamental way. They basically like how it has operated since FDR put the structure in place and Truman and Eisenhower ironed out the details. People just want adults to solve problems as they arise, and they don’t need all the drama the Republicans create about everything, however mundane. The Republicans have become a radical party whose policies are so different from the status quo, and so unsupported by the people, that they don’t really dare speak about their policies openly. That’s why Romney is so vague. But anyone else serious about winning would be vague, too, since no one but their base wants what the GOP is selling.
When the Republicans have this debate with themselves in earnest, after the elections, they’ll also have to figure out how to deal with the problem that they’re a party that is openly hostile to Latinos in a country where that is not a viable thing to be.
“When the Republicans have this debate with themselves in earnest…”
Boo … they can’t. There’s no one left to debate WITH. The inmates are running the asylum and the doctors are crazier than them. Rush, Beck, Ingraham, Malkin, Savage, and on and on and on and on.
The only way the crazies are going to be put back into the bottle, is to literally get another bottle. Earlier this year, I said I expected in 2013-2015 for the BatShit Contingent to split and form a short lived (6-10 years) 3rd party. I can’t in all honesty say that at this time. The BSContingent is running the roost in a significant number of states (NV, ME, ID, NE, MN, IA, WY, TX, LA, AL, FL and so on). In those states where they don’t hold control, the established R party is so weak as to be moribund (CT, MA, NY, CA, WA).
I think the non-BSContingent will be the ones to leave. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me to find that the Kansas example will be followed throughout the Mountain west and Deep South (primary any Republican that doesn’t gibber on command).
What do you think?
What would the non-BS contingent want in a party? If they want a fairly effective, pro-military, pro-gun, pro-business type party, there already is one. So they’re looking for a party that’s like the Democrats but anti-choice, anti-black, and anti-gay?
Yes
By definition, the non-BS contingent doesn’t care about being anti-choice, anti-black, or anti-gay. All they want is a party that is just like the Democrats, but isn’t the Democrats. For many of them, the only problem with the Dems is that they are the other team.
I expect the Dems will eventually split into a “centrist” party, where all the fairly sane ex-Republicans and corporate owned Dems will gather, and a liberal party. And the GOP will become nothing more than a southern based third party.
I don’t see the Republicans splitting apart anytime soon. They can all see that that way lies suicide. I see a huge battle for the heart and soul of the party. Of course I was wrong in 2008, when I predicted that for the last four years. Their unity in opposing Obama held them together. We’re gonna have to spank ’em hard to shake them free enough of their delusions to realize that the way their going is also suicide.
“. . . the way they’re going.”
Never underestimate Republican determination to win. It matters not at all to Republicans and their supporters how the objective is accomplished (purge Democratic districts and precincts of potential voters, cut polling facilities to the marrow, lose ballots, lie, cheat, intimidate, steal). No method is beneath a Republican, nor does it matter to a GOP supporter that nothing is beneath them. Democracy to Republicans is just a word that is without meaning, like honor, like integrity, like military service to the country. The philosophy is plain: I got mine, F*CK YOU!
I am Ed Tubbs, and I live in Palm Springs, CA
Ed, I agree with you in principle, except that the driving force of the R party today is not now and never was part of the “win at any cost” leadership and establishment.
In the South (Texas to the Atlantic, Ohio River to the Gulf Coast) the inherent racism was not part of the national leadership, it was the primary motivating factor for the followers. The dog whistles of Nixon, Wallace and Reagan were being blown by the true believers of Thurmond, Byrnes, Eastland and others who were definitely NOT movers and shakers in National R Politics.
In the Mountain West, the bigotry takes another slant. Instead of classic racism, you have sectionalist classism and an added disdain of “brown” people. They think that they are “better” than the effete inhabitants of the East Coast because they “stand on their own two feet”. Except of course, that the roads, dams, airports and parks that brings the majority of the $$$ into the region are paid for by those same effete inhabitants. Merle Haggard says it best
The dichotomy is extreme and profound.
The win at any cost legacy is from the Leadership, Establishment and Country Club R’s who have no principles except victory. It is easier to get votes by division than by inclusion.
The base, however, does NOT believe in win at any cost. They believe that they are RIGHT and will win if they are only given the chance. Furthermore, no amount of losses will convince them otherwise. If the “base” ever truley gets their own party, they will be around for a long time. In their case, the only votes they want are inclusive of their own little world.
If the R’s split, the resulting break will not heal until most of the true believing followers are dead.
Only a portion of their base wants these policies in earnest. The rest of their base thinks they want them, but they don’t really understand them at all. It’s uninformed consent.
“When the Republicans have this debate with themselves in earnest, after the elections, they’ll also have to figure out to deal with the problem that they’re a party that is openly hostile to Latinos in a country where that is not a viable thing to be.”
They are also openly hostile to women in a country that’s >50% women. They’re also pretty much hostile to any form of moderation and sanity.
I go back and forth on this. On one hand, I’d like them to return to being sane because I think it’s good for the country. On the other hand, if they march off into oblivion, I could care less.
In the past, I think you could count on the sane people who run their dog and pony shows to assess why they failed and move to moderate, but I’m not so sure those people even exist anymore. The crazy can’t be put back now.
The only thing that saves them electorally is that some women apparently LIKE to be in bondage.
50 shades of stupid.
Read your latest blog entry. I’m truly sorry and truly empathize. I was born blue collar, rose by talent and hard work (yes, plus a scholarship and the help of the U.S. Air Force) to become a white collar scientist and later computer programmer (about half my generation of physicists were destined to never have a physics job per Physics Today, most drifted into computer programming). With the current glut of programmers (not a dearth, don’t believe Micro$oft) and antipathy to gray haired programmers (Actually, I still had black hair at 42 when a manager told me I was too old, they only hired under 30), I have slipped back to blue collar. I don’t have your medical problems (osteoporosis is rare in males) but I have other problems that earned me a few free ambulance rides last year.
Regarding house cleaners, my wife worked as one when I was unemployed but she quit because the other women stole. She wouldn’t rat on them (blue collar all her life), but she didn’t want any part of it either. She says she will never let a cleaner into her house.
Regarding mess, I had a vacation last week. I was going to clean and sort out my computer room. I managed to enter two weeks of receipts into MsMoney and blogged a lot. I know it is discouraging.
Hang in there, Teach.
Thanks so much.
I have to agree with this and the comments so far.
While I don’t think we can know what will happen after the election I’m starting to think that this isn’t going to be the kind of intra-party civil war that a lot of people, myself included, have speculated might happen. I’m already hearing a lot of rationalization and even early acceptance of a loss from local GOPwarts.
I’m starting to think that we’ll see a replay of 2009, like we are now seeing a replay of McCain 2008 with the return to “Obama is a redistributionist, Obama palls around with terrorists” – I expect a new scary black preacher video any day now. Once they lose I expect we’ll hear a lot of calls for moderating their approach, but those will be quickly drowned out and the teajihadists will double down on the crazy, and the party of No will be even more extreme.
The one thing we must hope for is that the Dems regain the House and the Senate does something to neuter the filibuster (they won’t eliminate it, but they can defang it). After the last 4 years I expect even Obama will realize that the only way they can get the GOP to come to the bargaining table is if they show the GOP that they don’t need them to pass legislation.
But the reason the teavangelicals will win the argument is simply numbers. They are the very large majority of their own party. If the more sensible elite want to real them back they won’t be able to do it with a simple post-election debate. That will require years – perhaps decades – of slow, careful de-programming via the right wing media. When you’ve stirred your base up to a frenzy by getting them to believe a hundred easily disproven falsehoods you can’t just turn around and say “ok, guys, that was just for show, now it’s time to get real about politics”.
Of course, that assumes there are any sensible elites left in the GOP. There may be a few old policy hands who know all the Worldnetdaily stuff is crap, but based on what we are hearing out of the mouths of GOP politicians and the big GOP investors these days I suspect that Krugman is right – the inner party does indeed now believe the prole-feed. In that case there is no solution. The GOP will just stay permanently crazy until/unless the funding of the right wing wurlitzer is slashed.
That sounds to me like an argument for a semi-permanent schism between business and the now somewhat militant rank-and-file fuelled by their media allies. Cue the populist Republican insurgency; perhaps we should consider the Randian ideological fantasy merely duct-tape used to hold the existing coalition together.
If so, we better hope the economy does improve or we may have a fight on our hands. It would be hard to argue that corporate America hasn’t been picking everyone’s pockets.
Who ever gains control of the big money GOP doners will control the coming debate. Someone in the GOP must be able to shut down candidates like Akin by cutting off the money.
That’s a good point, and in this cycle and 2010 it seems clear that the Tea Party was astroturf financed. But I’m guessing the Akin supporters, such as they are, will learn a little something about fundraising locally. The Tea Party and their fellow travellers have already made progress, politically, in party primaries against the will of the Republican establishment. If they can consolidate political leverage the money might follow whether the party likes it or not.
Huckabee made a very credible run in 2008 with very modest financial support; it could be argued that the lack of it was partly responsible for his loss. But in the event of a clear schism with the mainstream party it isn’t too much of a stretch to imagine a more ambitious effort from the rank-and-file if they feel sufficiently alienated and can maintain their enthusiasm when the stakes move on from merely deposing a black man from the Oval Office.
That’s just it. Rove can’t cut off the Koch Bros.
Boo, somewhat on the subject, I’d really like to see your analysis of these projections:
http://www.electionprojection.com/2012elections/senate12.php
http://www.electionprojection.com/2012elections/house12.php
They show a massive Obama landslide, but Dems losing the Senate, the House, and even more Governorships. It’s like the country has embraced the Tea Party but they just can’t stand Romney.
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/fivethirtyeight-forecast-g-o-p-senate-hopes-slip
ping/
Thanks. I trust Nate Silver far more than this other site, but it still looks tight. For anything to be done, the filibuster must go and if the R’s hold the House, nothing will be done about our problems as the Tea Party scorches the earth.
Still like to have Booman’s take, even from the gut.
I saw several weeks ago that Booman was predicting taking back the House too.
This site is also very good. They see the question as linked to the nature of the post-convention bounce, which for Obama has been significant.
http://election.princeton.edu/2012/09/19/post-conventions-senate-and-house-races-go-national/
I have an unshakeable belief that reality always wins. That is, no matter how beautifully furnished your fantasy bubble, no matter how diligently you seal off all the borders to prevent any leakage from the rest of the world, reality will in the end bite you in the ass. So it will be with the teahadis. The reality that will bite will probably not be political reality — it’s too easy to rationalize away losses, not to mention how delicious they will find it to be the martyrs in an ever-dwindling minority.
The realities that will be harder and harder to keep at bay will be events that are surely coming, like global warming — we’re already seeing some fraying around the edges of the denialist bubble — and Obamacare. When the healthcare apocalypse doesn’t arrive as expected, and in fact many of them find that they have better healthcare access, it will be harder and harder to maintain that we’re living in a socialist dystopia featuring death panels for granny. Then I think we’re going to find that, just as it’s very difficult now to find anyone who voted for George Bush, it will be difficult to find anyone who belonged to the Tea Party back in the day.
One thing’s certain: The Republicans need to come to terms with the fact that they have been run by The Bubble, The Echo Chamber, whatever you want to call it. Like an addict hitting rock-bottom, that will be difficult for them to face.
I agree that “ObamaCare” (said in your most smarmy voice) may just be the thing that breaks the cognitive dissonance for many of them. So many of these folks (or friends/family of theirs) work at shitty jobs with either no healthcare or they get stuck with too much of the bill for mediocre healthcare. When they see it actually affect their pocketbooks in a positive way and see their family and friends finally getting the care that they need – and see that all the bullshit they’d been regurgitating was just that – bullshit, they may have the long-overdue head explosion, realize that they’ve been lied to, and finally turn off the Fox News once and for all. Maybe they’ll even call out the propagandists and hold them to account. Maybe?
We can dream, anyway…
I never really credited the ACA opposition with any intellectual merit and it seems to me that as reasonable as your argument seems it will not make much of an impression on those consumed by indignation over it. One stunning feature of cognitive dissonance is the agility it grants the sufferer to pivot seamlessly to the next outrage which provides a handy vessel for their emotional agendas without considering classical arguments.
The next manufactured controversy will enjoy exactly the same groundswell of opposition and provide a focal point for the same coalition; basically a Wallace Democrat diaspora throughout the South, West and flyover country.
Like I said “We can dream, anyway… “
Heh. Probably why we are Democrats.
Like I said “We can dream, anyway… “
Hmmm. How’d that duplicate comment happen?
The only portions of the Republican rank and file that are even capable of such a realization are parts of the Palaeoconservatives and Ron Paul supporters. Whatever you think of their ideas, at least they have ideas.
The moderate Republicans will become independents and some will become Democrats.
Debates are not going to save the Republican Party. First, most of them are not capable of debate. They are only capable of schism.
Schism will not help the Republican Party. They are already too numerically small and ethnically and ideologically too narrow. This process will continue
as they splinter into warring factions.
What is now the GOP will in the not too distant future be several small parties with regional and local enclaves, none capable of winning a national election.
As they weaken, opposition to them will become more politically effective.
Mitt Romney is the symptom not the cause.
It will be business as usual at least until the midterms. If they lose big there, then there might be some kind of reckoning. But probably not. They’ll just keep circling the drain of dead end politics for at least another 10 years.
Considering the work that needs to be done for this Country of ours, Obama better hold onto his sanity lead and may his coattails and alot of hardworking Dems get us majorities in the Sen and House. The hard part is going to be the corrections.
First, any smart and savvy politician in the GOP would also be smart enough to know to not run. The economy is fucked and the party is full of nuts who will not accept any conservative solutions that would actually work. It would be a losing proposition.
Second the GOP s full of people who don’t really want to govern. They think any governing is by definition is bad and anything the government does could be done better by somebody else. Yet they ask to govern. Guess what? The voters tend to vote for people who actually want to do the job.
Third, Obama is just that good. Under any circumstances he is really pretty good at what he does and it would take some real talent to out-strategize and out-smart him. And the voters tend to know that and like him personally.
Some are blaming fox news
http://youtu.be/P_0xRejWNuE
Will fox go down
That guy is hilarious! So far I’ve only watched about half of it. That’s all I could take at once. I will watch the rest later. At first I thought he was kidding. He seems to forget that Rick Perry was really the darling of Fox News early on in the primaries. At least, that’s my best recollection. But yeah, they own the Romney candidacy. And I am sure this guy just ate it up. Now he’s got an upset tummy. He blames it on all the Liberals that Fox puts on the air!! That the “Fair and Balanced” thing needs to stop. Poor thing.
He needs wider distribution. I’m gonna snag a copy of his video in case he decides to take it down.
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!